A man jumps from one slab to another; groups of loud kids play hide-and-seek; a girl takes a photo of her friend striking an impressive yoga pose. Everyday, flooded by tourists from all over the world (I was one of them), the Denkmal für die ermordeten Juden Europas, better known as the Holocaust Memorial, in central Berlin turns into the most unsettling playground on Earth. And the most controversial memorial, as well.
Yes, because, ever since its inauguration in 2005, the 2,711 sarcophagi-like concrete stelae designed by the NYC-based architect Peter Eisenman have been the subject of harsh criticism for “failing to serve the function for which they were intended”. Walking through the disorienting and claustrophobic maze, however, I couldn’t help but wonder if those pillars were even meant to serve a specific function at all. The structure, in fact, is so abstract that, if it weren’t for its title, it would be impossible to know what it is meant to commemorate, or even that it is doing so in the first place. The complete lack of inscriptions and historical information only adds to the vagueness of the memorial: “The world is too full of information and here is a place without information”, said Peter Eisenman, who was even against the inclusion of the information center beneath the memorial’s stones. Of course, even in this absence of explicit information, all visitors are aware of the nature of the memorial, but they are still free to interact with it however they want. This interactive approach — I believe — is much more powerful than simply informing visitors on historical facts they will inevitably be already familiar with. The architect wanted to stress the importance of this approach so much that he was even opposed to the special anti-graffiti coating of the memorial, saying that, “If a swastika is painted on it, it is a reflection of how people feel.”
In order to behave properly around the site without any guidance on what is meant by this or exhortation to do so, one is, thus, forced to constantly be the judge of her/his own actions, deciding where to draw the line between what is acceptable and what isn’t. The structure then becomes a daily testing ground for humanity, silently revealing our actual understanding of history’s darkest times: only when people get the real weight of what they’re dealing with without any external aid — and behave properly as a consequence — will they have truly understood. The function of the memorial — we could say — is, therefore, simply to make people reflect on their own selves and on the current state of humanity as a whole, hopefully bettering themselves in doing so.
Walking through the eerie narrow alleys and seeing a few visitors around me seemingly unaware of the importance of the site, I was indeed forced to reflect: not unlike the Jews of Europe, walking through a life of confusion and terror while their neighbors continued to frolic with indifference, I was getting lost in the labyrinth of cold stones surrounded by people who could not care less. Only then I realized the true power of this memorial as a terrifying reminder of the difficulty to truly interiorize lessons as harsh as that of the Shoah. The general behavior of people visiting the site mirrored the shortage of empathy in today’s world, something that I am guilty of, as well, hidden in the relative comfort of my life while terror is still being inflicted on a daily basis to millions of people around the world. The Holocaust Memorial stands to remind us precisely of that, and of the fact that we are still far from having learnt from our past history.
The fact that most people don’t like this shouldn’t come as a surprise.
