Berlin's moral maze is 'living tribute' to Jews

By Kate Connolly
(Filed: 11/05/2005)


It is the size of three football pitches, built in a concrete that should last 1,000 years or more and is believed to be the biggest memorial erected in a country to the victims of its own barbarous acts.

If ever Germany had wanted to prove to the world that it would never forget its crimes towards Europe's Jews, its first national Holocaust Memorial to the six million who were murdered by the Nazis is a fitting gesture.

Yesterday the £20 million monument by Peter Eisenman, the New York architect, was opened in a state ceremony attended by dignitaries and Jewish leaders, ending decades of anguished debate about what - if anything - could possibly sum up Germany's guilt for its crimes in physical terms.

Situated in the heart of Berlin, and symbolically placed over the sites where Hitler and Goebbels' bunkers lay, thus sealing them shut forever, it comprises of 2,711 grey pillars of concrete of differing heights, which from a distance resemble a field of undulating grave stones; from up close, a disorienting maze.
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