Memorial to the Murdered Jews of Europe

The memorial is located on Cora-Berliner-Straße 1, 10117 in Berlin, a city with one of the largest Jewish populations in Europe before the Second World War. Adjacent east to the Tiergarten, it is centrally located in Berlin's historical Friedrichstadt district, close to the Reichstag building and the Brandenburg Gate. The monument is situated on the former location of the Berlin Wall, where the "death strip" once divided the city. During the Third Reich a part of this area was the location of Joseph Goebbels' urban villa, with the nearby Reich Chancellery and the Führerbunker in the south. The memorial is located near many of Berlin's foreign embassies. The monument is composed of 2,711 rectangular concrete blocks, laid out in a rectangular grid covering . This allows for long, straight, and narrow alleys between them, along which the ground undulates. ==History==

Beginnings The debates over the existence and form of such a memorial extend back to the late 1980s, when a small group of private West German citizens, led by television journalist Lea Rosh and historian Eberhard Jäckel, first began pressing for West Germany to honor the six million Jews murdered in the Holocaust. Rosh soon emerged as the driving force behind the memorial. In 1989, she founded a group to support its construction and to collect donations. With growing support, the Bundestag (the German federal parliament) passed a resolution in favour of the project. On 25 June 1999, the Bundestag decided to build the memorial designed by Peter Eisenman. A federal foundation (Foundation for the Memorial to the Murdered Jews of Europe () was consequently founded to run it. Before the deadline, the documents required to submit a proposal were requested over 2,600 times and 528 proposals were submitted. The jury met on 15 January 1995 to pick the best submission. First, Walter Jens, the president of the Akademie der Künste, was elected chairman of the jury. In the following days, all but 13 submissions were eliminated from the race in several rounds of looking through all works. As had already been arranged, the jury met again on 15 March. Eleven submissions were restored to the race, as requested by several jurors after they had had a chance to review the eliminated works in the months in between the meetings. Two works were then recommended by the jury to the foundation to be checked as to whether they could be completed within the price range given. One of them was designed by a group around the architect Simon Ungers from Hamburg; it consisted of 85×85 meters square of steel girders on top of concrete blocks located on the corners. The names of several extermination camps would be perforated into the girders so that these would be projected onto objects or people in the area by sunlight. The other winner was a design by Christine Jackob-Marks. Her concept consisted of 100×100 meters large concrete plate, seven meters thick. It would be tilted, rising up to eleven meters and walkable on special paths. The names of the Jewish victims of the Holocaust would be engraved into the concrete, with spaces left empty for those victims whose names remain unknown. Large pieces of debris from Masada, a mountaintop-fortress in Israel, whose Jewish inhabitants killed themselves to avoid being captured or killed by the Roman soldiers rushing in, would be spread over the concrete plate. Other ideas involved a memorial not only to the Jews but to all the victims of Nazism. Federal Chancellor Helmut Kohl, who had taken a close personal interest in the project, expressed his dissatisfaction with the recommendations of the jury to implement the work of the Jackob-Marks team. A new, more limited competition was launched in 1996 with 25 architects and sculptors invited to submit proposals. ==Eisenman design==

The date for the inauguration was scrapped and in 1997 the first of three public discussions on the monument was held. The second competition in November 1997 produced four finalists, including a collaboration between architect Peter Eisenman and artist Richard Serra whose plan later emerged as the winner. Their design originally envisaged a huge labyrinth of 4,000 stone pillars of varying heights scattered over . Serra, however, quit the design team soon after, citing personal and professional reasons that "had nothing to do with the merits of the project." Kohl still insisted on numerous changes, but Eisenman soon indicated he could accommodate them. In a breakthrough mediated by W. Michael Blumenthal and negotiated between Eisenman and Michael Naumann in January 1999, the essence of the huge field of stone pillarsto which the incoming German government led by Gerhard Schröder had earlier objectedwas preserved. The number of pillars was reduced from about 2,800 to somewhere between 1,800 and 2,100, and a building to be called The House of Remembranceconsisting of an atrium and three sandstone blockswas to be added. This buildingan archive, information centre and exhibition spacewas to be flanked by a thick, Wall of Books that would have housed a million books between an exterior made of patterned black steel and a glass interior side. The Wall of Books, containing works that scholars would have been able to consult, was intended to symbolize the concern of the Schröder government that the memorial not be merely backward-looking and symbolic but also educational and useful. In July 2001, the provocative slogan The Holocaust never happened appeared in newspaper advertisements and on billboards seeking donations of $2 million for the memorial. Under the slogan and a picture of a serene mountain lake and snow-capped mountain, a smaller type said: "There are still many people who make this claim. In 20 years there could be even more." ==Construction==

