Six glass towers.Six for the six concentration camps constructed in Poland, their names engraved on the pathway that guides visitors through the towers. Majdanek, Treblinka. Sobibor, Auschwitz-Birkenau, Chelmno, Belzec. Six for the six million Jewish victims of the Holocaust.
And at night, light shines up from the bottom of the towers to illuminate the memorial. Six towers for six memorial candles.
The towers of the New England Holocaust Memorial are constructed from massive glass panels, taller than they are wide. Framed by metal beams on all four sides and stacked delicately upon one other to form slender glass chimneys, the panes of glass seem frosted, almost translucent. Fragile in a way that Boston as a whole is not. Fragile in a way that the brutalist architecture of the nearby Government Center is not. Fragile in a way that suspends the monument from its urban surroundings, from the street traffic, the concrete and cement, the low groans of ships in the Boston Harbor as workers unload containers of steel nearby.
We arrive at the memorial as the capstone to a day-long walking tour of monuments and art installations around Boston. The day had proceeded with a detached repetitiveness. Some pointing, brief historical background, commentary from the group on the design elements of the structure, and invariably, photographs. On to the next one.
But the Holocaust Memorial asks more from its visitors than a cursory glance and a cellphone-snapped picture. It carves out a space in an urban center and invites visitors along the path leading through the towers and into the smokestacks. The visitor’s experience is contained entirely by the monument’s glass confines. In its delicate translucency, the memorial constructs an enclosed space, separate from its surroundings both literally and stylistically.
One-by-one, we file through the memorial. As I approach the first tower, I realize that the smoky texture of the glass is the result of millions of pale-white numbers etched onto the surface. Grouped in seven-digit clusters, the digits recall the tattooed identification numbers used in concentration camps. Four walls of glass containing hundreds of thousands of these numbers tower above me, incrementally dimming the harsh sunlight of summer.
The New England Holocaust Memorial is rife with such symbolic meaning.
It’s not just the glass chimneys or numbers on the walls, it’s the grate beneath my feet, the stars that shine from underneath the grate, the stacked stones that visitors leave behind. It’s the strategically-selected location, merely a block away from the Freedom Trail that charts the genesis of the United States of America and roots the nation’s history firmly in the political allegory of freedom and justice.
And it’s the steam that rises through the grates. In the late August humidity,
the muggy air clings to the skin. As the warm air ghosts around my ankles to rise through the towers, I feel the heat prickle. The intent is not difficult to discern; in a bid to empathically link the visitors and the victims of the Holocaust, the memorial makes visitors hyper-aware of their position inside a quasi-literal smokestack. It evokes a sensation of noticeable—however slight—discomfort. It makes the horror all the more real.
The history of the Holocaust—and the United States’ relationship to it—is indeed horrific. Laurence Jarvik’s 1982 documentary “Who Shall Live and Who Shall Die?” opens with an excerpt from a letter that asks, “[A]nd you, our brothers in all free countries, and you, our governments of all free lands, where are you? What are you doing to hinder the carnage that is now going on?” The letter, smuggled to the United States in 1944 on behalf of Rabbi Michael Weissmandt and Mrs. Gisi Fleischmann, unearths a dimension of our nation that muddies America’s self-identification as the arbiter of freedom and democracy. Even as our national narrative positions the Allied powers against Nazi Germany, good against evil, these attempts to divide moral ground ultimately fail in light of America’s systematic failure to rescue the victims of the Holocaust.
In the wake of violent pogroms in Poland, Franklin D. Roosevelt called for a joint convention of thirty-two nations. But the 1938 Evian Conference in France ended in failure—with the exception of the Dominican Republic, all nations in attendance, including the United States, refused to accept additional Jewish refugees. Following the world’s unilateral refusal to accept Jewish immigrants, German officials released a statement noting the hypocrisy of conference’s outcome given the Allied nations’ condemnation of Germany’s treatment of the Jewish people.
Multiple failed attempts to encourage the Western nations to open their borders to the Jewish refugees ensued. In February of 1939, Senator Robert F. Wagner and Representative Edith N. Rogers introduced the Wagner-Rogers bill in the Senate and House, respectively. The limited refugee bill aimed to permit the admission of 20,000 German refugee children in addition to then-current joint German-Austrian immigration quota of 23,790. The bill was defeated in committee following strong opposition from anti-immigration groups.
