Holocaust Memorial Center in Berlin

Caspian Princess Pic

This memorial  to the murdered Jews of Europe, to the left of the Brandenburg Tor, took 17 years of discussion, planning and construction. On May 10, 2005, the vision of this memorial center to the Jewish victims of the Nazi-planned genocide of WWII  was created to share with the world.

I spent a few minutes digesting the words written on stone- MURDERED JEWS. I have memories of classroom teachings of the Holocaust, but I have zero recollection of the word murdered Jews. As obvious as the Nazis were in their plans....it was overwhelming to face those words.

The Caspian Princess_

The memorial is set up as two visiting levels. Street level, one can see a vast series of steale or tombstones, in various sizes, creating columns and where visitors can roam the lengths of  this undulating maze with 2711 sarcophagi-like columns. Signs nearby ask visitors to respect the space, remain quiet and not jump over the stones.

The Photo shoot...-Caspian Princess Pic

For the most part, visitors behave accordingly....but then again, some chose to sit on the stones and picnic or better yet others chose to have a photo shoot on the stone, posing with sunglasses and feet resting casually. Does the person realize and appreciate his freedom and his LIFE?

The Memorial Maze-Caspian Princess Pic

Below, is the museum portion of this memorial. The architect, a New Yorker by the name of Peter Eisenmann, created a mirror image of street level, using sombre lighting, same rectangular shapes and same maze like walking circuit. Visitors are greeted by an Italian-Jewish Writer, Primo Levi, who made it his legacy to inform the world that it happened once therefore it can happen again. The museum prides itself for representing the European dimension of the holocaust. Visitors are greeted with 6 European individuals who died during the war, fully aware that this was BUT a small representation of the many who perished.


Visitors are reminded of the Nazis' focus on humiliation, persecution, expulsion and extermination of Jews. Photographs, taken by SS officers, of women in Ukraine who were brought to a Ravine, asked to undress and were randomly shot to their death. One image shows a naked woman, who amidst the many dead bodies of her sisterhood, lifted her head to look up to the sky, only to be shot shortly after. Silence in the room. One hears only foot steps.


The museum managed to gather photographs of Jewish families from many European countries, displaying their genealogy, their legal documents and how many of them survived while others perished in various extermination camps. One photographs haunts me. Sabina Habermann. A young girl, in he teens, amongst other camp workers. She is the ONLY one not looking at the camera. The audio guide explains that was her sign for survival and refusal to accept the Nazi ways. he survived, married, had children and was a big part of the opening of this memorial center.


There was a grey map, with all the European and neighboring countries. With bright orange flags, they tagged most of Europe and North Africa where the Nazi regime had work camps, extermination camps, sites of mass shootings, starting points of deportation and ghettos where Jews were being held. A huge series of flags were centered around Poland.


In another room, they displayed only 8 camps: Auschwitz, Babji Jar, Sobibor, Kulmhof, Belzec, Treblinka, Birkenau, Majdanek and Malyj Trostinez. The last one was the least well know extermination camp, near the white Russian Capital of Minsk.For many years, scholars argued the validity of it being an extermination camp. Over time, it was unveiled that more than 60 000 Jews in 1942 were asked to dig their own graves, undress then died by mass shooting or poisonous gas.


Belzec was the FIRST of three extermination camps built by the SS in 1942, within the framework of Operation Reinhardt-code name for the planned mass murder of the Jews. This camp was located near a wooded area, by the railway line between Lublin and Lvov. Documented stats show that during the first four weeks, 30 000 Jews from Lublin, 15 000 from Lvov and 35 000 from other nearby ghettos were sentenced to death in gas chambers. In March 1943, the Nazis plowed through the area and replanted.


I walked away sombre for obvious reasons ....yet blessed for not having had to face such horrid situations. How lucky I am to be free and to raise my sons with an education and opportunities for their future.
And the 6 million who didn't get that same privilege....instead were murdered,