On 27 January 2000 a celebration was held marking the symbolic beginning of construction on the memorial site. The first provisional stelae were erected in May 2001. An international symposium on the memorial and the information centre was held by the foundation in November 2001 together with historians, museum experts, art historians and experts on architectural theory. In the spring of 2003, work began on the construction of the memorial. At the same time, an information point was erected at the fence surrounding the construction site. On 14 October 2003, the Swiss newspaper Tages-Anzeiger published articles noting that the Degussa company was involved in the construction of the memorial, producing the anti-graffiti substance Protectosil used to cover the stelae; the company had been involved in various ways in the Nazi persecution of the Jews. A subsidiary company of Degussa, Degesch, had even produced the Zyklon B used to poison people in the gas chambers. At first, these articles did not receive much attention, until the board of trustees managing the construction discussed this situation on 23 October and, after turbulent and controversial discussions, decided to stop construction immediately until a decision was made. Primarily it was representatives of the Jewish community who had called for an end to Degussa's involvement, while the politicians on the board, including Wolfgang Thierse, did not want to stop construction and incur further expense. They also said it would be impossible to exclude all German companies involved in the Nazi crimes, becauseas Thierse put it"the past intrudes into our society". Lea Rosh, who also advocated excluding Degussa, replied that "Zyklon B is obviously the limit." In the discussions that followed, several facts emerged. For one, it transpired that it was not by coincidence that the involvement of Degussa had been publicized in Switzerland, because another company that had bid to produce the anti-graffiti substance was located there. Further, the foundation managing the construction, as well as Lea Rosh, had known about Degussa's involvement for at least a year but had not done anything to stop it. Rosh then claimed she had not known about the connections between Degussa and Degesch. It also transpired that another Degussa subsidiary, Woermann Bauchemie GmbH, had already poured the foundation for the stelae. A problem with excluding Degussa from the project was that many of the stelae had already been covered with Degussa's product. These would have to be destroyed if another company were to be used instead. The resulting cost would be about €2.34 million. In the course of the discussions about what to do, which lasted until 13 November, most of the Jewish organizations including the Central Council of Jews in Germany spoke out against working with Degussa, while the architect Peter Eisenman, for one, supported it. On 13 November, the decision was made to continue working with the company, and was subsequently heavily criticized. German-Jewish journalist, author, and television personality Henryk M. Broder said that "the Jews don't need this memorial, and they are not prepared to declare a pig sty kosher." Completion and opening On 15 December 2004, the memorial was finished. It was dedicated on 10 May 2005, as part of the celebration of the 60th anniversary of V-E Day and opened to the public two days later, along with the information centre. It was originally to be finished by 27 January 2004, the 59th anniversary of the liberation of Auschwitz. The inauguration ceremony, attended by all the senior members of Germany's government, including Chancellor Gerhard Schröder, took place in a large white tent set up on the edge of the memorial field itself, only metres from the place where Hitler's underground bunker was. The medley of Hebrew and Yiddish songs that followed the speeches was sung by Joseph Malovany, cantor of the Fifth Avenue Synagogue in New York, accompanied by the choir of the White Stork Synagogue in Wrocław, Poland, and by the Lower Silesian German-Polish Philharmonic Youth Orchestra. By the end of 2005 around 350,000 people had visited the information centre, The foundation operating the memorial considered this a success; its head, Uwe Neumärker, called the memorial a "tourist magnet". Initial concerns about the memorial's construction focused on the possible effects of weathering, fading, and graffiti. Already by 2007, the memorial was said to be in urgent need of repair after hairline cracks were found in some 400 of its concrete slabs. Suggestions that the material used was mediocre have been repeatedly dismissed by Peter Eisenman. In 2012, German authorities started reinforcing hundreds of concrete blocks with steel collars concealed within the stelae after a study revealed they were at risk of crumbling under their own mass. ==Information Bureau==

The information centre is located at the site's eastern edge, beneath the field of stelae. The visitor display begins with a timeline that lays out the history of the Final Solution, from when the National Socialists took power in 1933 through the murder of more than a million Soviet Jews in 1941. The rest of the exhibition is divided into four rooms dedicated to personal aspects of the tragedy, e.g. the individual families or the letters thrown from the trains that transported them to the death camps. The Room of Families focuses on the fates of 15 specific Jewish families. In the Room of Names, names of all known Jewish Holocaust victims obtained from the Yad Vashem memorial in Israel are read out loud. Each chamber contains visual reminders of the stelae above: rectangular benches, horizontal floor markers and vertical illuminations. The visitors centre contains and displays some of the most important moments and memories of the Holocaust, through carefully chosen examples in a concise and provocative display. The entrances cut through the network of paths defined by the stelae, and the exhibit area gives the memorial that which by its very conception it should not have: a defined attraction. "The exhibitions are literal, a sharp contrast to the amorphous stelae that the memorial is composed of. "It is as if they (exhibits) were directed at people who cannot find the capacity to believe that the Holocaust occurred". ==Interpretations ==

