Monument for the murdered Jews of Europe - Holocaust-Memorial
2711 steles commemorate the murdered Jews of Europe.
2711 steles made of concrete in the centre of the capital - the monument for the murdered Jews of Europe.
These are stones of contentions. The monument is like a billowing stone field with different high pillars, at close quarter to each other. It is meant as a reminder of the biggest crime against humanity and demands to take a stand.
The monument is meant as a central place of remembrance to honour the six million murdered Jews and remind us of this incomprehensible genocide in German history. It was opened on the 10th of May 2005, 60 years after the war.
This monument is to warn all future generations, to never again violate Human dignity, to always defend the democratic constitutional state, to preserve the equality before the law and resist dictatorship and tyranny.
At the monument's opening Sabina van der Linden spoke: 'I'm the voice of six million murdered Jews, I'm the voice of the lucky survivor, I'm the only one in my family who survived.“ Sabina van der Linden was eleven years old when she had to watch her whole family being murdered at the Belzec concentration camp. The petite 75-year old lady, who travelled especially for this event from Australia, stood at the lectern and told her life story in short sentences. In front of her the leaders of the Federal Republic, next to her old men and women - Holocaust survivor just like herself. The president of the German parliament Wolfgang Thierse said that the monument should be an open memorial, which allows different interpretations. It is not a stony final stroke, but contributes to keep the history awake.
On the way from the Brandenburg Gate to the Potsdamer Platz, the monument is obvious for Berlin citizens and visitors to Berlin - situated at the grounds of the former minister gardens only a stone's throw away from the former power centre of the National Socialists, the Reichskanzlei (Chancellery) with the 'Führerbunker' demolished after the war and near to the Berliner Parliaments and Government quarter.
The underground, where the steles are inserted is wavelike, falls to the right sometimes to the left. The steles are made of grey cement and each 95cm long and 238cm long. They have different heights at the edge of the stele-field, flat as sarcophagi, in the middle up to 4, 70m high. The path between them is only 96cm wide.
Walking through the 19.000 square metre big stele-field has a trepidation effect. That is intended: In the centre of the monument, towered and hemmed in by metre high walls, the visitor is alone with himself. And his questions. This stony sea only wants to ask questions: How was this genocide on the Jews even possible? What would I have done in those times?