Holocaust Memorial

The Holocaust Memorial in Berlin is controversial, a stark city block filled with granite stones, well over 2,000 of them, standing in stark remembrance of the Nazi atrocities. The picture that includes a skyline shows the Reichstag in the distance and the United States Embassy directly across the street from the Memorial. The Brandenburg Gate is on the other side of the Embassy, not visible here.

Our tour guide for one does not like the Memorial, saying that children come here and play hide-and-seek among the stones, which are taller in the center due to an intentional slope of the ground. Others complain because there are no lists of names, or because the arbitrary number of stones has no relation to the millions of victims.

I was touched by it. I have no objection to children playing here, full of life, any more than I object to a picnic in a cemetery with the relatives feeling close to the deceased. And I was not bothered by the lack of number relationship, since the Nazis apparently killed as many as they could in the time they had, just as the memorial has as many stones as space allowed. To insist on number logic would apply a logic that does not compute when considering the massive scope of the Holocaust. And the absence of names is another factor that fits with what we are remembering here -- genocide, where all names would be taken away, replaced with numbers, and then forgotten.

A nearby memorial will be visited in the next post.