According to Eisenman's project text, the stelae are designed to produce an uneasy, confusing atmosphere, and the whole sculpture aims to represent a supposedly ordered system that has lost touch with human reason. The Memorial to the Murdered Jews of Europe Foundation official English website However, observers have noted the memorial's resemblance to a Jewish cemetery. The abstract installation leaves room for interpretation, the most common being that of a graveyard. "The memorial evokes a graveyard for those who were unburied or thrown into unmarked pits, and several uneasily tilting stelae suggest an old, untended, or even desecrated cemetery." The memorial's grid can be read as both an extension of the streets that surround the site and an unnerving evocation of the rigid discipline and bureaucratic order that kept the killing machine grinding along. Thierse talked about the memorial as creating a type of mortal fear in the visitor. Visitors have described the monument as isolating, triggered by the massive blocks of concrete, barricading the visitor from street noise and sights of Berlin. As one slopes downwards into the memorial entrance, the grey pillars begin to grow taller until they completely consume the visitor. Eventually, the grey pillars become smaller again as visitors ascend towards the exit. Some have interpreted this as the rise and fall of the Third Reich or the Regime's gradual momentum of power that allowed them to perpetrate such atrocities on the Jewish community. The space in between the concrete pillars offers a brief encounter with the sunlight. As visitors wander through the slabs the sun disappears and reappears. One is constantly tormented with the possibility of a warmer, brighter life. Some have interpreted this use of space as a symbolic remembrance of the volatile history of European Jews whose political and social rights constantly shifted. Many visitors have claimed walking through the memorial makes one feel trapped without any option other than to move forward. Some claim the downward slope that directs you away from the outside symbolically depicts the gradual escalation of the Third Reich's persecution of the European Jewish community. First, they were forced into ghettos and removed from society and eventually they were removed from existence. The more a visitor descends into the memorial, they are without any visible contact with the outside world. They are completely ostracized and hidden from the world. It is common for groups of visitors to lose each other as they wander deeper into the memorial. This often reminds one of the separation and loss of family among the Jewish community during the Holocaust. Some have interpreted the shape and colour of the grey slabs to represent the loss of identity during the Nazi regime. As one moves into the memorial, the space between the shapes widens. Identity in a regime is largely shaped by belongingness defined through 'sameness' and the "repetition of the same". The site is also enclosed by borders of trees and Berlin's city centre. The enclosure from these borders has often evoked feelings of entrapment. This can be understood as a symbolic representation of the closure of European and American borders following the Évian Conference that forced Jews to stay in Germany. ==Public reception and criticism==

The monument has been criticized for only commemorating the Jewish victims of the Holocaust; however, other memorials have subsequently opened which commemorate other identifiable groups that were also victims of the Nazis, for example, the Memorial to Homosexuals Persecuted Under Nazism (in 2008) and the Memorial to the Sinti and Roma Victims of National Socialism (in 2012). Many critics argued that the design should include names of victims, as well as the numbers of people murdered and the places where the murders occurred. German novelist Martin Walser cited the Holocaust Memorial. Walser decried "the exploitation of our disgrace for present purposes." He criticized the "monumentalization", and "ceaseless presentation of our shame." And said: "Auschwitz is not suitable for becoming a routine-of-threat, an always available intimidation or a moral club [Moralkeule] or also just an obligation. What is produced by ritualisation, has the quality of a lip service". The memorial has also come under fire for perpetuating what some critics call an "obsession with the Holocaust". Michal Bodemann, a professor of sociology at the University of Toronto, is critical of what he calls the "permanent" and "brooding" culture of Holocaust commemoration in Germany. He studies postwar German-Jewish relations and told Die Tageszeitung that Germany's focus on the past overlooks the racist tendencies in society today and suggests a hopelessness toward the future. "My impression is that you hide yourself away in history in order to keep the present from cutting too close". Many critics found the "vagueness" of the stelae disturbing. The concrete blocks offer no detail or reference to the Holocaust. The title of the monument does not include the words "Holocaust" or "Shoah". Critics have raised questions about the memorial's lack of information. "It doesn't say anything about who did the murdering or whythere's nothing along the lines of 'by Germany under Hitler's regime,' and the vagueness is disturbing". In 2009, swastikas and anti-Semitic slogans were found on 12 of the 2,700 gray stone slabs. In 2014, the German government promised to strengthen security at the memorial after a video published on the Internet showed a man urinating and people launching fireworks from its grey concrete structure on New Year's Eve. The monument is often used as a recreational space, inciting anger from those who see the playful use of the space as a desecration of the memorial. According to architecture critic Nicolai Ouroussoff, "The day I visited the site, a 2-year-old boy was playing atop the pillarstrying to climb from one to the next as his mother calmly gripped his hand." This caused anger among many people who felt that it was desecrating the site. "This is a memorial space for the six million Jews who were murdered and it is inappropriate for this kind of game," said foundation spokeswoman Sarah Friedrich, adding that she hoped the company would remove the memorial as a possible location. In January 2013, the blog Totem and Taboo posted a collection of profile pictures from the gay dating app Grindr, taken at the memorial. The emerging trend met with mixed responses: while Grindr's then CEO Joel Simkhai, himself Jewish and gay, asserted that he was "deeply moved" that his app members "take part in the memory of the holocaust", there was international criticism of use of the memorial as a backdrop for hookup profiles, which was held to be disrespectful. On 21 February 2025, a stabbing attack occurred at the Memorial. A 19-year-old Syrian refugee seriously wounded a 30-year-old Spanish man. The attacker was subsequently convicted and sentenced to 13 years' imprisonment. ==See also==