Meanwhile, Nazi persecution of the Jews continued. Thousands of torched synagogues. Hundreds of Jewish men, women, and children killed in systematic and planned killings masquerading as spontaneous violent uprisings.
Perhaps the most damning story of all is that of the travelers on the St. Louis. Aboard the German transatlantic liner were 938 refugees fleeing persecution in Germany. The refugees on board the ship, initially destined for Cuba, were in possession of landing certificates and travel visas issued by the Cuban director-general of immigration. But President Federico Ladero Bru had invalidated the certificates and visas a week earlier following public scrutiny of the director-general’s sale of the travel documents for personal profit. When the St. Louis arrived at Cuba, the 908 passengers possessing invalidated documents were unable to enter Cuba, and despite international overtures made to President Bru, the St. Louis was forced to leave Cuban waters with 908 refugees still on board. Even though national coverage resulted in overwhelming sympathy for the passengers, the United States also refused to allow the refugees to enter. Roosevelt and the White House remained unresponsive as passengers cabled, desperately seeking refuge. Mere miles away from the shoreline of Florida, the St. Louis set sail to return to Europe.
the muggy air clings to the skin. As the warm air ghosts around my ankles to rise through the towers, I feel the heat prickle. The intent is not difficult to discern; in a bid to empathically link the visitors and the victims of the Holocaust, the memorial makes visitors hyper-aware of their position inside a quasi-literal smokestack. It evokes a sensation of noticeable—however slight—discomfort. It makes the horror all the more real.
The history of the Holocaust—and the United States’ relationship to it—is indeed horrific. Laurence Jarvik’s 1982 documentary “Who Shall Live and Who Shall Die?” opens with an excerpt from a letter that asks, “[A]nd you, our brothers in all free countries, and you, our governments of all free lands, where are you? What are you doing to hinder the carnage that is now going on?” The letter, smuggled to the United States in 1944 on behalf of Rabbi Michael Weissmandt and Mrs. Gisi Fleischmann, unearths a dimension of our nation that muddies America’s self-identification as the arbiter of freedom and democracy. Even as our national narrative positions the Allied powers against Nazi Germany, good against evil, these attempts to divide moral ground ultimately fail in light of America’s systematic failure to rescue the victims of the Holocaust.
In the wake of violent pogroms in Poland, Franklin D. Roosevelt called for a joint convention of thirty-two nations. But the 1938 Evian Conference in France ended in failure—with the exception of the Dominican Republic, all nations in attendance, including the United States, refused to accept additional Jewish refugees. Following the world’s unilateral refusal to accept Jewish immigrants, German officials released a statement noting the hypocrisy of conference’s outcome given the Allied nations’ condemnation of Germany’s treatment of the Jewish people.
Multiple failed attempts to encourage the Western nations to open their borders to the Jewish refugees ensued. In February of 1939, Senator Robert F. Wagner and Representative Edith N. Rogers introduced the Wagner-Rogers bill in the Senate and House, respectively. The limited refugee bill aimed to permit the admission of 20,000 German refugee children in addition to then-current joint German-Austrian immigration quota of 23,790. The bill was defeated in committee following strong opposition from anti-immigration groups.
Meanwhile, Nazi persecution of the Jews continued. Thousands of torched synagogues. Hundreds of Jewish men, women, and children killed in systematic and planned killings masquerading as spontaneous violent uprisings.
Perhaps the most damning story of all is that of the travelers on the St. Louis. Aboard the German transatlantic liner were 938 refugees fleeing persecution in Germany. The refugees on board the ship, initially destined for Cuba, were in possession of landing certificates and travel visas issued by the Cuban director-general of immigration. But President Federico Ladero Bru had invalidated the certificates and visas a week earlier following public scrutiny of the director-general’s sale of the travel documents for personal profit. When the St. Louis arrived at Cuba, the 908 passengers possessing invalidated documents were unable to enter Cuba, and despite international overtures made to President Bru, the St. Louis was forced to leave Cuban waters with 908 refugees still on board. Even though national coverage resulted in overwhelming sympathy for the passengers, the United States also refused to allow the refugees to enter. Roosevelt and the White House remained unresponsive as passengers cabled, desperately seeking refuge. Mere miles away from the shoreline of Florida, the St. Louis set sail to return to Europe.
