Strg_F

Racist international shows: our repressed history (2022x44)

Air date: Dec 06, 2022

For a long time, Ganesha didn't know that her grandfather was exhibited in so-called "national shows". There is a black and white photo of her grandfather on her wall. It was only on a trip to his homeland of Sri Lanka that she found out about his story. That as a 16-year-old he was shipped to Europe with an elephant with the prospect of a prosperous life and finally had to perform as an exotic elephant rider in the Hamburg zoo “Tierpark Hagenbeck”. “People’s Shows” were a crowd puller. Crowds watched the racist production of the “savages”, the Tierra del Fuegos, the “cannibals from the South Seas”. STRG_F reporter Mirco and his colleague have been researching the colonial past of the famous Hamburg zoo for more than a year. You met descendants of those exhibited here. These call for a processing of history and clarification. Why are those responsible today finding it so difficult to face history?