The Jewish Holocaust Memorial in Berlin is a striking place; over 2700 rectangular concrete pillars of different heights, creating a forest like effect that makes it easy to forget you’re in the middle of a city (and a particular city at that). It was opened in 2005, marking the 60th anniversary of the end of the War. Even more than the sensibility created by the memorial itself, I was struck by its location: about 100 yards from the Brandenburg Gate, the symbolic center of Berlin and another 100-200 yards from the German Bundestag/Parliament building.
This siting represents Germany’s decision to confront the worst episode in modern human history, perpetrated at its hand; rather than sweeping it under the rug or relegating such a memorial to the fringes of society both geographically and metaphorically. It’s true that there’s no particular connection between this site and the events of the Holocaust, but it’s message is moral, not historical. Commemorations at Dachau or other camps in Germany exist and are appropriate, but they’re often far from population centers and popular attention.
Whatever might be said about the morals of those Germans who created or participated in the Holocaust, we can respect the moral stance of those who pushed this memorial to the forefront of the German national awareness. It’s easy to blame the Germans, including more recent generations; and Americans are all too ready to point out the moral failings of others. By way of comparison, can you imagine the responses to a proposal to put a memorial to the European/American treatment of Native Americans over the past 500 years on the National Mall in Washington. It would never happen in this Administration, of course, but even under a more “enlightened” government, there would be quite a brouhaha. Of course there would be deniers and rejecters, but as troubling is the likely response of the majority who might accept theoretical societal responsibility, but would be “uncomfortable” with such a statement.
It would be easy to say:” Oh, that was those folks [i.e. the earlier generation who actually conducted the extermination]; that’s not us, we’re new and improved [Germans, Americans, etc.]” Indeed, there is something to be said about the limits to national characterization and holding a subsequent generation responsible for the “sins of the fathers.” But one of the most important and least discussed and least comfortable aspects of general reflections on the Holocaust is that the Germans (and their allies) who perpetrated these horrific deeds were NOT all that different from the rest of us. It’s too easy to carve them out as distinctively morally defective or evil, and avoid wrestling with the part of each of our human nature that is awful.
Part of the job of History is to insist that all aspects of human experience are kept available for view and to ensure that memory does not fall into mythology, nostalgia, or simplistic and white-washed stories of the past. We need to do this without imposing our moral judgement on the people and events of the past, and without falling into the parallel traps of blame/self-justification. The Berlin Jewish Holocaust Memorial is an important and effective step in this regard.
It is doubly significant that just a block away from this somber site is another location whose memorialization is of quite a different nature. It’s not featured on the tourist maps. There’s no staffed and well-presented information center. In fact there are no structures at all (although in well-bombed Berlin, this is hardly a distinction). There’s merely a medium-sized explanatory sign (in German and English). It’s the site of the Fuhrerbunker, the underground control center from which Hitler directed the last days of the War and in which he, Goebbels, and others ended their lives. It’s now a parking lot, surrounded by undistinguished apartment and office buildings.
In the immediate aftermath of the War, this part of Berlin was occupied by the Red Army and the remnants of the Fuhrerbunker were destroyed and plowed under. It’s a different way of dealing with horrific memory. All of the Allies, not just the Soviet Union which occupied this particular plot of land, were concerned to avoid any memorialization of Nazidom and this site is especially susceptible of being seen as a shrine to their fallen leader.
The story of how Germans have faced up to their Nazi past is a complex one, intertwined with guilt, denial, ideology, and the positioning of ex-Nazis in the heightening Cold War tensions of the 1950s and ‘60s. Officially banned on both sides , Nazi anti-Communism respectively exacerbated or ameliorated the status of ex-Nazis in the East and West. Large-scale and official recognition and responsibility for their actions did not begin until the 1970s and, one might say, could not be addressed on its own terms until Germany was reunited so that any statements could encompass all of Germany and without concern that positioning vis-à-vis that aspect of the past could no longer be used in Cold War propaganda jousting. As a result, the more fulsome recognition didn’t materialize until the 1990s and 2000s as the generation that come to political and cultural power could face these questions more squarely than their parents.
So, even as acknowledgement of the Nazi crimes became normalized, their continued exclusion from current political life ensured that their sites were carefully marginalized; of which the site in the heart of Berlin is clear evidence.
