( CNN ) -- Playing cards with images of Hitler . Toy fuhrers . And a lamp and church tapestry with swastikas emblazoned across the front . No , it 's not a neo-Nazi convention . Rather , it is a groundbreaking exhibit that opened Friday in the German capital and is intended to show Adolf Hitler 's relationship with the German people . Germany has produced exhibits on the Holocaust and Nazism before but never since World War II has one focused solely on the man who taught an entire nation to hate . `` Hitler and the Germans '' is not about the fascist dictator 's memorabilia , not about the man himself , said curator Hans-Ulrech Thamer . It 's not about textbook history or scholarly writings . The everyday objects on display show how Hitler won the heart of the German people . Everyone can read a book , but `` objects have another quality , '' Thamer said . There are rows and rows of magazine covers carrying the face of Hitler as well as enormous metal busts carved for industrial mantle pieces . And propaganda signs , welfare collection boxes , photographs , film footage promoting a visionary leader of the fatherland . Thamer hopes viewers -- many of whom are sure to be Germans who no longer have direct memories of their nation 's ugly history -- will look inside themselves as they cast their eyes on ordinary things that back then , served a very extraordinary purpose . Michael Salberg of the Jewish civil rights group the Anti-Defamation League , called the exhibit `` extraordinary . '' `` It 's the ordinary objects -- that is what makes it powerful , '' he said . They are disquieting , upsetting , even off-putting , he said . Viewers might even go home and turn on a lamp in their living rooms and think about how the objects in the exhibit once occupied the same kinds of places . `` It was n't just among a group of elites , '' said said Salberg , director of international affairs at the ADL . `` That German society was permeated with the symbols and the images that the regime was promoting was an important first step , and it took hold in a very frightening way . '' More than 1,000 people streamed into the museum on opening day , Thamer said . They walked through halls devoted to three chronologically and thematically arranged chapters showing the circumstances of Hitler 's rise and rule . Swastikas are banned in Germany but Thamer said museums have special permission to display them for historical purposes . Still , organizers of the show agonized over possible repercussions : inciting neo-Nazi extremists and infuriating the rest of the world . A new study published this week in the German magazine Der Spiegel revealed far-right thoughts are common in Germany today . One-third of Germans said they would send foreigners home if there were not enough jobs to go around . One-sixth of Germans said Jews have too much influence . `` Yes , we have had some objections , '' Thamer said . `` One of the fears discussed in the newspapers is that this might promote extreme groups . But I am not sure they enter museums . '' Salberg said he did not believe an exhibit was likely to accelerate or motivate extreme viewpoints . `` People who have a xenophobic view of their society are not going to be any less or more xenophobic because of this exhibit , '' Salberg said . Deborah Lipstadt , a scholar of the Holocaust , also felt such exhibits are important . `` You understand that these things did not come out of nothing , '' said Lipstadt , who teaches at Emory University in Atlanta , Georgia . `` There was a method to the madness . '' She found powerful a similar exhibition of the power of Nazi propaganda at the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum in Washington . Some 55 million people died in World War II , including 6 million Jews who perished in the Nazi-orchestrated Holocaust .
This is the first exhibit in Germany that focuses on Hitler . On display are ordinary propaganda objects . The exhibition was opened by German Chancellor Angela Merkel and her husband Joachim Sauer at a ceremony attended by more than 1,000 people.