Jewish organizations eventually negotiated for refuge for the passengers in Britain, Belgium, France, and the Netherlands. But the refugees on the European continent were again in peril following the German invasion of Western Europe. 254 of the original passengers eventually perished in the Holocaust.
Despite such incidents, our nation’s collective inertia perpetuated itself. In response to the apathetic citizenry and the era’s anti-Semitism, the national press attempted to downplay initial reports of the Holocaust in order to avoid appearances of pandering to the Jewish population. On May 14, 1943—the day after all remaining occupants of the Warsaw Ghetto were deported into concentration camps—the New York Times’s coverage of the event was relegated to page seven.
These anecdotes paint a picture of US isolationism and anti-Semitism in the World War II era. The State Department’s failure to take further action to protect the Jews in Europe reflects popular sentiment in the Great Depression. A 1939 Fortune Magazine poll revealed that 83 percent of individuals opposed relaxing immigration restrictions. Economic hardship had forced society inward. How can we help others, we had rationalized, when even our own citizens struggle to feed their families? So the Evian Conference ended with a whimper. So the Wagner-Rogers bill died in committee. So the St. Louis returned to Europe. So the initial coverage of 700,000 Jews murdered in the “Final Solution” was relegated to 11 lines on page six of the Chicago Tribune.
Nazi officials, unable to force the Jewish population to flee to countries unwilling to accept the immigrants, rationalized their choice to turn to the “Final Solution.” Their aim to eliminate the Jewish people from Germany could not be solved by emigration, they claimed. Thus commenced the grisliest stage of the Holocaust.
What does it mean to liberate Auschwitz with events like the St. Louis embedded in our national past? What does it mean to condemn the perpetrators of the Holocaust when our nation’s failure to act exacerbated its effects?
The steam rising from the grates of the New England Holocaust Memorial seems to answer this unspoken question. As the heat settles onto the slick skin of the back of my neck, the uneasiness I feel becomes its own sense of complicity. In front of me, behind me, viewers linger in the towers, peer below into the grates, place stones along the granite walls lining the entrance and exit. They put their cellphones on vibrate. The glass confines of the memorial isolate visitors from their surroundings. Peering out, impenetrable.
Surrounded by the sounds of the city, the Holocaust Memorial is a pinprick of absolute, oppressive silence. Perhaps the monument evokes discomfort because we must feel uncomfortable in order to begin to untangle our nation’s role in the atrocities of the Holocaust.
Thousands of miles away, Germany grapples with a similar question of collective complicity. Unlike the United States, where national guilt from the Holocaust is largely separate from the nation’s political identity, such discussions of responsibility are inescapable in the country still burdened with the political legacy of the Nazi Party. Michael Sontheimer, writer for Der Spiegel, explains in his 2005 piece “Why Germans Can Never Escape Hitler’s Shadow” that “[f ]or us Germans, whether we like it or not, the past is always present.”
Still, the essential question remains the same—how does a country incorporate such guilt-tinged horror and tragedy into a national narrative? Just south of Brandenburg Gate, in Berlin, 2,711 cement slabs rise from the ground at varying heights. Arranged in a grid-like formation, the Memorial to the Murdered Jews of Europe resembles a collection of coffins or tombstones, a set of abstracted markers for the millions of lives lost.
Despite such incidents, our nation’s collective inertia perpetuated itself. In response to the apathetic citizenry and the era’s anti-Semitism, the national press attempted to downplay initial reports of the Holocaust in order to avoid appearances of pandering to the Jewish population. On May 14, 1943—the day after all remaining occupants of the Warsaw Ghetto were deported into concentration camps—the New York Times’s coverage of the event was relegated to page seven.
These anecdotes paint a picture of US isolationism and anti-Semitism in the World War II era. The State Department’s failure to take further action to protect the Jews in Europe reflects popular sentiment in the Great Depression. A 1939 Fortune Magazine poll revealed that 83 percent of individuals opposed relaxing immigration restrictions. Economic hardship had forced society inward. How can we help others, we had rationalized, when even our own citizens struggle to feed their families? So the Evian Conference ended with a whimper. So the Wagner-Rogers bill died in committee. So the St. Louis returned to Europe. So the initial coverage of 700,000 Jews murdered in the “Final Solution” was relegated to 11 lines on page six of the Chicago Tribune.