The juxtaposition of the two—in such close proximity—provides a stark illustration of the range of memory and the complexity of arranging memory and its management with the historians’ task of recollection end education. Regardless of what happened in the past, the construction of memory is always the responsibility of the present.
This siting represents Germany’s decision to confront the worst episode in modern human history, perpetrated at its hand; rather than sweeping it under the rug or relegating such a memorial to the fringes of society both geographically and metaphorically. It’s true that there’s no particular connection between this site and the events of the Holocaust, but it’s message is moral, not historical. Commemorations at Dachau or other camps in Germany exist and are appropriate, but they’re often far from population centers and popular attention.
Whatever might be said about the morals of those Germans who created or participated in the Holocaust, we can respect the moral stance of those who pushed this memorial to the forefront of the German national awareness. It’s easy to blame the Germans, including more recent generations; and Americans are all too ready to point out the moral failings of others. By way of comparison, can you imagine the responses to a proposal to put a memorial to the European/American treatment of Native Americans over the past 500 years on the National Mall in Washington. It would never happen in this Administration, of course, but even under a more “enlightened” government, there would be quite a brouhaha. Of course there would be deniers and rejecters, but as troubling is the likely response of the majority who might accept theoretical societal responsibility, but would be “uncomfortable” with such a statement.
It would be easy to say:” Oh, that was those folks [i.e. the earlier generation who actually conducted the extermination]; that’s not us, we’re new and improved [Germans, Americans, etc.]” Indeed, there is something to be said about the limits to national characterization and holding a subsequent generation responsible for the “sins of the fathers.” But one of the most important and least discussed and least comfortable aspects of general reflections on the Holocaust is that the Germans (and their allies) who perpetrated these horrific deeds were NOT all that different from the rest of us. It’s too easy to carve them out as distinctively morally defective or evil, and avoid wrestling with the part of each of our human nature that is awful.
Part of the job of History is to insist that all aspects of human experience are kept available for view and to ensure that memory does not fall into mythology, nostalgia, or simplistic and white-washed stories of the past. We need to do this without imposing our moral judgement on the people and events of the past, and without falling into the parallel traps of blame/self-justification. The Berlin Jewish Holocaust Memorial is an important and effective step in this regard.
It is doubly significant that just a block away from this somber site is another location whose memorialization is of quite a different nature. It’s not featured on the tourist maps. There’s no staffed and well-presented information center. In fact there are no structures at all (although in well-bombed Berlin, this is hardly a distinction). There’s merely a medium-sized explanatory sign (in German and English). It’s the site of the Fuhrerbunker, the underground control center from which Hitler directed the last days of the War and in which he, Goebbels, and others ended their lives. It’s now a parking lot, surrounded by undistinguished apartment and office buildings.
In the immediate aftermath of the War, this part of Berlin was occupied by the Red Army and the remnants of the Fuhrerbunker were destroyed and plowed under. It’s a different way of dealing with horrific memory. All of the Allies, not just the Soviet Union which occupied this particular plot of land, were concerned to avoid any memorialization of Nazidom and this site is especially susceptible of being seen as a shrine to their fallen leader.
The story of how Germans have faced up to their Nazi past is a complex one, intertwined with guilt, denial, ideology, and the positioning of ex-Nazis in the heightening Cold War tensions of the 1950s and ‘60s. Officially banned on both sides , Nazi anti-Communism respectively exacerbated or ameliorated the status of ex-Nazis in the East and West. Large-scale and official recognition and responsibility for their actions did not begin until the 1970s and, one might say, could not be addressed on its own terms until Germany was reunited so that any statements could encompass all of Germany and without concern that positioning vis-à-vis that aspect of the past could no longer be used in Cold War propaganda jousting. As a result, the more fulsome recognition didn’t materialize until the 1990s and 2000s as the generation that come to political and cultural power could face these questions more squarely than their parents.
So, even as acknowledgement of the Nazi crimes became normalized, their continued exclusion from current political life ensured that their sites were carefully marginalized; of which the site in the heart of Berlin is clear evidence.
The juxtaposition of the two—in such close proximity—provides a stark illustration of the range of memory and the complexity of arranging memory and its management with the historians’ task of recollection end education. Regardless of what happened in the past, the construction of memory is always the responsibility of the present.
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