Categorías inductivas

This second sub-chapter is dedicated to the architectural and exhibition narrative of the JMB. As previously noted, the base of Libeskind’s building is ‘Absence’, thus this part thoroughly examines how this absence is perceived by visitors and how the concept of “perpetrators’ guilt”

113 _{Hansen-Glucklich, ‘Holocaust Memories,’ 40.} 114 _{Libeskind, The Space of Encounter, 23.} 115 _{Rotem, Constructing Memory, 146.}

116 _{Annette Seidel-Arpacı and Helmut Schmitz, ‘Introduction’ in Narratives of Trauma: Discourses of} German Wartime Suffering in National and International Perspective, eds. Annette Seidel-Arpacı and Helmut Schmitz, 2.

expands in the lower floors of Libeskind’s building. The permanent exhibition begins with the Holocaust in the lower and ground floors; from there, the history of Berlin Jews begins from the Middle Ages. Thus, the exhibition begins at the point of maximum destruction in order to affirm German Jewish identity despite the Shoah. With the JMB, Germany is embracing the perpetrators’ guilt narrative as the country that was responsible and allowed the genocide of over six million human beings. Starting the visit with the Holocaust is also the consequence of the German 1990s being a decade dedicated to Holocaust remembrance in German culture. After the 1990 reunification, the country was finally ready to fully face their participation to National Socialism.117 _{The ‘secondary suffering’ of German people analyzed by Schödel, was} repressed by the ’68 generation to rightfully give space to the Holocaust; it was in the 2000s that the question of German suffering and victimhood resurfaced.118 German suffering is important to understand the initial refusal of Nazi past and how Holocaust memory developed in Germany and in the JMB. Schmid writes that this suffering includes: ‘the expulsion of the German population from the Eastern territories, the bombing of major German cities, and the raping of German women after the invasion of the Red Army.’119 Today is generally recognized that the Holocaust and German suffering are not competing memories, but, as Schmid writes, that ‘German narratives of victimization are legitimate as long as the German responsibility for the outbreak of World War Two and the Holocaust is accepted.’120

As Arnold-de-Simine argues, in visiting memorial museums, ‘empathy is seen either as a prerequisite or as an outcome.’121 Before the permanent collection was opened in 2001, studies with the public showed how visitors wanted to have an historical exhibition engaging with the German past, but not pointing fingers and making them feel personally guilty.122 As Hansen-Glucklich argues, the exhibition designers ‘have been careful not to reduce the German Jewish experience to persecution and to avoid giving the impression that the museum is a frightening, negative, or guilt-inducing place for non-Jewish German visitors.’123 In order to connect with both a Jewish and non-Jewish German public, the curators made two choices:

117 _{Ibid., 1.}

118 _{Kathrin Schödel “‘Secondary Suffering’ and Victimhood: The ‘Other’ of German Identity in}

Bernhard Schlink’s ‘Die Beschneidung’ and Maxim Biller’s ‘Harlem Holocaust,’ in Germans as Victims in the Literary Fiction of the Berlin Republic, ed. Stuart Taberner and Karina Berger, 219.

119 _{Ulrich Schmid, ‘Nation and Emotion: The Competition for Victimhood in Europe,’ in Melodrama} After the Tears: New Perspectives on the Politics of Victimhood eds. Scott Loren and Jörg

Metelmann, 290.

120 _Ibid.

121 _{Arnold-de-Simine, Mediating Memory in the Museum, 42.} 122 _{Cox in Rotem, Constructing Memory, 143.}

first, in the Holocaust-dedicated part, to follow Libeskind’s design built according to his own Jewishness and Holocaust memory and thus focus on the Jewish experience of the Holocaust, not discussing in depth German ‘perpetratorship’, but showing stories of Jewish people and their struggles. His building wants to show visitors the three tough paths that Jews were forced to take in WWII. Secondly, by making the old permanent exhibition a celebration of Jewish- German culture, the JMB aimed to show how essential Jews were for Germany throughout history.

