Berlin’s Memorial to the Murdered Jews of Europe is unlike anything else in the city. Unique in its intention and in its composition. Both strangely familiar in its design, yet completely alien.
An austere commemorative installation in the centre of the German capital for the millions of Jews who fell victim to one of the most murderous regimes of the 20th century. An event solidified in collective memory and summarised in one term – the Holocaust – or Shoah, as it is known in Hebrew. A genocide most remarkable for reaching a callous industrial meridian – planned, and eventually executed, with a bureacratic efficiency never before witnessed in human history.
This strange and provocative interruption to the city landscape, a field of 2,711 concrete stelae, was introduced in 2005 – and designed by architect, Peter Eisenmann (also responsible for the 9/11 memorial in New York City). Like the genocide whose victims it stands to pay tribute to, this place of remembrace bears all the hallmarks of an industrial process – grey, uniform, and regulated in its order. Situated only a short walk from the Brandenburg Gate and Germany’s federal parliament, the memorial is also walking distance from the former Nazi government quarter and the site of Adolf Hitler’s Führerbunker. The location of the Nazi SS-GeStaPo headquarters, where the Holocaust would be planned from, is also located similarly nearby. Leaving this place of remembrance sandwiched in-between the darkest chapter in Germany’s past, to the south, and its introspective and repentant present, to the north.
To approach this memorial from the streets that surround it is to be confronted with an unadorned mass of monumental grey – a panoramic presentation of the abstract. As what is most evident, on closer inspection of the memorial, is what is clearly missing. Nowhere is there a justification of its design, it is completely lacking in any immediate indication that it serves as a memorial – or even a memorial specifically for the Jewish victims of National Socialism. There are no names on the concrete blocks.
All that is present to explain the existence of this plot of land is a small plaque – visible on all corners of the memorial – listing its title and indicating what is also prohibited. No smoking, no eating amongst the blocks, and no climbing on top of them – or jumping from stele to stele. As there is no clear entrance point or fencing to cordon off the memorial, it remains accessible from all directions. And also open at night. The blocks vary in height, and also in angle, across the landscape. When examined from different viewpoints the memorial offers a subtly different perspective. Perhaps also allowing the visitor to then reach different conclusions from different viewpoints as to the meaning of the memorial.
Most significant though is the way that the pathways between the blocks allow visitors to descend into the memorial – only to be enveloped by the grey sentries of the blocks that suddenly surround and overwhelm the bodies weaving through them. The contrast between the blocks and the humans who descend into this bleak forest could not be more obvious – the warmth of bodies in contrast to the cold concrete most evident in the winter months when the memorial is often also covered in snow or swept through with an icy wind.
The journey into the centre of the memorial – its deepest point – is a story, a narrative, waiting to be discovered. With the singular interactions between the individuals exploring this memorial and undulating terrain as significant as to its meaning and purpose as the collective entirety of the project. Whichever approach is taken, the memorial must be experienced and interacted with, then contemplated when the visitor returns to the periphery. Perhaps even returning to the exact same location they left to enter the memorial but experiencing it in a different way at the end of a journey that took them into the dark heart of the memorial. Although at first glance the memorial appears to be dead – simply a collection of clearly defined inanimate objects – it is in fact a living breathing phenomenon. That interacts with nature and humanity – and has to deal with the interaction of nature and humanity.
Perhaps its greatest strength is – despite initial impressions – its actual lack of uniformity. An understated critique of the National Socialist Weltanschauung that would lead to the Holocaust. While from a distance the blocks may appear identical, move closer and it is obvious that some have been weathered in different ways to other. That some have cracked or have visible holes due to the wind, rain, and snow.
That even trying to make something as simple as concrete homogeneous is an impossible task. And even more impossible to force humanity into a similar box. Any premeditated attempt to do will inevitably lead to that box multiplied and materialising not as a unremarkable box but as a field of coffins.
