Some feared that it would lead to a strong emotionalization, and preferred to list the victims’ names instead of displaying subjective quotes. Others feared that the victims’ testimonies would literally be trampled underfoot. Some even thought that the idea that visitors could only read the inscriptions with their heads bowed was contradictory to the aim of providing rational elucidation and information. They feared that visitors would be forced into a pose of religious devotion. However, Monika Richarz, Christoph Stölzl, and others maintained that the arrangement of the texts on the floor was a successful means of conveying information in the exhibition. After Dagmar von Wilcken succeeded in convincing the members of the Kuratorium by means of a model in a room of the German Bundestag, this point of contention was resolved, especially since Alexander Brenner, then head of the Berlin Jewish Community, was very much in favor of the design and did not seem to worry that it might cause problems for Jewish visitors or hurt anybody’s feelings. To this day, the first room, containing the shocking testimonies of persecuted individuals most of them taken from secret diary entries, final letters, or messages and pleas for help thrown from trains on illuminated floor showcases, is one of the most important and touching parts of the exhibition (see Figure 1.2).
FIGURE 1.2 Room of Dimensions, Memorial to the Murdered Jews of Europe. Eyewitness accounts are exhibited in showcases on the floor that resemble the stelae above. The showcases contain a fragment of the original source in its original language and translations into English and German. The individual level of these eyewitness accounts is supplemented by a tape on the wall providing information on the number of victims in each of the occupied countries in Europe.
© Foundation Memorial to the Murdered Jews of Europe, Marko Priske, 2008.
Of the four rooms, the room today called Room of Dimensions impresses the majority of the center’s visitors most strongly, according to evaluations conducted by the foundation (SKOPOS visitor evaluation 2011, 8, Archives of the Foundation). It is precisely the interplay and tension between the quotes of individuals and the enormous number of victims from the various European countries occupied by Nazi Germany inscribed in a continuous frieze that runs on the wall that enables this first room of the center to offer the possibility of both acknowledging the fates of individuals and of grasping the scope of the genocide. Contemplation and information, mourning and enlightenment, are no longer contradictory but are rather complementary elements in a deeper, more thorough understanding of the Holocaust. Visitors also appreciate this presentation because the historical context has already been conveyed to them in a concise, comprehensive portrayal in the center’s foyer before they enter the first room.
Religious reading or historical remembrance? The Room of Names
The questions that arose in the planning and realization of the exhibition’s third room, the Room of Names, were similarly difficult (see Figure 1.3). The controversies surrounding this room, however, tended to remain in the background. The entire Kuratorium, as well as political decision-makers, greatly appreciated the willingness of the Memorial Yad Vashem in Jerusalem to make available for use in the information center their database containing over three million names of Shoah victims, based on the “Pages of Testimony” compiled since the early 1950s (Shalev and Avraham 2005, 128–137). This was recognized by all sides as an extraordinary gesture of reconciliation. Nevertheless, for critics of the memorial, as well as museum experts, it also entailed some risks. As in the case of the Room of Names, they saw a tendency to emotionally stage and symbolically reduce the historical context of the Holocaust, which is inimical to the conveyance of historical knowledge. The mere reading of the names of those who were murdered would be reminiscent of liturgical elements and would amplify the “sacralization of remembrance” all the more so as the subterranean location of the center under Eisenman’s memorial can be regarded as a sort of crypt beneath a vast cemetery. I strongly promoted the idea of reading the names and at the same time providing biographical information on each person who carried the name. Consultations with museum experts ultimately yielded the result that the names of murdered Jews from Yad Vashem’s extensive database would be projected onto all four walls of the exhibition room. In parallel with this, basic biographical information on these individuals would be provided in an audio program.
By providing these individual albeit very brief biographies, the center was able to avoid the religiously ritualized reading of names. At the same time, the audio program is so arresting, dignified, and appropriate to mourning and remembrance that this room can undoubtedly be regarded as the centerpiece. As Brigitte Sion (2008, 65) writes in her study, “Visitors slow down, freeze, stare at the names and listen to the life stories: a child from Dresden, a grandmother from Budapest, a student from Lyons, a singer from Venice. One more. It is hard to exit the room.” The fact that such biographical information is available for only a fraction of the more than three million names collected in the Yad Vashem database reveals the tremendous task for the future: scholars will be busy for years researching as many personal histories as possible in order to put a face to the names in the database. And the stories they unearth can subsequently be presented in the information center. To this day, only approximately ten thousand names from Yad Vashem’s collection have been reviewed in this way and presented in the center. Scholars from the Holocaust Memorial Foundation cooperate closely with Yad Vashem and other institutions in Germany and abroad that are conducting research into the individual fates and biographies of people who perished in the Holocaust.
FIGURE 1.3 Room of Names, Memorial to the Murdered Jews of Europe. The room is empty. A reading of names and short biographies of Jews from across Europe who were murdered, or are presumed dead, emanates from speakers. At the same time, the names and, if known, year of birth and year of death of the victims appear on all four walls.
© Foundation Memorial to the Murdered Jews of Europe, Lepkowski, 2007.
Visitors to the information center can access the actual database of Yad Vashem and its “Pages of Testimony” at computer terminals in a separate part of the exit foyer outside the Room of Names, and print out any information they have found. This way, visitors who have never been to Israel can also research the fates of their relatives in Berlin. (For a critical discussion of presenting the names of Holocaust victims at the memorial, see Dekel 2008, 166–188, and passim).
The outcome
The exhibition concept that eventually emerged from fraught discussions is an exemplary portrayal of the individual fates of victims of the Holocaust from across Europe. In accordance with contemporary exhibition culture, it is subjectcentered. Visitors are encouraged to empathetically acknowledge individual life stories, particularly in regard to the history of the Holocaust (Köhr 2008; Geissler 2011). The variety of the biographies allows us to perceive Jewish life across Europe before the Holocaust in all its diversity (see Figure 1.4).
FIGURE 1.4 Room of Families, Memorial to the Murdered Jews of Europe. Different social, national, and religious Jewish milieus are shown in this room, based on the fates of 15 Jewish families. The stories of these Jewish families reflect the diversity of Jewish culture and tradition in Europe before the Holocaust. Photos and personal documents bear witness to the dissolution, expulsion, and extermination of these families and their members.
© Foundation Memorial to the Murdered Jews of Europe, Lepkowski, 2008.
Interest in Jewish milieus especially in the countries of eastern Europe (e.g., Poland, Russia, and Lithuania) has not been very strong in the past, at least in Germany, in contrast to many other countries. The center’s exhibition hence
