Memory and Mourning in Berlin: on Peter Eisenman's Holocaust-Mahnmal (2005)

In the heart of Berlin, on what was once the Ministergärten, now stands a memorial so gigantic and abstract that it demands not simply notice but also interpretation as metaphor, especially because it lacks signage. The work, by American-Jewish architect Peter Eisenman, was commissioned to commemorate genocide. It is the Denkmal für die ermordeten Juden Europas, or Memorial to the Murdered Jews of Europe, there to honor the Jeww--between five and six million--ho at the hands of Nazis and their allies, in Germany and elsewhere, suffered death in the "Holocaust" of 1933-1945.