Holocaust memorial with ‘victim ashes’ erected in Berlin

Times of News

7 years ago

An art installation that claims to contain the ashes of Nazi victims appeared outside Germany’s parliament on Monday.

The memorial is part of a new campaign launched by art-activist collective Zentrum für Politische Schönheit (Center for Political Beauty) called “Come look for us!”

The group says it spent two years digging up soil and testing rivers near areas where the “Nazis perfected and industrialized mass murder.”

“At one of the horrific sites we found ashes and bone char a meter deep. This column contains the sample from this soil that has been preserved for all eternity.”

Dubbed the “Resistance Column,” the solemn gray cylinder is partly illuminated from the inside with an orange light — giving viewers a chance to look at the soil sample contained inside.

Defending against criticism about desecrating human remains, the group said in a statement: “There were no graves where we sampled the soil.”

Read more: German Holocaust victims’ group loses charity status

The column contains a drill sample that allegedly contains the ashes and bone fragments of those who lost their lives in the Holocaust

A message to Merkel’s conservatives

Although the activist artists say the memorial is to remember Holocaust victims — it’s also intended to send a message to German Chancellor Angela Merkel’s conservatives about the dangers of working with the far-right Alternative for Germany (AfD).

“The only likely path to power for the AfD is through the conservatives,” the Center for Political Beauty said.

Merkel’s center-right Christian Democrats (CDU) and their Bavarian sister party the Christian Social Union (CSU) have ruled out working with the far-right on a national and state-wide level.

At the local level, however, the success of the AfD has led some CDU politicians to team up with the far-right. Recently, a group of CDU politicians in the eastern state of Thuringia called for talks with “all democratically elected parties.”

The Center for Political Beauty said it picked the location for its Holocaust memorial carefully. Located between the Bundestag and the chancellery, the artwork stands where the Kroll Opera House once stood — the site where German members of parliament gave dictator Adolf Hitler virtually unlimited authority in 1933.

‘Never Again’: Memorials of the Holocaust

Dachau

The Nazi regime opened the first concentration camp in Dauchau, not far from Munich. Just a few weeks after Adolf Hitler came to power it was used by the paramilitary SS “Schutzstaffel” to imprison, torture and kill political opponents to the regime. Dachau also served as a prototype and model for the other Nazi camps that followed.

‘Never Again’: Memorials of the Holocaust

Wannsee House

The villa on Berlin’s Wannsee lake was pivotal in planning the Holocaust. Fifteen members of the Nazi government and the SS Schutzstaffel met here on January 20, 1942 to plan what became known as the “Final Solution,” the deportation and extermination of all Jews in German-occupied territory. In 1992, the villa where the Wannsee Conference was held was turned into a memorial and museum.

‘Never Again’: Memorials of the Holocaust

Bergen-Belsen

The Bergen-Belsen concentration camp in Lower Saxony was initially established as a prisoner of war camp before becoming a concentration camp. Prisoners too sick to work were brought here from other concentration camps, so many also died of disease. One of the 50,000 killed here was Anne Frank, a Jewish girl who gained international fame posthumously after her diary was published.

‘Never Again’: Memorials of the Holocaust

Buchenwald Memorial

Buchenwald near the Thuringian town of Weimar was one of the largest concentration camps in Germany. From 1937 to April 1945, the National Socialists deported about 270,000 people from all over Europe here and murdered 64,000 of them.

‘Never Again’: Memorials of the Holocaust

Nazi party rally grounds

Nuremberg hosted the biggest Nazi party propaganda rallies from 1933 until the start of the Second World War. The annual Nazi party congress as well as rallies with as many as 200,000 participants took place on the 11-km² (4.25 square miles) area. Today, the unfinished Congress Hall building serves as a documentation center and a museum.

‘Never Again’: Memorials of the Holocaust

Memorial to the German Resistance

The Bendlerblock building in Berlin was the headquarters of a military resistance group. On July 20, 1944, a group of Wehrmacht officers around Colonel Claus von Stauffenberg carried out an assassination attempt on Adolf Hitler that failed. The leaders of the conspiracy were summarily shot the same night in the courtyard of the Bendlerblock, which is today the German Resistance Memorial Center.

‘Never Again’: Memorials of the Holocaust

Hadamar Euthanasia Center

From 1941 people with physical and mental disabilities were killed at a psychiatric hospital in Hadamar in Hesse. Declared “undesirables” by the Nazis, some 15,000 people were murdered here by asphyxiation with carbon monoxide or by being injected with lethal drug overdoses. Across Germany some 70,000 were killed as part of the Nazi euthanasia program. Today Hadamar is a memorial to those victims.

‘Never Again’: Memorials of the Holocaust

Holocaust Memorial

Located next to the Brandenburg Gate, Berlin’s Memorial to the Murdered Jews of Europe was inaugurated sixty years after the end of World War II on May 10, 2005, and opened to the public two days later. Architect Peter Eisenman created a field with 2,711 concrete slabs. An attached underground “Place of Information” holds the names of all known Jewish Holocaust victims.

‘Never Again’: Memorials of the Holocaust

Memorial to persecuted homosexuals

Not too far from the Memorial to the Murdered Jews of Europe, another concrete memorial honors the thousands of homosexuals persecuted by the Nazis between 1933 and 1945. The four-meter high monument, which has a window showing alternately a film of two men or two women kissing, was inaugurated in Berlin’s Tiergarten on May 27, 2008.

‘Never Again’: Memorials of the Holocaust

Sinti and Roma Memorial

Opposite the Reichstag parliament building in Berlin, a park inaugurated in 2012 serves as a memorial to the 500,000 Sinti and Roma people killed by the Nazi regime. Around a memorial pool the poem “Auschwitz” by Roma poet Santino Spinelli is written in English, Germany and Romani: “gaunt face, dead eyes, cold lips, quiet, a broken heart, out of breath, without words, no tears.”

