Throughout the course of this essay, we have encountered various arguments and problems that attest to the fact that when Germany began its push to erect a central, national Holocaust memorial in the early 1990s, it undertook an impossible mission. Whether it was the question of simply building a memorial, the question of what form the memorial would take, or the question of the effectiveness of such a project, the existence of so many different opinions guaranteed that there would be conflict, and the rationality and enthusiasm present on all sides of the debate ensured that very few people would change their minds.

 Many of the arguments that emerged in the early years of competition and debate would continue to plague the memorial even after the German parliament approved it and construction began, largely because each side used equally convincing arguments in so many cases. For instance, the very first opposition that the project encountered was that of Romani Rose, leader of the German gypsy community, and other Germans who disagreed with the choice to only include Jewish victims in the memorial, and not the gypsies, homosexuals, communists, disabled, mentally retarded, Freemasons, and all of the other groups that Hitler so systematically devastated.

However, as proponents of a memorial for Jewish victims argued, Jews did make up more than half of the Holocaust’s eleven million victims, and were the principal targets of Adolf Hitler’s racial ideology. If anyone had a claim to their own memorial, it was the Jewish community. Furthermore, to rebuff the Jews in such a sensitive and unpredictable political and social time period would have led to just as much opposition, especially from Lea Rosh and her two lobby groups, Perspective Berlin and the Sponsor Circle. Just one claim of anti-Semitism would have opened old and new wounds for a country that had been trying to heal for fifty years.

 The location of the memorial also led to considerable debate. The groups in support of the project were ecstatic when a prominent space in the middle of Berlin became available, and the fact that the memorial would literally sit atop the bunkers of Adolf Hitler and other former Nazis made it the perfect site. Moreover, the prominence of the site, which is between two of the prime symbols of a reunited Berlin, the Reichstag building and Potsdamer Platz, is fitting for a memorial of such magnitude. However, Katharina Kaiser and others warned that a memorial in this space would lead not only Germans, but also Jewish visitors to associate the Holocaust and all of its victims with Hitler alone, and not with all of the ordinary Germans, whose mass support aided the dictator in his rise to power.

 There was not only a dispute over the proposed site of the memorial, but indirectly over the other sites in Berlin that already remembered the Holocaust. Many argued that with the Topography of Terror, the Wannsee villa, the Sachsenhausen concentration camp, and dozens of other minor museums and memorials, Berlin did not need another, especially one as large and as prominent as this proposal called for. On the other hand, none of these sites was a universal site, none of them was a central, national place of remembrance, and many of them focused more on the Nazis’ crimes than on the Jewish victims. This memorial would be unique in its scope and in its purpose.

  The concept of memorials in general came under attack, especially in terms of portraying an event as horrible as the Holocaust. Michael Naumann was worried that a memorial would freeze memory and mark the Germans’ last, great contribution to remembering their troubled history. Young warned that such a memorial might actually contribute more to forgetting than to remembering, as it would shoulder the “memory-work” for its visitors, remaining to remember the victims while the visitors returned home and forgot about them. Naturally, proponents of the memorial had a reply to such criticisms, and their simple, yet powerful question left little room for an appropriate answer. Six million Jews were murdered, Ignatz Bubis reasons, “why should there not be a monument?”⁷⁸  It is a profound question, and it would require an even more profound response if one were to attempt to answer it. Furthermore, the great influence of Lea Rosh and Helmut Kohl, the former the most powerful figure in the German Jewish scene and the latter the most powerful in Germany, served to neutralize even the most compelling argument.

 One of the main arguments in the entire debate concerned the type of memorial that the Memorial to the Murdered Jews of Europe would actually be. The dangers of an abstract monument are already known, and these problems are what Naumann and Gerhard Schröder had in mind when they unveiled their alternative to Eisenman’s entry, an interactive project that would focus more on information and education than on abstract thoughts and feelings. Critics, however, noted that a museum and a memorial are two different things, and the information that such a center would contain was the same type of information that the concentration camps and their museums would have available. Germans would not have something new and innovative if they simply built a museum in the place of a memorial.

 The evidence for such division is in the winning entry itself. One side wanted an abstract memorial, the other favored a place of information, and the end result was a synthesis of both, a compromise that evidenced the refusal of either side to relent. The two groups had to meet directly in the middle if they were to ever succeed in erecting this memorial to the Jews.

  Then, of course, the sensitive questions pertaining to a reunited Germany and its relationship to its Nazi past are some of the most complicated of all. The complex issue of Vergangenheitsbewältigung makes every German decision involving past, present and future a potential quandary, and if the country leans too far in any direction, those in favor of the other directions will voice their objections. Every German attempt to assume a new place in the new Europe meets an accusation that the country wants to forget its Nazi past, and many attempts to reflect on and teach younger Germans about the past irritate those Germans who have heard enough about Hitler and the Nazis, and who simply want to look forward to Germany’s promising future. The memorial debate evoked the protests of people on both sides, as one group thought such an endeavor would draw a permanent line between the past and future, and the other believed that Eisenman II would never tie the German nation forever to its past.

 All of these arguments lead to the two most convincing examples of the difficulty that the Germans’ ambitious project posed. To begin with, no other major power had constructed a memorial or monument for the victims of its own crimes. The Germans, in attempting to honor the victims in the land of the perpetrators, undertook a unique project that had no basis for comparison, and no model to follow if they remained undecided. Every suggestion, every decision, and every result was something completely new. Germany was not able to learn from others’ mistakes, and therefore would inevitably make many of their own.

  Of course, the most obvious factor that makes remembrance such an impossible task is that memorials, and especially the Memorial to the Murdered Jews of Europe, can ultimately only hope to improve the present, and will never change the past. The memorial, like apologies or monetary reparations to the victims, is certainly an honorable effort, and reassures victims and their descendants that the Germans have learned their lesson and will vow to prevent genocide and mass murder in the future. Moreover, the debate on the memorial provided perhaps the most lasting and effective means of Holocaust remembrance in one of the world’s emerging superpowers. However, these measures will never compensate for the loss of six million lives and the destruction of six million futures, and no Holocaust memorial, regardless of location, ever will.
 
 
 

78 Alan Cowell, “Intellectuals criticize plan for Holocaust memorial,” The Oregonian (Portland, OR), 5 February 1998.