Nazi officials, unable to force the Jewish population to flee to countries unwilling to accept the immigrants, rationalized their choice to turn to the “Final Solution.” Their aim to eliminate the Jewish people from Germany could not be solved by emigration, they claimed. Thus commenced the grisliest stage of the Holocaust.
What does it mean to liberate Auschwitz with events like the St. Louis embedded in our national past? What does it mean to condemn the perpetrators of the Holocaust when our nation’s failure to act exacerbated its effects?
The steam rising from the grates of the New England Holocaust Memorial seems to answer this unspoken question. As the heat settles onto the slick skin of the back of my neck, the uneasiness I feel becomes its own sense of complicity. In front of me, behind me, viewers linger in the towers, peer below into the grates, place stones along the granite walls lining the entrance and exit. They put their cellphones on vibrate. The glass confines of the memorial isolate visitors from their surroundings. Peering out, impenetrable.
Surrounded by the sounds of the city, the Holocaust Memorial is a pinprick of absolute, oppressive silence. Perhaps the monument evokes discomfort because we must feel uncomfortable in order to begin to untangle our nation’s role in the atrocities of the Holocaust.
Thousands of miles away, Germany grapples with a similar question of collective complicity. Unlike the United States, where national guilt from the Holocaust is largely separate from the nation’s political identity, such discussions of responsibility are inescapable in the country still burdened with the political legacy of the Nazi Party. Michael Sontheimer, writer for Der Spiegel, explains in his 2005 piece “Why Germans Can Never Escape Hitler’s Shadow” that “[f ]or us Germans, whether we like it or not, the past is always present.”
Still, the essential question remains the same—how does a country incorporate such guilt-tinged horror and tragedy into a national narrative? Just south of Brandenburg Gate, in Berlin, 2,711 cement slabs rise from the ground at varying heights. Arranged in a grid-like formation, the Memorial to the Murdered Jews of Europe resembles a collection of coffins or tombstones, a set of abstracted markers for the millions of lives lost.
Yet in spite of the abstraction, the physical experience of the monument retains an emotional tenor. Like the New England Holocaust Memorial, it recreates an element of the Jewish experience during the Holocaust. But unlike the memorial in Boston, which recalls a specific element of the emotional experience, the abstraction of its Berlin counterpart suspends any experience from specifics. The tourist in Berlin experiences the field of symbolic gravestones differently than, say, the children playing at the periphery. The visitor’s experience is self-defined and therefore unique.
Perhaps such an open approach to memorializing the Holocaust is a response to Germany’s previous attempts to contend with its Nazi past, first with the philo-Semitism of the 80s and 90s and the ensuing desire to move on and forget. “Clearly, there was something artificial about the ritualistic displays of historical contrition that had long been central to public life in Germany. But to assert that the time had come to move beyond the past, once and for all, was no less artificial,” Yascha Mounk declared in her New York Times op-ed. “Normality cannot be decreed by fiat.”
Perhaps such an open approach to memorializing the Holocaust is a response to Germany’s previous attempts to contend with its Nazi past, first with the philo-Semitism of the 80s and 90s and the ensuing desire to move on and forget. “Clearly, there was something artificial about the ritualistic displays of historical contrition that had long been central to public life in Germany. But to assert that the time had come to move beyond the past, once and for all, was no less artificial,” Yascha Mounk declared in her New York Times op-ed. “Normality cannot be decreed by fiat.”
The singularity of visitors’ experiences of the memorial is intentional. In a nation where nearly all citizens have some ties to the Holocaust, the nature of complicity is complicated—widely dispersed, but far from homogeneous. In order to avert explicitly assigning blame, the monument leaves open and abstract the intent of the memorial. No visitors are immune: Peter Eisensman, the architect behind the memorial, explained, “I don’t want people to weep and then walk away with a clear conscience.” The visitor’s experience is dictated entirely by his or her own ties to the Holocaust. Awareness of guilt must emerge organically in order to avert sentimentality, or worse: insincerity.
