Walking down a narrow passage over undulating ground, you find yourself alone, immersed in waves of cement slabs. You see nothing but cold concrete blocks and it seems the distant sky above is the only way out. Suddenly, you catch a glimpse of someone appearing from behind one of the blocks and disappearing behind another. It's hard to escape the feeling of isolation.
The silence arouses a sense of despair, a distant and much-diminished echo of what was endured by persecuted Jews during the 12-year reign of the Nazis.
For most tourists visiting Berlin this year, the completion of the Holocaust Memorial, Germany's first official memorial dedicated to all murdered Jews of Europe, offers an opportunity to review a terrible warning in modern history: the story of the Nazis.
PHOTOS: CHIU YU-TZU, TAIPEI TIMES
Although today's Federal Republic of Germany has nothing in common with the Third Reich, a new wave of controversial discussions about Germany's "unresolved past" took place in 1988, when German journalist Lea Rosh first proposed the memorial. Seventeen years later, the monument to the mur-dered Jews of Europe finally a couple of months ago in Berlin. The fenceless open area covering the space of about three football fields was once heavily used by high-ranking Nazis.
Reflection
For some Taiwanese people, the Holocaust Memorial offers a chance to reflect on Taiwan's own unresolved past, specifically the poignant history surrounding the 228 Incident and the White Terror -- the brutal military crackdown begun in 1947 that resulted in the slaughter of thousands of innocent Taiwanese, from the intellectual elite to lay people, at the hands of Chiang Kai-shek's (
The shadow of these events on the minds of the Taiwanese people could be similar to the holocaust for the Jewish people. Since the end of World War II it has taken Germany six decades to open its first official Jewish holocaust memorial. It was not until the 1950s and 1960s that the voice of young generations became stronger, demanding that German people to face up to the crimes of the Nazis.
In Taiwan, however, historical responsibility remains unaccepted and the crime has yet to be fully acknowledged.
"It's a pity perpetrators now still defend themselves and attribute what they did to past postures on political affairs," said Taiwan's representative to Germany, Shieh Jhy-wey (
Germany's self-understanding
The Nazis' systematic murder of 6 million Jews -- including 1.4 million children -- as well as other atrocities still affects German society. On May 12, the field of 2,711 stone slabs near the Brandenburg Gate, Germany's national symbol, was first opened to the public.
Its location in the heart of Berlin -- near the US Embassy, various cultural institutions, businesses, schools, federal structures, apartments, and the city's park, the Tiergarten -- expresses the memorial's public character. Its integration into the historic urban space of the parliament and government district highlights the fact that the memorial is directed toward building a civil society.
Since the public inauguration, the field has been visited by a range of people, including ruminating seniors, curious visitors, noisy teenagers jumping from stele to stele, and kids playing hide-and-seek.
The memorial was planned by New York architect Peter Eisenman, whose radical design does not use any direct symbolism. Even the number of stelae is of no significant relation to the number of victims.
The grid of concrete blocks can be walked through from all sides, leaving it up to visitors to find their own way in and out of the complex. The waterproof stelae are made of high-quality concrete, each 0.95m wide and 2.38m long. They are hollow and tilted in slightly different ways. Looking far into the distance, the stelae are like waves. The field could be an ocean of cold terror.
"When you walk into the middle of the field, where stelae are higher than you, you cannot see buildings around anymore. The city of Berlin disappears and it's quiet like a death room. The distance between stelae allows only one person passing at one time. You walk by yourself. You are sort of in despair," said Ralf Oberndorfer, an interpreter working at the information center.
Before the two-year construction of the memorial, there had been a long discussion of an idea brought up in 1988 by Rosh, who called for a "high-profile memorial."
The planned memorial, which would cost 27.6 million euros (US$33.4 million), was mired in controversy for more than a decade.
For example, the company that developed anti-graffiti chemicals for the monument, Degussa, was under the parent company of Degesch, which manufactured the lethal gas Zyklon B -- the gas that the Nazis used in the "shower" rooms in places like Auschwitz.
"Since there's no piece of German society that doesn't have connections of the Nazis, we cannot build a monument of innocence," Oberndorfer said -- although in the end the chemicals were not applied.
"Every German family has some linkage with the Nazis. But you have to cope with yourself. It's like you prepare for a marathon. You have to do at least a little bit everyday," said Oberndorfer, whose grandfather worked for the Nazis.
Teach your children well
Jenny Onochie, a mother of two, said that she was shocked when listening to a survivor of the holocaust who spoke in one of her classes when she was a teenager. Now she always tries to come up with better ways to appropriately explain this part of Germany's history to her children.
"You cannot have a future without looking back [at] your history," Onochie said.
Germany has paid billions of dollars in compensation to Holocaust survivors since the end of World War II. It has also taken in displaced Jews from the former Soviet Union and other countries, and financially supported victims.
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