Holocaust Denkmal (Holocaust Memorial), Berlin (must see)

Officially the Memorial to the Murdered Jews of Europe, this striking sprawl of concrete near the Brandenburg Gate serves as a powerful symbol of remembrance for the individuals who fell victim to the Nazis between 1933 and 1945.

Unveiled to the public in 2005, the memorial was designed by American architect Peter Eisenman. It comprises over 2,700 concrete slabs of varying heights and sizes, arranged in a grid-like formation across a gently sloping terrain of some 19,000 square meters.

The memorial aims to evoke an uneasy, confusing atmosphere that represents a supposedly ordered system losing touch with human reason. The abstract design has no symbolic significance, according to Eisenman, yet it resembles a cemetery, creating room for various interpretations. Some see it as a graveyard for those unburied or thrown into unmarked pits, while others suggest it represents the rigid bureaucratic order that enabled the Holocaust.

The memorial’s layout creates feelings of isolation and entrapment. As visitors move through the concrete slabs, the space shifts, evoking the loss of identity and forced segregation experienced by Jews during the Nazi regime. The downward slope into the memorial, where slabs grow taller and block out the view of Berlin, symbolizes the gradual escalation of the Third Reich's persecution.

The unfinished appearance of some structures is seen as a reminder that the process of remembering the Holocaust is ongoing. Some interpret the spatial separation of blocks as representing the incomplete nature of memory. Overall, the memorial denies any sense of collectivity, reflecting individual and societal responsibility for the past, while the surrounding trees and city borders evoke feelings of entrapment, symbolizing the isolation faced by Jews during the Holocaust.