‘Never Again’: Memorials of the Holocaust

‘Stolpersteine’ – stumbling blocks as memorials

In the 1990s, the artist Gunther Demnig began a project to confront Germany’s Nazi past. Brass-covered concrete cubes placed in front of the former houses of Nazi victims, provide details about the people and their date of deportation and death, if known. More than 45,000 “Stolpersteine” have been laid in 18 countries in Europe – it’s the world’s largest decentralized Holocaust memorial.

‘Never Again’: Memorials of the Holocaust

Brown House in Munich

Right next to the “Führerbau” where Adolf Hitler had his office, was the headquarters of the Nazi Party in Germany, in the “Brown House” in Munich. A white cube now occupies its former location. A new “Documentation Center for the History of National Socialism” opened on April 30, 2015, 70 years after the liberation from the Nazi regime, uncovering further dark chapters of history.

Author: Max Zander, Ille Simon

Searching for remains

The Center for Political Beauty said it collected over 240 samples from 23 locations across Germany as well as in previously Nazi-occupied areas in Poland and Ukraine.

Lab results found traces of human remains in over 70% of the samples, the group said in a statement.

The samples were taken from areas near Auschwitz, Sobibor, Treblinka and other sites of Nazi German concentration camps where the ashes and remains of victims were spread in nearby fields and rivers.

At Auschwitz-Birkenau, the largest Nazi death camp, over 1.1 million victims — including some 1 million Jewish prisoners — were killed. The ashes of hundreds of thousands of bodies were disposed of in the lakes and grounds surrounding the camp.

The artists’ collective is known for its headline-grabbing protest pieces — particularly for setting up a replica of Berlin’s Holocaust memorial outside the house of AfD politician Björn Höcke in 2017.

Earlier that year Höcke dubbed the memorial in Berlin as a “monument of shame” and has called for a reversal of Germany’s culture of remembrance surrounding the Holocaust.

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Jewish memorials in Berlin

The Holocaust Memorial

A huge field of stelae in the center of the German capital was designed by New York architect Peter Eisenmann. The almost 3,000 stone blocks commemorate the six million Jewish people from all over Europe who were murdered by the National Socialists.

Jewish memorials in Berlin

The “Stumbling Stones”

Designed by German artist Gunther Demnig, these brass plates are very small — only 10 by 10 centimeters (3.9 x 3.9 inches). The stumbling stones mark the homes and offices from which people were deported by the Nazis. More than 7,000 of them have been placed across Berlin, 70,000 across Europe, and in 2017 the first stones were also laid in outside Europe, in Buenos Aires.

Jewish memorials in Berlin

The Wannsee Conference House

Fifteen high-ranking Nazi officials met in this villa on the Wannsee Lake on January 20, 1942 to discuss the systematic murder of European Jews, which they termed the “Final Solution to the Jewish Question”. Today the house is a memorial that informs visitors about the unimaginable dimension of the genocide that was decided here.

Jewish memorials in Berlin

Track 17 Memorial

White roses on track 17 at Grunewald station remember the more than 50,000 Berlin Jews who were sent to their deaths from here. 186 steel plates show the date, destination and number of deportees. The first train went to the Litzmannstadt ghetto (Lodz, Poland) on October 18, 1941; the last train to the Sachsenhausen concentration camp on January 5, 1945.

Jewish memorials in Berlin

Otto Weidt’s Workshop for the Blind

Today, the Hackesche Höfe in Berlin Mitte are mentioned in every travel guide. They are a backyard labyrinth in which many Jewish people lived and worked — for example in the brush factory of the German entrepreneur Otto Weidt. During the Nazi era he employed many blind and deaf Jews and saved them from deportation and death. The workshop of the blind is now a museum.

Jewish memorials in Berlin

Fashion Center Hausvogteiplatz

The heart of Berlin’s fashion metropolis once beat here. A memorial sign made of high mirrors recalls the Jewish fashion designers and stylists who made clothes for the whole of Europe at Hausvogteiplatz. The National Socialists expropriated the Jewish owners and handed over the fashion stores to Aryan employees. Berlin’s fashion center was irretrievably destroyed during the Second World War.

Jewish memorials in Berlin

Memorial at Koppenplatz

Before the Holocaust, 173,000 Jews lived in Berlin; in 1945 there were only 9,000. The monument “Der verlassene Raum” (The Deserted Room) is located in the middle of the Koppenplatz residential area in Berlin’s Mitte district. It is a reminder of the Jewish citizens who were taken from their homes without warning and never returned.

Jewish memorials in Berlin

The Jewish Museum

Architect Daniel Libeskind chose a dramatic design: viewed from above, the building looks like a broken Star of David. The Jewish Museum is one of the most visited museums in Berlin, offering an overview of the turbulent centuries of German Jewish history.

Jewish memorials in Berlin

Weissensee Jewish Cemetery

There are still eight remaining Jewish cemeteries in Berlin, the largest of them in the Weissensee district. With over 115,000 graves, it is the largest Jewish cemetery in Europe. Many persecuted Jews hid in the complex premises during the Nazi era. On May 11, 1945, only three days after the end of the Second World War, the first postwar Jewish funeral service was held here.

Jewish memorials in Berlin

The New Synagogue

When the New Synagogue on Oranienburger Strasse was first consecrated in 1866 it was considered the largest and most magnificent synagogue in Germany. The only one of Berlin’s 13 synagogues to survive the Kristallnacht pogroms, it later burned down due to Allied bombs. It was reconstructed and opened again in 1995. Since then, the 50-meter-high golden dome once again dominates Berlin’s cityscape.

Author: Kerstin Schmidt