Nestled between the Brandenburg gate and Potsdamer Platz, sits the Memorial to the Murdered Jews of Europe– around 2700 concrete slabs arranged in a grid-like pattern to remember the Jewish victims of the Holocaust. The concrete plinths are arranged on a 19,000 sq m sloping site that the public are able to walk through. Some of the stones tower above head-height, creating claustrophobic gaps and crevices, while others are waist-height and can be used as seats. The slabs contain a steel reinforcement and were manufactured by pouring an extra-hard concrete mixture into specially-produced steel forms offsite. The concrete also has a special coating to combat the graffiti seen across much of the city, making the memorial seem calm and serene compared to its surroundings.
Peter Eisenman explained the idea behind the design: “The enormity and scale of the horror of the Holocaust is such that any attempt to represent it by traditional means is inevitably inadequate … Our memorial attempts to present a new idea of memory as distinct from nostalgia … We can only know the past today through a manifestation in the present.”
Deep below the monument is a museum and information centre that documents the persecution and extermination of European Jews as well as the historic sites of the crimes. Daniel Libeskind’s nearby Jewish Museum on Lindenstraße, also worth a visit, certainly had experiential impact, but this succinct subterranean exhibition provided more information and made the plight of the Jews all the more real with personal stories and diary entries from the camps.
Images my own
