Night at the Museum
EVEN BEFORE U.S. PRESIDENT DONALD TRUMP LANDED in Brussels in mid-July to trash-talk NATO allies, it was clear that the European Union was in crisis. In Germany, a weakened Angela Merkel was forced to either tighten migration policy or lose her coalition (she chose the former); in Italy, Matteo Salvini, the leader of the ascendant right-wing Lega party, railed against his country remaining in the eurozone; Hungary and Poland were continuing their creep toward authoritarian rule; and Britain was struggling to figure out Brexit. The opening in May 2017 of a new museum in Brussels devoted to promoting Europe might have served to bolster the flagging union. Yet all it has managed to do is generate more controversy.
The House of European History, which was created by the European Parliament, was roundly criticized even before its doors opened for just about everything: The Platform of European Memory and Conscience, a multinational nongovernmental organization that raises awareness about totalitarianism in 20th-century Europe, said the museum was too soft on communism; Piotr Glinski, the Polish minister of culture and national
