The Holocaust Memorial in Berlin.

[Cleopatra]

I'm not really against it, but I have a very cynical view when it comes to memorials. Memorials, often as not, are give-aways. It's a way for a government to throw a little bit of money at a group of people and say, "See? We care!" Easy placation.

I am sorry to say it but I feel exactly the same about memorials. When I first heard about the Memorial in Berlin I couldn't help thinking about the Memorial we have in Salonika. At the beginning my family sent money because the jewish communities in Greece are really poor but when I saw how small and irrelevant it was and how desolated from the centre of the city of Salonika where the jewish community flourished I forbid them to include the name of my family on that. As I type this I am getting mad.

They thought that with a tiny monument at the corner of the town they would make us forget how they waited for the Germans to imprison us to grab our houses.

I don't want memorials, I want the greek school books to start mentioning that in this country there was a huge jewish community that lived in the area even before the Greeks became Christians. Our school books mention nothing about the Jews of Saloniki, the most prominent jewish community of western europe.

I despise memorials, I hate them. When I see huge memorials , I suspect huge hypocricy hiding behind.

We don't want memorials, we want our lives back in the Europe we adored and we were so tragically expelled from it.

The rest is BS.

When a city needs fifteen years to decide to erect a monument then there is something wrong with that. The Jews of Germany, don't they have any pride to deny a silly monument that was escorted by a silly campaign?

 

[demon]

Grammy:
"However, I would expect nothing else from Hate-US-First-Lobby."

Speaking of the US, I think the criticisms are right on if they apply, say, to the Holocaust Museum in Washington too, one ot the great ideological monstrosities.
The country that dropped the Atom Bombs can't even find a street corner to build a memorial to its own victims, but dedicates a city block to the victims of its defeated enemies... The situation in Berlin is, to say the least, a different one.

 

[Grammatron]

Grammy:
"However, I would expect nothing else from Hate-US-First-Lobby."

Speaking of the US, I think the criticisms are right on if they apply, say, to the Holocaust Museum in Washington too, one ot the great ideological monstrosities.
The country that dropped the Atom Bombs can't even find a street corner to build a memorial to its own victims, but dedicates a city block to the victims of its defeated enemies... The situation in Berlin is, to say the least, a different one.

Uhmm...huh?

 

[CBL4]

We should have memorials to the great successes and failures of mankind. Since the holocaust is one of the greatest atrocity of mankind and Berlin is the capital of the nation that perpetuated the atrocity, clearly it is appropriate to have a holocaust memorial in Berlin.

From the description of the monument, it does not seem to be specific to the jewish victims. Am I missing something? An accurate monument would heavily concentrate on the jews but mention the others as well.

As to the design, without going there I cannot tell. I remember the outrage over the Vietnam War Memorial in DC before it open. Veteran's group raged against "the gash" but it is now generally recognized as an exteremely moving monument. This description of the monument sounds like it might be effective:

Thousands of bullet-gray concrete blocks rise crookedly from the earth like fresh gravestones along what was once barren no man's land surrounding the Berlin Wall ...
"The power of the field is that you can only experience it by going inside," said Guenter Schlusche, a consultant on the project, which was designed by the American architect Peter Eisenman. "At first, people just see a mass of concrete blocks," Schlusche said. "It's much, much more. Once you get inside, you feel alone. You lose your normal ways of orientation."

http://msnbc.msn.com/id/7765690/

BTW, I support memorials for the Cultural Revolution in Beijing, for Stalin's victims in Moscow, for Tutsis in Kigali, for Bosnians in both Sarajevo and Belgrade, etc.

CBL

 

[CBL4]

The country that dropped the Atom Bombs can't even find a street corner to build a memorial to its own victims,

Those damn American attacked the Japanese by designing the Pearl Harbor navy base to magnetically pull Japanese war planes and their bombs from over 1000 miles away.

CBL

 

[Tmy]

Grammy:
"However, I would expect nothing else from Hate-US-First-Lobby."

Speaking of the US, I think the criticisms are right on if they apply, say, to the Holocaust Museum in Washington too, one ot the great ideological monstrosities.
The country that dropped the Atom Bombs can't even find a street corner to build a memorial to its own victims, but dedicates a city block to the victims of its defeated enemies... The situation in Berlin is, to say the least, a different one.

Why pick on the US. Were no where near the top of the bad boy list.

I dont think theres enough land in England to contain all the memorials they would build for their nafarious deeds.

