BERLIN — Some say it feels like walking through a field of gravestones. Others liken it to a maze of coffins, disorientating and eerily quiet despite being in the middle of Berlin.
The German capital’s sombre Holocaust memorial — an arrangement of 2,711 concrete steles which has drawn millions of visitors — marks its 20th anniversary this month.
The Memorial to the Murdered Jews of Europe has become a powerful symbol of Germany’s determination to ensure the crimes of the Holocaust are not forgotten.
But as the world readies to mark the 80th anniversary of the end of World War II, fears are growing that the country’s strong tradition of remembrance is starting to erode.
Architect Peter Eisenman, whose New York firm designed the memorial, said he wanted to create “an experience that you would have walking in the space like you couldn’t have in any other space in the city”.
“People find it quite scary because even though it’s open to the city, you can disappear and you can lose a child, for example,” Eisenman, 92, told AFP.
But the idea “was not to make people feel bad or guilty or anything like that”, he said.
“Kids love it because they play tag and hide-and-seek and run around, and people sunbathe on the pillars. You’re supposed to do whatever you want to do. It’s not prescribed.”
‘Quite like a cemetery’
The idea of establishing a central Holocaust memorial in Berlin was born in the 1980s but the project was delayed for several years amid concerns that it may provoke anti-Semitism.
The German parliament finally agreed on the project in 1999 and the finished memorial, including an underground information centre, officially opened on May 10, 2005.
There are no figures on how many people visit it each year but Uwe Neumaerker, the head of the foundation that takes care of it, said that in general “everyone who visits Berlin also visits this memorial”.
“It is accessible day and night, and there are always visitors here. It’s hard to say that people love it but they have taken it into their hearts,” he said.
Maintaining and securing the memorial costs around two million euros ($2.3 million) a year, according to Neumaerker but “considering the crowds of visitors, it’s money well spent”.
On any given day in Berlin, in any weather, groups of tourists can be seen wandering through the steles, taking pictures and pausing to reflect on history.
“I think the German nation have been good to put something like that as a memorial,” said Clifford Greenhalgh, 74, visiting from England on a sunny spring day.