The climate in the Holocaust floors is not controlled; therefore, it changes with each room and each season: it can be very cold or very warm especially in the voids.124 _{The first} axis on the right side of the building is the Axis of Exile, once called the Axis of Emigration. The corridor is filled with objects that relate to the Jewish emigration away from Germany, and names of cities where Jews were forced to flee to after 1933, when the Nazis seized power in the country. Legal antisemitism brought the German population to boycott Jewish businesses, therefore many Jews emigrated.125 Personal memorabilia of immigrants are displayed in order to empathize with victims. As Hansen-Glucklich points out:

‘Axis of Exile, for example, an emigration pack containing works of Goethe and Gabriele Reuter, which a German Jew took with him to the Promised Land, is displayed is a glass case. These books testify to the bond that German Jews felt with German culture even when forced to leave their homes (an aspect of resonance that contributes to the Jewish Museum's overall narrative of a long and often mutually beneficial relationship between German Jews and Germany).’126

The JMB’s narrative creates a strong link between Germany and Jews, showing that they were an invaluable part of the Nation’s culture. However, while it reflects on antisemitism during the Second World War, it does not explore how deeply rooted it was in Germany and Europe already from Medieval times and Romantic period.127 Therefore, if visitors do not know that antisemitism was already a known issue in the country, they would end up thinking it was only a twentieth century problem, and that before then, Jews were living in German land without discrimination.

124 _{‘Libeskind Building,’ Jewish Museum Berlin, Accessed March 2019,}

https://www.jmberlin.de/en/libeskind-building.

125 _{Information from JMB audio guide.}

126 _{Hansen-Glucklich, ‘Holocaust Memories,’ 122.}

The audio guide also focuses on personal stories of Holocaust survivors. As the narrative of the Axis progresses towards salvation in a foreign land, the floor starts to rise: the journey to exile is a very challenging one, between financial difficulties128 and leaving home for the unknown, Jews struggled to leave Germany behind. For this reason, Libeskind created an ascending path, but it offers hope.

At the end of the Axis of Exile, the visitor leaves the building to enter the Garden of Exile. Libeskind writes how he wanted to create a sense of disorientation, of being uncomfortable because that feeling is exile.129 _{It is a symbolic garden with a tilted floor and it} is a perfect square, walking through the garden creates confusion and dizziness in the visitors because of the uneven floor and the different height of the pillars. Robert Mugerauer argues that the environment of the garden triggers and connects the haptic and visual dimensions.130 The garden represents the dichotomy between uncertainty and rescue. 49 concrete pillars tilted at 12° symbolize ‘the total instability and lack of orientation experienced by those driven out of Germany.’131 Here, Libeskind connects Israel and Germany by filling 48 pillars with earth from Berlin, and the last one with soil from Jerusalem. This way, the architect relates 1948, the year when the State of Israel was founded, with the history of Berlin. He also planted olive willows in every pillar because these trees are a symbol of hope and renewal.132 Mugerauer further argues how this is ‘the only outdoor space to be experienced, […] and the only geometrically ordered space in the project. After moving around a bit in the space, you realize that you need to go back inside through the same door and then back along the axis in reverse, back to the main intersection’s crossroads.’133

The second axis is the Axis of the Holocaust; a series of personal objects such as letters and family photos are displayed, many letters mention the final trips to concentration camps as a ‘journey’, unaware of what they were going to face. The names of concentration camps are written on the walls. Libeskind built this path to become narrower and narrower as the floor rises and the ceiling remains at the same height creating an increasingly claustrophobic and dark corridor that end with a big iron door. Through it, visitors can access the Holocaust Tower, also called the Voided Void, where the public can feel Absence more than anywhere else. The

128 _{The Nazis robbed Jews from most of their valuable property, and without financial resources many}

countries did not accept them.

129 _{Libeskind, The Space of Encounter, 115.}

130 _{Robert Mugerauer, ‘Art, Architecture, Violence: Daniel Libeskind’s Jewish Museum Berlin’ in} Responding to Loss: Heideggerian Reflections on Literature, Architecture, and Film, 84.

131 _{Rotem, Constructing Memory, 147.} 132 _Ibid.

building is ‘an isolated building splinter whose sole connection to the Libeskind building is underground.’134 The walls are extremely high (24 meters) and made of concrete: the only light comes from a thin slit. This space makes the destruction of Jews and the memory of the Shoah especially tangible (Fig.10). As Murgerauer writes, ‘you feel small and alone, even when there are others there, because of the unusual severity of the space - intimidatingly large and confined all at once - and the silence.’135 Libeskind uses sharp lines to highlight the harshness of the space. The tower is a symbol of the ability of the abstract architecture of Libeskind to convey a message, in this case a message of hopelessness and anxiety, and it is empty, it does not contain or need any exhibit as it speaks for itself.

