I had mixed feelings about the Jewish Museum in Berlin. On one hand, I thought that the symbolism of the building’s architecture was very powerful. I loved the courtyard that was built to look like a sukkah or chuppah, and how it was such a subtle resemblance that only a Jewish person would make the association. I also thought the outdoor area at the end of the “emigration tunnel” was highly thought-provoking. Its rows of tall columns evoked the Memorial to the Murdered Jews of Europe, but the distorted perspective that it created made it all the more relevant to Jews of the diaspora. Finally, I found the Holocaust Tower to be one of the most moving experiences of the trip. In the eerie darkness and silence, with the unreachable ladder and sliver of light, I couldn’t stop thinking about how trapped and hopeless the victims of the Holocaust must have felt.
On the other hand, there were some aspects of the museum that I really didn’t care for. I was confused by the art installation in which the visitor could walk on the metal faces representing the many thousands of victims of genocide. I felt disrespectful doing this and didn’t understand how the piece was meant to be in honor of these people. I also didn’t like the exhibition about the A-Zs of contemporary Jewish life. It didn’t seem like a lot of thought had been put into it, and the curators clearly struggled to come up with something meaningful for some of the letters of the alphabet. As someone who works in a museum, I thought of many different concepts for exhibitions that they could have presented instead to show the vibrancy of Jewish life in today’s world.
All in all, I’m glad we visited the museum but it was one of several instances on this trip that made me realize that Germany still does not completely understand its Jewish citizens and how to properly memorialize the horrors that have been inflicted on them here.
Elana Hain lives in Washington, DC.