During my 2001 visit, the RIAS fellows walked on the vacant lot that is now the Monument to the Murdered Jews of Europe. Nine years ago, organizers told us of the plans to give the Holocaust memorial a central place in the heart of Berlin, only a block from the famed Brandenburg Gate and across the street from the US embassy.
Visiting the completed monument in 2010 was somewhat disappointing. Architect Peter Eisenmann placed 2,711 stelae, or concrete blocks on an uneven surface in a grid pattern. The idea was to challenge visitors to find their way out of the maze and experience the lost feeling of the Jewish people. However, the monument was filled with kids, teens and adults playing hide and seek among the blocks. I always think of the Holocaust in terms of the tragic loss of individual human beings, multiplied by millions. The faceless blocks did little to recall the memories of these individual victims, instead lumping them together as a group of anonymous coffins and making them easier to dismiss. I was not motivated to visit the exhibit center underneath the memorial, which appears to have more on individual victims and families. For me, the randomness and lack of symbolism in the memorial was exactly the OPPOSITE of the Nazi's final solution, which was meticulously planned down to the extermination of the very last Jew. Overall, a monumental disappointment.
During my 2001 visit, the RIAS fellows walked on the vacant lot that is now the Monument to the Murdered Jews of Europe. Nine years ago, organizers told us of the plans to give the Holocaust memorial a central place in the heart of Berlin, only a block from the famed Brandenburg Gate and across the street from the US embassy.
Visiting the completed monument in 2010 was somewhat disappointing. Architect Peter Eisenmann placed 2,711 stelae, or concrete blocks on an uneven surface in a grid pattern. The idea was to challenge visitors to find their way out of the maze and experience the lost feeling of the Jewish people. However, the monument was filled with kids, teens and adults playing hide and seek among the blocks. I always think of the Holocaust in terms of the tragic loss of individual human beings, multiplied by millions. The faceless blocks did little to recall the memories of these individual victims, instead lumping them together as a group of anonymous coffins and making them easier to dismiss. I was not motivated to visit the exhibit center underneath the memorial, which appears to have more on individual victims and families. For me, the randomness and lack of symbolism in the memorial was exactly the OPPOSITE of the Nazi's final solution, which was meticulously planned down to the extermination of the very last Jew. Overall, a monumental disappointment.
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