Then, the visitor goes back to go through the Axis of Continuity and enter the permanent collection. This is the longest axis and it is intersected by the other axes; Libeskind designed them as communicating as they all connect or meet as some point: mass murder and survival, exile and continuity, hope and death. The Axis of Continuity leads visitors to the Sackler staircase, which consists of 90 steps that lead visitors to the ground floor and light, but it is very straight and does not change direction, therefore it feels like a journey to the day, to safety. The last steps of the ladder do not lead to a big first room of the museum, but they lead visitors in front of a big white wall. The architect defines it as a symbol of history, because we cannot know what the future holds. He wanted to avoid a moment of epiphany at the end of the Shoah-dedicated lower floor and raise questions with a more subtle lateral entrance to the exhibition. The staircase shows us that there is not only a past, but there is a present and a future, there is hope in Berlin, even after the devastating event of the Holocaust and the consequences of it.

While the permanent exhibition of the JMB is currently under renovation, the ground floor with the Eric F. Ross Gallery and the Memory Void exhibit is still open to the public. The Memory Void is not left empty like the other voids in the museum, but it hosts the walk-in installation “Shalekhet” (Fallen Leaves) made by the Israeli artist Menashe Kadishman to commemorate the victims of the Shoah.136 The exhibit consists of 10.000 iron faces that cover the floor. Visitors are invited to carefully enter the void and step on the metal (Fig.11). They cover the floor like autumn leaves, however they do not fall silently, instead they make an unsettling loud metallic noise that resonates throughout the tall concrete walls. If visitors take

134 _{‘Libeskind Building,’ Jewish Museum Berlin, Accessed March 2019,}

https://www.jmberlin.de/en/libeskind-building.

135 _{Mugerauer, ‘Art, Architecture, Violence,’ 82.}

136 _{‘Fallen Leaves,’ Jewish Museum Berlin, Accessed March 22, 2019,}

a closer look, the iron faces that seemed to be all the same, will now appear all different. This shows how unthinkable it is for humans to imagine a number as high as 6 million individual people being murdered; what seems to be a mass of the same faces, is instead a pile of 10.000 singular victims. Kadishman’s installation does not want to accuse, he wants to make tangible what is lost: every single victim of the Shoah was someone, and their death should never be forgotten. Saindon analyses ‘Fallen Leaves’ using Foucault’s concept of ‘Heterotopia’ to apply it to the JMB. He writes that the iron faces are ‘anonymous faces’,137 however, even if they appear to be such at first, they are revealed to be different which is an important part of Kadishman’s exhibit. Saindon further argues that the installation ‘produces a rhetorical slippage between the Holocaust, understood as a particularly German and Jewish historical phenomenon, and a more generic understanding of perpetrator and victim relations.’138 The dedication to other victims does not take away from the Holocaust focus, but ‘it “doubles’’ its memorial function while maintaining the singularity of the experience of the Holocaust as a devastating event in German-Jewish relations worthy of primary consideration.’139 Stepping on the faces is seen by Saidon as a perpetration of violence, as the metallic noise resembles the ones of forced labor camps. By opening up the Holocaust memorial to other kinds of violence, the artist creates a personal connection with every visitor, even the ones who do not directly relate to the Shoah.

As this exhibit ends the tour of the JMB during these years when the permanent exhibition is closed, there is a strong link with Yad Vashem’s last room of the Holocaust Museum: the Hall of Names. One of the aims of both Holocaust museums is to highlight the importance of not generalizing the victims of the Holocaust as a crowd of people, but to put names and faces to them in order to commemorate and prevent a horrible genocide like the Shoah from ever happening again. Kadishman in fact dedicated his installation first to the Holocaust victims, but also to every victim of war and violence in the world, spreading a message of compassion and tolerance.

The perpetrators’ narrative adopted by Germany is a painful one to embody: in fact other countries in Europe struggle to accept their role as perpetrators. For instance, Hansen- Glucklich points out how the older generations in Hungary and Poland refuse to acknowledge the guilt of their own people’s involvement in the Holocaust as they tell a narrative in which

137 _{Saindon, ‘A Doubled Heterotopia,’ 39.} 138 _Ibid.

the enemy is always the German Nazis.140 This is a problematic approach to history and the new generations are trying to change this by recognizing that it was the Hungarians and Polish too who shot their own people. Older generations still have this notion of ‘the other’ who did it, while the younger generations are ready to face a more truthful history. This ‘otherization’ of the persecutors is a part of the memory-trauma process that has to overcome different kinds of resistance before the true, but more painful, narrative is accepted. This process becomes even longer in Poland and Hungary since the popularity of right-wing parties is increasing. Therefore, there is a contrast between people of younger generations trying to acknowledge the Polish and Hungarian role in the Holocaust, and the rising nationalism in both countries. Poland and Hungary deal with the concept of double victimhood, victims of Nazism and of the Russians, which brought to a denial of ‘perpetratorship’ that is hard to overcome. This is further explored in Chapter III.