September 2008 we traveled to Berlin and Gdansk. In Berlin, we visited the Memorial to the Murdered Jews of Europe, a monument consisting of about 2700 concrete stelae. It is an impressive place.
More information on www.stiftung-denkmal.de.
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What do big concrete blocs tell us about the 'big sorrow' that has gone through Europe? I had read about the controversies around the design of the The Memorial to the Murdered Jews in Europe in Berlin, which date back to the mid '90's , and when it was eventually 'opened' in 2005, the only picture I had seen was that of a row of blocs similar to domino stones, with the further information that it stretched about one city-block.
Then, we were in Berlin September 2008. We walked from the Fernsehturm via Unter den Linden through the Brandenburger Tor. You come around the new buildings, and then you see these blocs slowly rising out of the pavement, with paths between them. The blocs get higher towards the middle, the paths go up and down, about half a meter or so. What, again, does it tell us about the 'big sorrow'?
I sat down for some time, at the corner of the area, walked a bit between the blocs, came back to where I had been sitting, and looked at how people were interacting with the monument. School kids running through the alleys; youth posing in between the blocs, sometimes climbing up on them, and then being summoned to step down by the guards who keep an eye on proper behaviour; a gothic couple preparing a pick-nick lunch sitting on one of the stones. Then one picture came up, that of the Jewish cemeteries that I have seen around Amsterdam. There is one in the little village Diemen, still in use, and just visible when one takes the train going east -- when going to Berlin. The grave stones form a strict rectilinear pattern, are all about the same size and so form the same perfect rows as the rows of concrete blocs of the Berlin monument. The there is also the image of the cemetery in Ouderkerk a/d Amstel. That one is not in use any more, but is open as a museum. Here, the graves are sinking into the peat ground of the polder, partly disappearing, partly tilted. In the same way as the blocs in Berlin come up out of the ground, and are all slightly tilted.
Jews believe that their actual body will revive in the resurrection and they therefor want to be buried in fresh soil. The burning of the victims of the gas chambers is an ultimate descration. There are also no stones to remember them, and when one reads the yourney of the tribes of Israel through the desert, one reads about the stones that were erected to commemorate the highpoints (which honestly, were quite often rather low points in the relation between G'd and the people). Can these blocs be the grave stones for those who were slaughtered, giving them a definite place on earth again? And, do they also signify that these people are still around us, that we walk amidst them? In all its initial strangeness, this monument grows more and more meaningful the longer you spend time in it.
© 1998-2010 j.f.groen
This page modified: 12 January 2010
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