Sixty Years On

The Memorial to the Murdered Jews of Europe was created by New York architect, Peter Eisenman and is Berlin's newest landmark. It opened July of this year and is already being called The Holocaust Memorial. I’ve been there twice and plan to go again as I find it intriguing and well concieved. The concept itself is simple: 2,711 stone slabs of varying heights and irregular tilts are arranged in a rectangular pattern right near the Brandenburg Gate. Between them runs a grid of narrow paths, and when you venture into the middle of this field of slabs, they swallow you up and soon tower over you. On a bright sunny day, as on my first visit, the slabs offer you shade and a dazzling display of dark shadows. In the rain on my second visit they offer shelter. The memorial is not overbearing, nor overstated, just quietly somber and yet children would likely be inclined to run or play hide and seek in it.
The memorial invites you to walk individually through its mazelike paths and you walk alone with your thoughts but you are also continually being surprised by another visitor suddenly appearing from the left or right. There is a lot of random bumping into people. But no matter how deep you venture amid the tallest of the slabs, every intersection has four clear straight ways out. Doing some research on the memorial I found out the following: that 2,711 is a prime number, and also apparently the number of pages in the Babylonian Talmud. Another theory is that 2711 squared is a little over seven million, representing the approximate number of Jews killed. The concrete slabs also seem to represent graveyards and some slabs already have small stones placed on their edges, which is apparently a sign of respect for the dead in Jewish cemeteries. The lack of rules for interaction i.e. no running etc. was apparently also intentional and is something that forces an individual response.
As I read on one Jewish web site, this memorial is not for the Jews, as they have their own but for Germany herself and her people, in their changing capital, to care for, grow with and remember.
Sixty years on there is still much to remember