Horst Hoheisel, 1993/94, proposal
for the Memorial to the Murdered
Jews of Europe | Picture: Horst
Hoheisel
There is a hierarchy of memorials in Berlin. For out in 1940/1941 in secret as what was known as a T4
instance, the Field of Stelae for the Murdered Jews action in six death camps in Germany. The Holocaust
of Europe by Peter Eisenman, the largest and most began with the murder of mentally ill and disabled
expensive memorial. However, the effects of the people, who were considered “unfit to live” by race
elements are now breaking up the memorial, because ideology.
no reinforcement was put in place when casting the
dark-grey stelae, which were built hollow with thin Over 300,000 people were initially murdered in
walls. It’s starting to break up and many stelae are the gas chambers, then through medication or
only held together by steel bands. starvation. These victims had no advocacy group.
They were forgotten, and their murder was often
A Holocaust Memorial that is destroying itself! A kept secret even in their families. To this day, there
symbolic problem of the German people? is still a taboo surrounding mental illnesses.
Closer to the Reichstag but much smaller than the
Field of Stelae lies Dani Karavan’s Memorial to
the Sinti and Roma Victims of National Socialism,
constructed much later. In Tiergarten, not far
from the Field of Stelae and closer to a stele in
formal terms, Elmgreen & Dragset have created the
Memorial to Homosexuals Persecuted Under National
The victims of
“euthanasia” are the
Holocaust’s forgotten
victims.
Socialism, which is smaller than the memorial for
the Sinti and Roma victims. However, there is a There has only been a memorial for them in Berlin
group of victims that has been forgotten in this since autumn 2014, marking the site of the former
succession of memorials established in the German mansion in Tiergartenstraße 4 where the mass
capital: the first victims of the Holocaust. The Nazis murder of mentally ill and disabled people was
used them to put to the test mass murder carried out planned, carried out and organised. After the war,
with gas. It started at the onset of the war in 1939 West Berlin built on this exact spot the Berlin
in Posen/Poznán, my place of birth, and was carried Philharmonic concert hall by the famous architect
52
Observing Memories
ISSUE 2