Memorial for the murdered Jews
of Europe
View of completed Memorial
2005
Photo Credit: Deutsche
Welle
The 19,000 square-meter Memorial for
the murdered Jews of Europe, which was opened to the public on
May 12, 2005, consists of 2711 stones placed on sloping, uneven
ground in an undulating wave-like pattern, giving visitors the
feeling of insecurity as though the stones were on unstable ground.
Visitors can enter from all four sides,
day or night, and wander on their own through the maze of stones,
as though visiting a graveyard with nameless tombstones. The
columns are sunk into the ground to various depths and at some
places, they are higher than the heads of the visitors. There
are no set paths or sign posts to guide viewers. The memorial
was designed by architect Peter Eisenman to deliberately disorient
visitors by having all the stones tilted slightly and paths that
are not level.
Completed Memorial
site covers five and a half acres
Photo Credit: Bonnie
M. Harris
On the west side, a row of 41 trees stands
next to the Tiergarten park on Ebertstrasse, as shown in the
photo above, which was taken by Bonnie M. Harris in 2006.
The photo below, also taken by Bonnie
M. Harris, shows the Potsdamer Platz, a business district and
shopping center, in the background. The second photo below shows
the same view of the south end of the Memorial site when it was
under construction in June 2002.
View of Memorial Site
with Potsdamer Platz in background
Photo Credit: Bonnie
M. Harris
Construction site of
Jewish Holocaust memorial in Berlin, June 2002
The site of the Jewish Holocaust Memorial
in Berlin was formally dedicated on January 27, 2000 in a "symbolic
event" which could not be termed a ground-breaking ceremony
because the project had not yet received approval from the German
parliament. The 27th of January is Europe's international day
of mourning for the Jews who were murdered by the Nazis.
The first dedication ceremony for the
Memorial was held on November 15, 1993. Originally expected to
be finished by January 27, 2004, the Memorial was dedicated on
May 10, 2005 and opened to the public on May 12, 2005, exactly
60 years after Germany was liberated from the Nazis in World
War II.
Sign at the corner
of Ebertstrasse and Behrenstrasse, June 2002
The design for the Denkmal für die
ermordeten Juden Europes was approved on 25 June 1999 by the
German parliament. The vote was 314 to 209 with 14 members abstaining.
The project cost the German tax-payers 35.1 million euro. The
5.5 acre site covers an area the size of three soccer fields.
Before 1945, this location was part of
the Ministry Gardens; it was adjacent to the large complex of
buildings which included Hitler's Chancellery. After the war,
it was part of the "death strip" along the Berlin wall.
The memorial covers an area very close to the underground bunker
where Adolf Hitler committed suicide on April 30, 1945. There
is no access to Hitler's bunker which still exists underground.
On the first day that the memorial was
open, disrespectful teen-agers used it as a playground and the
site was desecrated with a swastika, which was quickly removed.
The architect of the Memorial, Peter Eisenman, said that he was
not worried about the threat of graffiti as he thought this might
even make the Memorial more interesting.
Photo Credit: Deutsche
Welle
At the opening ceremony on May 10, 2005,
Paul Spiegel, the head of Germany's Central Council of Jews,
sharply criticized the new Holocaust memorial, saying that it
was too abstract and that it failed to confront the issue of
German guilt. In his speech, Spiegel said that the Memorial for
the murdered Jews of Europe honors the victims of Nazism, but
the Memorial does not refer directly to the perpetrators. According
to Spiegel, viewers are not confronted with questions of guilt
and responsibility. Spiegel complained that the Memorial leaves
an "incomplete message" and merely shows the Jews "as
a nation of victims poured into 2,711 concrete pillars."
Spiegel said that the Monument fails to ask the question "Why?"
This page was last updated on August
18, 2006
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