Holocaust Memorial

I went to the Memorial for the Murdered Jews of Europe today, or Holocaust Memorial. I got an audio guide in English, and decided it was an excellent investment. It really helps the exhibit to come alive.

Of course, for an exhibit like that to come alive means I heard some pretty heart-wrenching stories.

I couldn’t believe how many stories there are about women and children being killed. There was one story about a mother who made sure the guard knew her son was under 12 so he would avoid the hard work at the forced-labor camp. She also asked if her mother could go with the children for the same reason. She didn’t know that everyone in that group would be shot. She sentenced her older son and mother to death.

The museum is underground, underneath the big concrete blocks (stelae) that most pictures show. The ceiling is designed so that the recesses show where the stelae are located, above ground.

The museum is organized into rooms, each of which has a specific focus.

The first is the Room of Dimensions.

Each of the lighted sections of floor contains someone’s personal experience written down. These are short sections of writing – a letter, postcard, or diary entry – that describes a personal experience regarding their persecution. One particularly touching excerpt is the postscript of a letter written to a father. The daughter states that she is writing because she is going to die, and she wants to say goodbye.

The second room is the Room of Families.

Rather than recesses in the ceiling, the stelae stretch toward the floor in this room. They are used to tell stories of 15 specific families. Each family has a family picture, as well as pictures and text illustrating what life was like before their persecution, and how they died. One family does not have a family picture, as this information was destroyed. The audio guide sometimes had personal testimony from family members as well.

The third room is called the Room of Names. I don’t have a picture. In this room, the names and dates of birth and death of Jews who were murdered or presumed dead are projected onto each of the four walls, while brief biographies are read aloud, first in German, then English. According to the literature, reading out these names and biographies like this for all the victims would take about six years, seven months, and 27 days.

The fourth and final room is the Room of Sites.

This room contains a map showing the locations of 500 extermination and concentration camps, mass executions, ghettos, deportation routes, and death marches.

The points in red, with names listed, are highlighted in greater detail around the room. The audio guide tells stories about a few locations, like the one I mentioned earlier regarding the woman sentencing her own child to death. This room brings to light the horrors of those camps, discussing firing squads and gas chambers. Some prisoners also did forced labor, but many were murdered on the spot.

The tour ends in the Holocaust Memorials Database, which highlights other memorials around the world, and allows patrons to search for specific victims.

Some photos of other memorials:

and the computer terminals available to look up victims:

After this, returning to the sun above ground feels like returning to reality.