Memorial to
the Murdered Jews of Europe (Eisenman
Architects, 2004) is an interesting work, not only for the memorialization but
also for the interaction with the public and visitors. 2,700 stelae,
meticulously placed 95 cm apart, rise like gravestones in a cemetery and
confront the viewer with questions about space, time, perception, and instability.
The varying levels of the ground and stelae tops create a sense of being
off-balance. The concrete presence of the stelae “makes for a place of loss and
contemplation” (Eisenman, 2005) in the midst of a bustling city.
The Ort, or information center, design reflects the stelae
pattern while introducing visitors to some stories of the Holocaust through
photographs, letters, and contextualization of victims and survivors. The New Yorker states the memorial is
inadequate due to ambiguities within the work. More specifically, while
acknowledging the stelae evocation of “headstones or sarcophagi,” the article
states the memorial “separates the victims from their killers and leaches the
moral element from the historical event, shunting it to the category of a
natural catastrophe.” Yet, the article’s author delves into the underlying
meanings and intentional ambiguity of the memorial while comparing the work to
specific museums and sites, including the Anne Frank House in Amsterdam. Such a
comparison is unfair as Memorial to the
Murdered Jews of Europe encompasses more lives lost. That is not to
undermine or understate the memorialization of specific museums but rather to
point to the difference in scale.
If we take time to contemplate upon the vast
destruction of the Holocaust, no memorial is sufficient to honor and remember
the families destroyed, lives lost, and scars left on survivors and the collective memory of
history.