In 2003, during the construction of the Memorial to the Murdered Jews of Europe, the deconstructed, minimalist monument was embroiled in controversy. Degussa AG, the German firm contracted to provide the anti-graffiti resin for the cement slabs, was linked to its parent company Degesch. Degesch, it so happens, supplied Nazi concentration camps with Zyklon-B hydrogen cyanide tablets during the war.
Sontheimer was correct in his recognition that for Germany, the present is inextricably linked to the Holocaust. Even as Germany memorializes the Holocaust, the ugliness of the past inevitably and inescapably presents itself.
Germany, then, must balance the act of remembrance with that of overcoming. The nation cannot remain paralyzed in its past, but moving forward is not so simple. The 4.7 acre site of the Memorial to the Murdered Jews of Europe testifies to the impossibility—and inadvisability—of forgetting. But its blank faces and perpendicular angles offer no further answers.
Both the Boston and Berlin Holocaust memorials offer collections of moments instead of sentimentality, physical experiences instead of editorialized explanation. They translate the burden of national memory into a physical space.
But where Boston’s memorial encloses, Berlin’s exposes. Unlike the insulated nature of Boston’s memorial, Berlin’s memorial maintains a more porous relationship with the surrounding city. The grid-like arrangement of the stelae resembles the layout of the nearby street intersections. The memorial’s location at the center of Berlin results in high foot traffic and plenty of visitors, tourists and locals alike. On sunny days, children play inside the labyrinthine arrangement of slabs. Families picnic.
The memorial reflects Sontheimer’s declaration of the past’s omnipresence. Just as the monument has woven itself in the physical fabric of Berlin, Germany will always contend with its past role in perpetrating the atrocities of the Holocaust.
However, such porousness also exposes the memorial to the callousness and grit of the city. On January 1, 2014, news reports revealed that a man was filmed urinating from one of the cement stelae comprising the monument. In the same video, individuals appeared to launch fireworks from the site. The police did not deem the acts to be political (though the monument has previously been the target of neo-Nazi vandals), yet the news story appears to carry an inherent political weight. German Culture Minister Monika Gruetters condemned the vandals, stating that “The incidents are outrageous and to be deplored.” On the Neo-Nazi website Stormfront, commenters immediately celebrated the man’s actions. User Hungry Brian deplored the monument as “the Jew’s hideous markings on an otherwise beautiful city … [the vandal’s acts] will make it smell as ugly as it looks.”
The act—and the responses it drew—offered a telling portrayal of Germany’s struggle to situate the Holocaust in its national narrative. Like the Zyklon-B incident, the video’s controversy emerges from Germany’s uncertainty about how to treat this memorial, and by extension, how to treat the Holocaust. For the memorial is merely a manifestation of the event itself: a dark scar in the center of Berlin to mark a dark period of German history.
In 2003, during the construction of the Memorial to the Murdered Jews of Europe, the deconstructed, minimalist monument was embroiled in controversy. Degussa AG, the German firm contracted to provide the anti-graffiti resin for the cement slabs, was linked to its parent company Degesch. Degesch, it so happens, supplied Nazi concentration camps with Zyklon-B hydrogen cyanide tablets during the war.
Sontheimer was correct in his recognition that for Germany, the present is inextricably linked to the Holocaust. Even as Germany memorializes the Holocaust, the ugliness of the past inevitably and inescapably presents itself.
Germany, then, must balance the act of remembrance with that of overcoming. The nation cannot remain paralyzed in its past, but moving forward is not so simple. The 4.7 acre site of the Memorial to the Murdered Jews of Europe testifies to the impossibility—and inadvisability—of forgetting. But its blank faces and perpendicular angles offer no further answers.
Both the Boston and Berlin Holocaust memorials offer collections of moments instead of sentimentality, physical experiences instead of editorialized explanation. They translate the burden of national memory into a physical space.
But where Boston’s memorial encloses, Berlin’s exposes. Unlike the insulated nature of Boston’s memorial, Berlin’s memorial maintains a more porous relationship with the surrounding city. The grid-like arrangement of the stelae resembles the layout of the nearby street intersections. The memorial’s location at the center of Berlin results in high foot traffic and plenty of visitors, tourists and locals alike. On sunny days, children play inside the labyrinthine arrangement of slabs. Families picnic.
