Remembering the Holocaust in Germany

The catastrophic events that escalated in Germany from 1933 until 1945 contain many horrific images. Visuals so appalling, so chilling, it is with extreme difficulty that they can be erased from the mind. Nevertheless, representations of the events of the Holocaust are important for the construction of memorials and other artistic expressions of the Shoah. Therefore, it makes perfect sense that Peter Eisenman's memorial in Berlin to commemorate "the murdered Jews of Europe" during the Holocaust is done in abstract.

The recently opened memorial is over three acres in size. It consists of an underground museum and the monumental Field of Stelae, an open area consisting of 2,711 concrete slabs of various heights. The slabs are on uneven ground and they reach loftier heights toward the center of the field. Walking through the grid of stelae generates the feeling of getting deeper and deeper into darkness, as the sky becomes blocked and the slabs become more imposing. This is meant to cause a feeling of helplessness and despair, just as the victims of the Holocaust fell deeper into the downward spiral of horror as the war progressed.

Although the Field of Stelae is successful in imparting a feeling of helplessness, it fails to represent the murderous destruction of Jewish lives and communities during the Shoah. The helplessness of European Jewry should not be the measure of remembering the Holocaust; rather, it is the horrific industrialized murder and dehumanization that took place, for which the Holocaust should be significantly memorialized. As far as representational architecture goes in Berlin, Daniel Libeskind's Jewish Museum, constructed in the shape of a Jewish star being pulled apart and contorted, is far more successful.

The underground museum consists of five main rooms, each with a different focus. The first gives a brief overview of the Holocaust starting with Hitler's assumption of power in 1933 until the end of the war in 1945. The signs communicating the information are heavily washed with political correctness. Whenever the murder of Jews is mentioned, the assault on the Sinti and Roma (Gypsies) are recounted as well. A similar amount of space is dedicated to the deportation of both Polish and Macedonian Jews, even though the former were of a far greater number than the latter. Though no amount of space is enough, only a bare overview is given for the Final Solution. Certainly a few paragraphs are insufficient in addressing that fateful program.

The other rooms are more successful. The next room, "The Room of Dimensions," has fifteen large personal testimonials of victims on the floor while the walls are scarred with the numbers of the dead from their respective countries. This assists in evoking the feeling of the magnitude of the number of the lost. The rest of the rooms concentrate on specific individuals, families, and communities that were destroyed or affected during the Shoah.

Although it is informative and, at times, moving, the museum pales in comparison with the magnitude of information conveyed at the Holocaust museum in Washington D.C., while Yad Vashem in Jerusalem is far more stirring with its monuments and memorials.

What saves this quasi-successful memorial and museum is its location. It is situated right next to the Brandenburg Gate and Pariser Platz, where the major embassies of the city are located, placing it next to some of the most prime real estate in unified Berlin. It is in the backyard of the American embassy and the Reichstag and is down the street from Potsdamer Platz, the new upscale downtown area. Erecting this three-acre memorial in such a desirable location, right in the middle of town, shows that the German government is not going to hide its disgraceful past; rather it is on display for the whole city and world to see. Constructing the memorial in such a central location will hopefully contribute to the overall goal of any Holocaust memorial: preventing such a travesty from ever reoccurring.