Berlin's "Memorial to the Murdered Jews of Europe"

I debated about writing this entry at all, largely because I didn't like the idea of letting anyone think that the Holocaust somehow overshadowed or constantly underlined our time in Germany in anyway. The Holocaust is incomprehensible human tragedy. But even so, Germany and Berlin in particular are infinitely more; they have so much to offer outside of this. However, when I ended the last post thinking about memorials, I just had too many thoughts on this one to let go.

So here we are: the Memorial to the Murdered Jews of Europe. The design for this memorial was chosen in a competition; architect Peter Eisenman won. His design, architecturally speaking, is fairly straight forward: it consists of 2,711 concrete slabs arranged on the softly sloping 19,000 square meters worth of designated land. The plain, grey slabs are equal widths and lengths, but the height rises and then falls as the viewer walks through the memorial.

Our guide talked to us briefly beforehand about the monument, explaining its background. Rather than leading us through the memorial though, he asked us to wander through on our own, so when we met on the other side we could talk briefly about how it had felt. With this in mind, we started in.

 The monument sucks you into it, swallows you. As you walk, the grey slabs slip by like other cars on a quiet, impersonal highway. They rise, they swell imperceptibly, and you lose yourself despite the defined organization. Eisenman at one point explained that his piece symbolized a "supposedly ordered system that had lost touch with human reason." As with any abstract piece there are multiple things being expressed simultaneously, but this one seems especially true. 

You catch glimpses of others walking through as well, snatches of individuals who are looking at the slabs in confusion; sometimes you meet eyes, sometimes they are unaware of your existence, but always when the next slab whips up and disrupts your line of vision they seem as if they were ghosts, now suddenly gone, lost.

As you begin to emerge back out onto the other side, the houses of the city start to rise above the slabs. The stones fall away before your line of vision, and soon you are taller than the slabs. You work your way up the hill back into the light and the free air, into the city of living people. 

When we met our guide on the other side, he asked us what we each had thought of the memorial. Of course we had some numb-nuts who kept insisting it was worthless and he'd felt nothing, but the rest of the people generally offered words like "confused," "disturbed," "uncomfortable." I believe if you are willing to let it, the memorial absolutely evokes feeling.

However, after reading about this memorial for a few days (prompted by what our guide had told us), it became clear how controversial it had really been. Of course citizens were peeved that tax money went into hauling a bunch of concrete into the middle of their city, but that's not what I'm not talking about.

I believe the first thing that we, as interested and intelligent viewers, ask ourselves when confronted with an abstract piece like this is simply, "Does this work, this memorial, make me feel something?" Does it do more than just tweak my curiosity? Can it serve as something more complex than just a visually interesting creation? Does it exist in more than just a physical sense?

But (and here's what really got me thinking) I also realized there is another question that we have to ask ourselves. Not just "does it exist," as in does it exist as a statement, as an emotion, as more than just expensive slabs of concrete (which clearly it does), but "should it exist?" Not in the sense of "should it exist at all" (of course we must commit our human failures to world memory), but in the sense of "should it exist in this specific form?" Is this truly the expression we need? Is this memorial's specific expression truly the appropriate one, the "right" one?

I feel I've been struggling this with this question in English as well... It's a question that, though it belongs to all of us, is one for which the arts have claimed a special responsibility.

Something can be "good" in one sense. It can provoke, it can emote, it can question and challenge and preserve. But can it somehow still be "wrong" in another sense? There is great subtlety in artistic expression and, even if only ever subconsciously, we are so much more sensitive to it as individuals and as a culture than we realize. These memorials influence us, influence how we digest our own human history, and the way in which we remember our history plays an enormous role in who we are today.

It seems that the focus of this specific memorial is to bring to the forefront of the viewer's mind the agonizing question of just how humanity could have allowed such atrocity to take place. In addition, there is a total dismissal of the possibility that this event will ever be allowed or be able to recede fully into the past-- the monument seems to both sink into and rise out of the grey, cobblestoned earth (as if becoming an eternal part of it) and is literally constructed of non-negotiating, undeniably present concrete.

The negative reactions ranged from disgust over it being simply unnecessary, to anger that it was meant to honor only the Jews, to frustration over it being too impenetrably abstract. Some were horrified, envisioning the stones as thousands of massive grave markers. An enormous deal of thought and work and debate went into choosing this memorial.

Ultimately, personally, I support the physical memorial. The work is not exclusively for the German people, but for any member of the human race. No, our generation is not specifically to blame; we do not have blood on our hands. However, the Holocaust is an essential part of human history, and in this sense, we are responsible. We are responsible not just for preserving that memory, but for deciding what to do with this. Knowing now the dark possibilities and weaknesses of our nature, we are responsible for ourselves as conscious, self-aware humans.

I suspect this is part of what makes this memorial so difficult to swallow... the viewer is actively incorporated into the memorial itself, into the memory of the event. It is not so much about the victims this time as it is about this responsibility. It is this emphasis though, that creates that essential link to the future. As we literally emerge out on the other side, I think we are forced to ask ourselves if this is what we are doing metaphorically as well... Are we taking up that responsibility? Are we making ourselves aware of the world around us, and are we acting with history in mind? 

The art of creating memorials must be exhausting. We demand so much from them. And in the case of the Holocaust, especially within Germany, the complexity of those demands increases exponentially. It must both honor and grieve, bring both humility and hope. It must lend dignity yet not disguise the rawness of pain and loss. It must be transitional, bringing the people of that past time of suffering into the present so we may mourn them, yet it must also at the very least inspire a bridge into the future, where peace has been made with the loss. Even the title of the memorial and its location are points for such intense consideration...

Once again, I'm so grateful to have been able to experience these sights in person.

Curious side notes:

~There is also a museum beneath the memorial that we did not have time to go see, so I didn't attempt to really look at how its presentation might play into all this as well. If anyone goes, have a look for me.

~During construction, a company called "Degussa" was employed to coat the stones with an anti-graffiti sealant. In the middle of the job, it was thrown into public knowledge (by a competitor) that Degussa was one of the companies that had helped to supply Zyklon B (the gas of the gas chambers) to the death camps. Inappropriate? A sign of moving on?

~The bunker where Hitler committed suicide still technically exists just across the street from this memorial. It is, however, buried some 8 to 10 meters below what is currently an unimpressive car park. The Germans attempted to tear up the underground complex and even tried blowing it up later, but as it turns out, the massive bomb shelter was too well built for them to completely destroy it. Eventually, the place was flooded and permanently sealed up, the tunnels and underground chambers where Hitler lived never to be seen by human eyes again.

The memorial technically sits on top of where this underground Nazi complex was. It was decided this location would elevate the victims above their murderers, which was an important and highly symbolic act.

~Hitler's half-cremated corpse was actually originally found in this very same area. After he killed himself, his men attempted to follow his orders by bringing his and Eva Braun's bodies up and cremating them. However, it proved more difficult to burn the human bodies than they had expected, and the job was not quite complete. Left behind was just enough evidence for Hitler's body to eventually be identified.