The memorial reflects Sontheimer’s declaration of the past’s omnipresence. Just as the monument has woven itself in the physical fabric of Berlin, Germany will always contend with its past role in perpetrating the atrocities of the Holocaust.
However, such porousness also exposes the memorial to the callousness and grit of the city. On January 1, 2014, news reports revealed that a man was filmed urinating from one of the cement stelae comprising the monument. In the same video, individuals appeared to launch fireworks from the site. The police did not deem the acts to be political (though the monument has previously been the target of neo-Nazi vandals), yet the news story appears to carry an inherent political weight. German Culture Minister Monika Gruetters condemned the vandals, stating that “The incidents are outrageous and to be deplored.” On the Neo-Nazi website Stormfront, commenters immediately celebrated the man’s actions. User Hungry Brian deplored the monument as “the Jew’s hideous markings on an otherwise beautiful city … [the vandal’s acts] will make it smell as ugly as it looks.”
The act—and the responses it drew—offered a telling portrayal of Germany’s struggle to situate the Holocaust in its national narrative. Like the Zyklon-B incident, the video’s controversy emerges from Germany’s uncertainty about how to treat this memorial, and by extension, how to treat the Holocaust. For the memorial is merely a manifestation of the event itself: a dark scar in the center of Berlin to mark a dark period of German history.
So the Memorial to the Murdered Jews of Europe completes its final goal. Its presence continues to propagate discussions, however controversial, of how to properly commemorate. The topic remains fresh, unresolved, a contemporary historical battleground. For how can a nation relegate the Holocaust to the past when an abstracted cemetery occupies nearly five acres at the heart of its capital?
Monuments do not merely commemorate events. They connect the past to the present, endowing history with a physical space. They embody the tension between remembrance and complicity that emerges as nations attempt to situate tragedies like the Holocaust within their national narratives. And, most importantly, they help individuals situate such events within their own narratives.
History becomes relevant when it distills the vast collective memory into a single individual’s physical sensation—of glass walls and faint steam, of a dizzying maze of tombstones. And as visitors begin to grapple with their own sense of culpability through these experiences, a nation’s history begins to take shape, written as an aggregation of individual moments.
In Berlin, children leap between the seemingly endless rows of concrete slabs, limbs splayed. Meanwhile, as I exit the New England Holocaust Memorial, I leave a single stone along one of the ridges lining the footpath. The action hearkens back to the Jewish tradition of leaving visitation stones at graves. In an age where the experience of traveling and visitation involves so much consumption—buying souvenirs, taking photographs, coming, seeing, conquering—the act of leaving something behind feels remarkably personal. And it is only fitting for a monument that asks for so much from its visitors.
By the exit, an engraving on the path implores visitors to Remember. But if the deadened silence surrounding the monument is any indication, the task is a more complex burden than the simple command suggests.
Image Credit: Peacework Magazine
Monuments do not merely commemorate events. They connect the past to the present, endowing history with a physical space. They embody the tension between remembrance and complicity that emerges as nations attempt to situate tragedies like the Holocaust within their national narratives. And, most importantly, they help individuals situate such events within their own narratives.
History becomes relevant when it distills the vast collective memory into a single individual’s physical sensation—of glass walls and faint steam, of a dizzying maze of tombstones. And as visitors begin to grapple with their own sense of culpability through these experiences, a nation’s history begins to take shape, written as an aggregation of individual moments.
In Berlin, children leap between the seemingly endless rows of concrete slabs, limbs splayed. Meanwhile, as I exit the New England Holocaust Memorial, I leave a single stone along one of the ridges lining the footpath. The action hearkens back to the Jewish tradition of leaving visitation stones at graves. In an age where the experience of traveling and visitation involves so much consumption—buying souvenirs, taking photographs, coming, seeing, conquering—the act of leaving something behind feels remarkably personal. And it is only fitting for a monument that asks for so much from its visitors.
By the exit, an engraving on the path implores visitors to Remember. But if the deadened silence surrounding the monument is any indication, the task is a more complex burden than the simple command suggests.
Image Credit: Peacework Magazine