 

[Cleopatra]

I wonder why we need Holocaust Memorials when in Greece for example the Church doesn't do anything to stop the " custom" of the burning of the effigy of Judas although the Greek Jewish Counsil has been pleading the Archibishop to stop this stupidity.The Archibishop was sitting in the first row ( so as everybody sees him) in the inauguration of the Holocaust Memorial in Saloniki...

 

[Mycroft]

I don't want memorials, I want the greek school books to start mentioning that in this country there was a huge jewish community that lived in the area even before the Greeks became Christians. Our school books mention nothing about the Jews of Saloniki, the most prominent jewish community of western europe.

If you make the monument big and disturbing enough, it does make it hard to leave the event out of the school books.

 

[peptoabysmal]

Geez. Why not make a huge accusing finger pointing at Germany and visible from low Earth orbit. I'm against it, because I think it is little more than a symbol of dominance / submission.

 

[epepke]

Can we see a picture of this supposed monstrosity?

I've seen some really good Holocaust memorials. The best one I've seen concentrated on a single Polish town, which was basically wiped out. It had old photographs and letters of the people who lived there, and it really put a human face on the Holocaust. Unfortunately, I can't remember where it was; I've been a lot of places, and it's sort of a blur.

Another pretty good one is the Anne Frank museum. Not stellar, but good.

 

[ZeeGerman]

Can we see a picture of this supposed monstrosity?

Here you go.

Zee

 

[ZeeGerman]

I am sorry to say it but I feel exactly the same about memorials. When I first heard about the Memorial in Berlin I couldn't help thinking about the Memorial we have in Salonika. At the beginning my family sent money because the jewish communities in Greece are really poor but when I saw how small and irrelevant it was and how desolated from the centre of the city of Salonika where the jewish community flourished I forbid them to include the name of my family on that. As I type this I am getting mad.

They thought that with a tiny monument at the corner of the town they would make us forget how they waited for the Germans to imprison us to grab our houses.

I don't want memorials, I want the greek school books to start mentioning that in this country there was a huge jewish community that lived in the area even before the Greeks became Christians. Our school books mention nothing about the Jews of Saloniki, the most prominent jewish community of western europe.

I despise memorials, I hate them. When I see huge memorials , I suspect huge hypocricy hiding behind.

We don't want memorials, we want our lives back in the Europe we adored and we were so tragically expelled from it.

The rest is BS.

When a city needs fifteen years to decide to erect a monument then there is something wrong with that. The Jews of Germany, don't they have any pride to deny a silly monument that was escorted by a silly campaign?

I think you're allowing your anger to get the better part of your judgment.
The memorial covers 19.000 square meters (about 200000 sq ft) so it's not tiny. And it's just 400m from the Reichstag (parliament building) so it's not desolated.

Also, it's not a project of the city of Berlin but that of a foundation under public law which is steered by a quite mixed curatorship
With a group like this, it's no wonder it took the several years to agree on something so delicate.
There are several very active representatives of the german jews in the foundation so your rant about their pride is a little off target.

Regarding the

"We don't want memorials, we want our lives back in the Europe we adored and we were so tragically expelled from it."

Are you saying that the still present anti semitism throughout Europe stops Jews from living a normal live here? That may be so, I'd guess that the opinions will differ here but I can't comment. There is anti semitism in Europe and the memorial will not get it out of people's heads where it is already in - I give you that. But it might help to stop anti semitism from spreading.

Zee

 

[Mike B.]

Very cynical indeed. But in the case of the memorial in question hardly justified. I would humbly like to claim that the way Germany has handled the memory of the third Reich is anything but a "placation".
For me, the memorial is simply the promise to the world that we will continue to deal with it as seriously as possible.
And as such it also serves (for me that is, I haven't actually seen it yet let alone discussed it with my compatriots) as a kind of seed crystal for a process where things start to turn from events of the near past into history. A process I regard as crucial for us to develop a "healthy" idea of patriotism, a concept that had no real place in the Germany of the past 60 years for quite obvious reasons.

Zee

The above post is an example of why
I always wish Zee would post more.

 

[Cleopatra]

I think you're allowing your anger to get the better part of your judgment.
The memorial covers 19.000 square meters (about 200000 sq ft) so it's not tiny. And it's just 400m from the Reichstag (parliament building) so it's not desolated.

I was referring to the Memorial in Saloniki. It's small and isolated. I consider bothe memorials, a small and isolated and a huge and in the centre of a city the two sides of the same coin.

