I also started reading a book that my mother always had in her library called Man's Search for Meaning by Viktor Frankl.I haven't finished this book,yet, but I'm sure it will inspire me to find meaning in what I saw here.
My sister and I had decided to walk to the Brandenburg gate from our hotel. It was in the late afternoon of our second day in Berlin. We passed a whole block filled with concrete slabs just as it was getting dark. The lights of the surrounding town were just coming on and the darkness was settling into this memorial like a shroud. It was very cold.
This was the Memorial to the Murdered Jews of Europe.
This was, and is, a very controversial memorial and seems to be criticized most by the Jewish community. Still, it produces this amazing combination of sadness, evil and ghostly remembrances that represent, as the architect Peter Eisenman said "... a supposedly ordered system that has lost touch with human reason."
It is interesting to note that the fastest growing population in Germany today is the Jewish immigrant. Go to this link to learn more about the Memorial.
" We have come to know Man as he really is. After all, man is that being who invented the gas chambers of Auschwitz; however, he is also that being who entered those gas chambers upright, with the Lord's Prayer or the Shema Yisrael on his lips." ~Viktor E. Frankl~
wow this had to be powerful and moving....the holocaust museum in DC floored me...this reminds me a bit of the oklahoma city memorial...it has chairs for those killed in the bombing...
ReplyDeleteA very moving post. This is a very unusual memorial but very meaningful. Have a blessed day. Madeline
ReplyDeleteYou have described it very well. I can sense the collossal greif here.
ReplyDeleteNo matter what, people need to be reminded again and again of these parts of history. I'd never heard of this one before. I like the quote at the end of your post very much, reminding us of the struggle between good and evil in every human being.
Berlin is an interesting city, last time we were there "The Wall" was still up & there were guards in the towers, barbed wire everywhere in E. Berlin and all the buildings facing the wall were boarded up & abandoned. There was a museum at The Wall with the current history of all the ways people had tried to escape from E.Germany, The Wall was covered in crosses and other memorials to those who died in the effort to escape. We could see into E.Berlin from our hotel window.
ReplyDeleteWe visited Auswich and Dachau with our sons, I think I had nightmares for weeks after. I will NEVER forget the horror of seeing it all and now we have a new horror, the senseless slaughter of more innocents last week.
God have mercy.
Thought provoking post...and wondrous photos.
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