Thoughts From A Holocaust Memorial
Berlin’s memorial to murdered Jews is as timely as it is stark.
You can’t walk through central Berlin and miss the Holocaust memorial. Directly south of the Brandenburg gate, perched between the embassies and the Tiergarten, the Memorial to the Murdered Jews of Europe is a recent build. I first saw it in 2005, shortly after its opening. Angela Merkel had been chancellor a month or two, and back then fewer people on the left were glad of her. The position of the memorial makes fascism’s realities impossible to ignore or escape. The decade since has done the same.
There are no stars of David or menorahs on the monument. While the names of three million victims are displayed in an information area, the public site makes no explicit reference to the Holocaust—a bone of contention with Jewish groups during its construction. In lieu of a clear centrepiece, 2,711 slabs—equal in length and width, varied in height—cover the area, arranged in rows. The taller ones stand nearer the centre, suggesting a field on a hill—or a field of graves.
Wander in between the stones and the illusion starts to give way. As they grow taller, the ground in which they’re planted slopes downward: the hill is really a basin, and before you know it the stones reach far above your head. Each of the slabs stands at a slight angle, not quite upright, and the depths of the maze can be disorientating, blocking ambient light and the sound of the nearby streets. From the outside, people who enter seem to be drowning, and you never know how many others have been swallowed, vanished in a mass, nameless grave.
Around the edges of the site, people eat their lunch on the shorter stones, while children skip from one slab to the next. It feels as jarring as it sounds, but not uninvited—tasteful or not, this is the use the site’s creators must have intended, and it’s easy to imagine emerging visitors needing to sit. Like the memorial’s location and the unease it inspires, the short stones bring to mind nazism’s legacy in Germany—a past too hateful to live with, which must be lived with nonetheless. Sat with, at least.
The memorial’s greatest flaw is that in that respect, it’s a monument more to modern German guilt than Jewish people who were killed. Conspicuously less impressive are the nearby tributes to queer and Roma-and-Sinti victims, added in 2008 and 2012 respectively; but the memorial to murdered Jews suffers from being treated as an all-purpose reminder of nazism’s crimes. The feelings it conveys—shame, discomfort and confusion—feel like a German politician’s, with Jewish grief in short supply.
Nevertheless, the effect is timely. Wander into the maze for the first time, and you’ll find yourself wondering how you sank down so fast, why no one warned you and how to find your way out. As the far right surges in Europe and America, the world would be forgiven for asking the same—but perhaps it ought not to be. Unlike a tourist, the world’s been here before.