As I said to my opening post I don't understand why the people of Berlin must be obliged to see those pilars for the rest of their lives.

It seems that some societies-- like the Greek one-- have decided to expel part of their past while others cannot let the past go.

How many times I have defended in this forum the uniqueness of the Holocaust as a genocide? I can't even remember. On the other hand I won't stop declaring that only education and the study ( and not the whorship) of the past will turn the world a better place.

The Germans must remember but they must be left to proceed and the jewish congresses must work in promoting the jewish culture and not the millions of dead because the world has started to suspect that there is a policy that hides behind, the policy of Sharonistas to invoke terror.

This must stop. 60 years have passed,it's time to find some balance in this story that has caused so much pain to so many people.

 

[CBL4]

As I said to my opening post I don't understand why the people of Berlin must be obliged to see those pilars for the rest of their lives.

I do not blame the current generation of Germans for the actions of their parents and grandparents. However, the holocaust was one of the greatest atrocities ever and it was created in Berlin. Therefore a significant monument should be in Berlin. Is this unfair to the innocent German people? To some degree, yes, but I think we need a significant reminder to the barbarities that we are capable of in the place of one of the worst.

CBL

 

[Jon_in_london]

Im 100% with Chaos here.

Yes to a memorial- to remember, not shame the current generation. But not such an ugly piece of modern 'art'.

The ability to design good memorials has been completely lost in the West.

 

[Cleopatra]

I do not blame the current generation of Germans for the actions of their parents and grandparents. However, the holocaust was one of the greatest atrocities ever and it was created in Berlin. Therefore a significant monument should be in Berlin. Is this unfair to the innocent German people? To some degree, yes, but I think we need a significant reminder to the barbarities that we are capable of in the place of one of the worst.

CBL

I understand that and I don't deny it. On the other hand though the constant view can lead the immunization. The specific memorial is not only about the pillars but they have an information centre on the basement where various jewish communities will present images of their former lives , before extinction.

In Athens we discussed in creating a similar centre. Some of us protested because I find more significant that we find a building to create a secular ( I mean out of the Synagogue) centre to teach Ladino ( judeo-esoagnol). We have enough pictures of our people wearing the Yellow Star and watching the camera scared and melancolic. Our duty to them is not to preserve their photos but teach their language and civilization to the next generations.

Also, why the didn't create a huge beautiful garden in memoriam of the Holocaust? Something that will invoke melancholy and the urge to preserve life on the expense of death. Holocaust was really ugly but the people that had been assassinated were beautiful and unique, they had nothing in common with blocks of cement.

 

[CBL4]

On the other hand though the constant view can lead the immunization

It could but it could also lead to more introspection. It just depends.

In Athens we discussed in creating a similar centre.

I have been to the holocaust memorial in Washington, DC. I found it a very moving and well done museum. However, if it were up to me, I probably would not have built one there. The location seems suspect. I am not familar enough with the Nazis and WWII in regards to Greece to comment properly about a holocaust memorial in Athens. With my limited knowledge, it does not seem like a particularly appropriate place either. With Greece's history (both ancient and the more recent fascism, coups and ascent to democracy), it seems like there are a lot more appropriate memorial topics.

Also, why the didn't create a huge beautiful garden in memoriam of the Holocaust? Something that will invoke melancholy and the urge to preserve life on the expense of death. Holocaust was really ugly but the people that had been assassinated were beautiful and unique, they had nothing in common with blocks of cement.

I am not sure that this would work properly. I cannot imagine a beautiful holocaust memorial but perhaps this is my lack of artistic ability or having never seen one. I can see one corner of a memorial being flowery to symbolize hope but I cannot see how an beautiful memorial would bring the appropriate emotion and introspection.

To me, the Berlin memorial seem to set a proper tone.

CBL

 

[davefoc]

Cleopatra wrote:

Also, why the didn't create a huge beautiful garden in memoriam of the Holocaust? Something that will invoke melancholy and the urge to preserve life on the expense of death. Holocaust was really ugly but the people that had been assassinated were beautiful and unique, they had nothing in common with blocks of cement.

I read through this thread with interest, but I had no opinion as to what was an appropriate monument nor any idea of how to make such a judgment. But these words of Cleopatra's resonated perfectly with me. I think this would have been exactly right.

 

[epepke]

Here you go.

OK, I agree with the OP then. It's a monstrosity. Even worse than the Kennedy memorial in Dallas.