This is about two Berlin monuments. They both commemorate the Holocaust, and specifically the Jewish dimension of that (as opposed to the murder of other groups). I prefer one over the other.
I know my views will not be shared by everyone, but I want to develop a
case.
It is a sunny morning.
As I walk past Monument A there are a variety of tour buses lined up
alongside, with groups (generally of young people) being instructed on what
they are seeing, what it is supposed to mean, and how they should react. They clearly need briefing, since there are
no explanatory notices or other signage (apart from the regulations for the use
of the site). But when the mini-lecture
from their leader is over, although they initially disperse into the monument
soberly, within a few minutes they are playing hide and seek, chasing each
other, shouting out each others’ names.
And then they start taking selfies, posing for the camera as the leader
(or the one with the most modern smart phone) turns their back on the monument
– the main element in the picture will be the group. Some small groups of adults nearby look at
the monument for a minute or two and then spy a food shop diagonally opposite
selling fast food and head off there. At
the northern side of the monument a lorry is finding it difficult to park to
make a delivery to the 5 star hotel, because there is a row of taxis and
limousines in the way: the traffic builds up and although there is no hooting
there is clearly some frustration in the air.
On the far side of the monument a dual carriageway road produces a continuous ribbon of traffic in
both directions – visible from within the monument and from around it. Many people pass by, but few engage fully
with what they see.
It is a sunny afternoon.
I walk up the slope to Monument B, leaving behind the few shops and the groups
of people who have just got off the S-Bahn train or the local buses. When I look back from the top of the slope I
can see no-one else, although I can hear some children’s’ voice in the gardens
of the villas to my right. I spend
perhaps 30 minutes at the monument, during which time only 7 other people
appear: 3 who come out of the station and stand quietly for a few minutes
before returning the same way, a boy who seems to be taking a short cut home
from school, a man who had parked his car on the ramp and drives to the top to
turn round, and a woman with a dog who probably visits the site every day but
who has a camera and takes pictures of one part of the monument – focusing on a
specific element. I wonder if she has
some personal connection with it. To the
west of the monument, on the other side from the villas, are derelict railway
sidings with birch trees growing alongside them and even within the tracks, and
beyond I occasionally glimpse an S-Bahn train or a regional express passing. It is a very lonely spot, and even on a sunny
day there is at atmosphere here that chills.
Those who know Berlin will already
have realised that Monument A is the Memorial to the Murdered Jews of Europe,
dedicated in 2005 after a great deal of discussion and publicity. Monument B is the ‘Platform 17’ (Gleis 17 – ‘Gleis’ means ‘platform’ in
German) memorial at Grünewald Station, unveiled in its final form in 1998,
although an earlier memorial dates back to 1991.
Much has been written about the
Memorial to the Murdered Jews of Europe, designed by Peter Eisenman of New
York, and it has become very well known.
It was commissioned as a result of a national debate and competition,
with much controversy about the exact site and the nature of the message the
memorial should convey. It serves as the
central German memorial to the Holocaust of the Jews. The Gleis
17 memorial, by contrast, was commissioned rather quietly by the German
Railways (the Deutsche Bahn) as a
result of some research that had been carried out on the role their
forerunners, the Deutsche Reichsbahn,
played in the War. The Gleis 17 memorial is by a lesser-known German
architectural practice – Hirsch, Lorch und Wandel.
So why do I prefer the Grünewald
monument? Let me briefly describe
it. There is an overgrown railway siding
– one end of which actually has birch trees growing through the sleepers. The siding, which is perhaps 200 metres long,
is lined on both sides by industrial metal plates, each perhaps 2 by 4
metres. And along the edges of each of those
plates, abutting the siding, are cast a few simple facts – a date, a number,
and a destination. Each plate represents
the despatch from here of a group of Jews, sometimes a waggon-load, sometimes a
whole train to the camps and extermination grounds of the east. The first such departure was on 18 October
1941, of 1251 Jews to Łodz, with other early destinations including Minsk,
Kowno, Lublin, Warsaw, Riga, and then from July 1942 to Theresienstadt
(Terezin). The first train to set out
from here to Auschwitz left on 29 November 1942, taking 1000 Jews. Reading the metal plates, the peak of
departures came in early March 1943 when 6369 Jews were sent by train to
Auschwitz in 4 days – a period that coincided with the decision to despatch
certain Jewish individuals (such as Jewish husbands of ‘Aryan’ German wives)
who had previously been spared. Numbers
dropped after that – but there were by then few Jews left in Berlin to be
deported. The last despatch to Auschwitz
occurred on 12 October 1944, only a month before the dismantling of the
extermination apparatus there started, on Himmler’s orders. Later transports were to Ravensbruck and
Sachsenhausen and to Bergen-Belsen, as well as continuing to
Theresienstadt. The last waggon of Jews
left on 27 March 1945, only a month before the downfall of the Nazi regime.
Walking along one side of the
siding and back along the other, the cumulative effect of these simple factual
statements of Jewish transports is overwhelmingly moving, made more so by the
fact that these facts were played out in this very spot – and by the loneliness
of the place. A heavy and contemplative
atmosphere hangs over the Gleis 17
memorial, inviting reflection. The
meaning of the site is immediately comprehensible, and it takes little
imagination to conjure up an image of people of all ages being herded up the
ramp that today the visitor uses to access the site. The only slight jarring note on my recent
visit was a banner at one end consisting of half a dozen Israeli flags tied
together. The Jews sent east from
Grünewald were not Israelis (since Israel did not yet exist), nor do we know whether
they were Zionists (the Israeli flag was first adopted by the World Zionist
Organisation at its Basel congress in 1897).
They were first and foremost Germans who happened also to be Jewish.
Gleis 17 is a memorial in the ‘right place’. It is simple, easily read and understood, and
inviting full inspection and reflection.
While the documentation centre under the Eisenman monument in the centre
of Berlin tells the poignant story of the Holocaust in an effective manner, the
monument itself is not easily legible, is not in an especially relevant
location, and has become too much of a quick stop and photo opportunity on the
tour bus routes to provide any real air of melancholy or contemplation. That’s why I prefer Gleis 17.
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