Geraldine Museum’s WWII display rekindles debate over portrayal of Nazis

A Canterbury military museum is under scrutiny after unveiling a World War II display featuring Nazi symbols and Waffen-SS uniforms, sparking renewed debate about how New Zealand institutions should present the history of Nazism.

The Geraldine Military Museum’s exhibit, created by a local re-enactment group, includes mannequins dressed in the uniforms of the 1st SS Panzer Division LSSAH, Adolf Hitler’s personal guard. A large Nazi flag and minimal explanatory signage accompany the display, which aims, according to the museum, to show “both sides” of the war.

Richard Bunce, who led the re-enactment group, said the display was intended to illustrate the equipment and appearance of German forces rather than endorse their ideology. “History should not be hidden away because it might offend someone,” Bunce told Stuff.

Museum owner Don Pelvin supported the installation, saying he wanted to portray “both sides” of the conflict and that New Zealand troops “weren’t exempt” from wrongdoing.

But historians and Holocaust educators have called the display troubling. Dr Rowan Light, a University of Auckland historian, rejected the notion of moral equivalence between Allied soldiers and the Waffen-SS. “Atrocities were the point of the Nazi regime, not an accident or side-effect of battle,” he said. Displays without context risk sanitising history and undermining public understanding of why New Zealanders fought.

Holocaust Centre of New Zealand chair Deb Hart agreed, stressing that Nazi symbolism must be treated with care. “You can’t just put a big swastika up in a museum with some military uniforms and equipment and say, job done. It doesn’t help people understand,” she said. “There’s an obligation to safeguard community. We want to educate, not traumatise: safeguard NZ against anti-Semitism and hatred.”

The controversy also echoes an earlier local debate. Geraldine was home to the late Willi Huber, a former Waffen-SS officer who became known as a founder of the Mt Hutt skifield. Huber’s 2017 appearance in a TVNZ Sunday feature drew national criticism for downplaying his Nazi past. At the time, Holocaust Centre chair Jeremy Smith called such portrayals “outrageous” and “an intentionally distorted version of history.”

The recurrence of Nazi imagery in the same small town has reignited concerns that parts of New Zealand’s wartime history are being revisited without adequate moral framing.

While the museum insists the goal is education, experts say confronting history responsibly requires more than artefacts — it demands context.