A museum to the Jewish victims of the Nazi holocaust opened in Germany — amid controversy centered on whether it was appropriate to have a memorial that only honors the Jews murdered by the Nazis and not others.
Why? Part of the reason is that in recent years there has indeed been a focus on the totality of victims singled out the by Nazis. That doesn’t take away from the genoicidal crimes against the Jews but it provides a more accurate picture of the totality of Nazi brutality.
Just read some of this from the KRN News wire:
The architect appeared almost apologetic. The woman considered the driving force behind the memorial was put on the defensive in television interviews, as German newspapers referred to her as a “professional Jew” and “Holocaust Cassandra.”
Even supporters of the memorial were critical that it was dedicated only to Jewish victims.
Others saw triumph just in the two-hour ceremony that opened the Memorial to the Murdered Jews of Europe, which has been dogged by controversy since the German Parliament approved the $35 million project in 1999.
“Architecture is no panacea for evil in the world,” the memorial’s American architect, Peter Eisenman, 72, told a crowd of hundreds gathered in a large tent on the edge of the site, a stone’s throw from the bunker where Adolf Hitler committed suicide days before the war ended. Eisenman added that he hoped the memorial “would speak to and for the German people” on the darkest chapter in their history.
The memorial consists of 2,711 rectangular concrete columns of different heights on sloping ground, a design intended to make visitors uneasy, unsure of time and space.
It’s been controversial from the outset, with questions arising about everything from its design to the fact that the anti-graffiti coating on the concrete “tombs” was made by the company that also manufactured Zyklon B, the murderous poison used at Auschwitz.
The most persistent criticism has been that the memorial honors only the 6 million Jews who were killed, not the millions of gypsies, homosexuals, people with handicaps, communists and others.
At the ceremony, Paul Spiegel, the president of the Central Council of Jews in Germany, echoed that criticism, saying there should be no hierarchy of suffering among Nazi victims and that all groups should have memorials. He also said the memorial avoided the difficult questions of the Holocaust.
“How could a civilized nation at the heart of Europe perpetrate this?” he asked. “This memorial does not ask why. On the contrary, the memorial focuses on the suffering of the Jews.”
But some of the criticism leveled at the memorial not being more inclusive has not exactly been loving:
Lea Rosh, the head of the foundation that will oversee the memorial, is seen as the driving force behind its being built. She’s been a lightning rod for criticism of the project, particularly its dedication only to Jewish victims. Tuesday’s media coverage was harsh in its references to her.
The paper Berlin Zeitung called her a “professional Jew,” while Stern magazine called her a “Holocaust Cassandra,” odd references given that German society in general is accepting of Holocaust memorials. Berlin city trains run to the Sachsenhausen concentration camp site, and memorials dot many city streets and railway platforms.
Clearly, the whole history of the holocaust is — and rightly should be — a sore point in Germany. It probably would have been wise to have included as many groups that were targetted as possible since that wouldn’t have taken anything away from the crimes perpetuated against the Jews.
Joe Gandelman is a former fulltime journalist who freelanced in India, Spain, Bangladesh and Cypress writing for publications such as the Christian Science Monitor and Newsweek. He also did radio reports from Madrid for NPR’s All Things Considered. He has worked on two U.S. newspapers and quit the news biz in 1990 to go into entertainment. He also has written for The Week and several online publications, did a column for Cagle Cartoons Syndicate and has appeared on CNN.