The Germans at Least Are Looking in the Mirror  Serge Schmemann,
in the NYT (Nov. 10, 2004):  ... There's no escaping the past in
Berlin. An exhibition currently at the German Historical Museum
on the Unter den Linden, the "Myths of the Nations,'' has
attracted considerable attention with its displays of how people
from different nations - Russians, Americans, Europeans - have
formed and reformed the narratives of their experiences of World
War II and the Holocaust over the past 60 years. The purpose is
to impress on the visitor that national memory is really the
past continuously reinterpreted through the present. "Nowhere
have the memories of the war faded,'' the text declares. "On the
contrary, they are constantly being renewed in ever-changing
variations.''  Like much of what the Germans do with their past,
the exhibition is open to the criticism of seeking to
"relativize'' Nazi history. The display about the United States,
for example, is dominated by a clip of Jimi Hendrix playing his
screeching version