“The murderers’ children are no murderers…But we can hold them accountable for how they handle the memory of the crime of their ancestors.” This was how survivor Sabina van der Linden quoted another survivor, Elie Wiesel. They spoke for six million Jews that were murdered during the Second World War by German perpetrators. These words were spoken during the inauguration of the Memorial to the Murdered Jews of Europe on May 10, 2005. In 1988, West German intellectuals proposed building a memorial that would commemorate the Jewish victims. It was to be built in Berlin, where the Nazi rulers had decided on and directed the Holocaust. The year after this initiative, the Wall fell, Berlin was united and became the capital once again. In Berlin, now growing together, new locations presented themselves. The choice fell on an area near the Brandenburg Gate. This had previously been the border strip and even earlier the gardens of ministries. Hitler’s Reichskanzlei, in English Reich Chancellery, and bunker were located right next door. New government buildings emerged in the surrounding area, and so the site also carried a message: in the centre of political power, reunited Germany was taking a stance for the murdered Jewish children, women and men.
Regarding the design of the memorial, opinions varied strongly. The result of an initial competition was discarded, the winning design of the second competition was significantly changed. It came from the New York architect Peter Eisenman. On an area of two and a half football fields, 2,700 concrete stelae were to be built. They all have the same base area and stand in the same small distance to each other, but are between a few centimetres and 4.7 metres high and have different inclinations. During the inauguration, Bundestag President Wolfgang Thierse noted that the memorial enables “a sensual-emotional idea of loneliness, distress, threat. It does not enforce anything.”
The memorial was approved by the Bundestag in 1999, as was the historical exhibition at the Information Center and the foundation that takes care of the memorial. Their purpose is “the commemoration of the National Socialist genocide of the Jews of Europe.” This led to debates about how to deal with other groups of victims. For the most part, however, this is not noticeable in the everyday life of tourists: the memorial attracts millions of visitors each year.
