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German Holocaust memorial dedicated

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Tuesday, May 10, 2005

photo by Stefan Wagner

A new $35m Holocaust memorial in Germany officially called the Memorial to the Murdered Jews of Europe was dedicated during a ceremony Tuesday. The memorial commemorates the suffering the millions of European Jews who were held in concentration camps by the Nazi regime. The dedication comes just a day after the 60th anniversary of the Allied Victory in World War II.

U.S. architect Peter Eisenman designed the new memorial, which is contained in one block square very close to the parliament and the new US embassy in the heart of Berlin, Germany. The memorial consists of over 2,700 gray concrete blocks representing the helplessness of the Holocaust victims. The blocks are covered with an anti-graffiti substance which was made by the same company that produced the Zyklon B poison used in the genocide. They are all of different shapes and sizes, and are set on a sloping hillside, designed to produce an uneasy, confusing atmosphere.

The memorial has met with criticism. Many have pointed out that the memorial is only for the Jews who died, and does not represent the millions of gypsies, homosexuals and mentally-handicapped people who were also murdered. It has also been said that while the memorial commerates those who died, it does not ask any questions about why the atrocity happened. However, there are plans for memorials commemorating other victims of the Nazi regime. Under the abstract memorial there is a place which informs visitors about Holocaust.

The ceremony, which Chancellor Gerhard Schröder attended, included prayer led by a Jewish rabbi and speeches reflecting on the Holocaust given by a survivor and leaders of the Jewish community in Germany.

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This page is archived, and is no longer publicly editable.
Articles presented on Wikinews reflect the specific time at which they were written and published, and do not attempt to encompass events or knowledge which occur or become known after their publication.

Got a correction? Add the template {{editprotected}} to the talk page along with your corrections, and it will be brought to the attention of the administrators.

Please note that due to our archival policy, we will not alter or update the content of articles that are archived, but will only accept requests to make grammatical and formatting corrections.

Note that some listed sources or external links may no longer be available online due to age.

The text of this article is licensed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution 2.5 License
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