Memorial to the Murdered Jews of Europe

Why is it significant?

Step off the sidewalk into one of the narrow corridors between these gray concrete slabs and walk slowly toward the center.

Key Facts

Open the walk

Step off the sidewalk into one of the narrow corridors between these gray concrete slabs and walk slowly toward the center. Notice how the ground beneath your feet gently undulates and drops, while the concrete pillars rise higher and higher around you, blotting out the sounds and sights of the city. You have entered Peter Eisenman's Memorial to the Murdered Jews of Europe.

Unveiled in May two thousand and five, this somber memorial spans four and a half acres and contains exactly two thousand seven hundred and eleven concrete slabs, known as stelae. Eisenman deliberately gave no plaques or names to the individual stones. The disorienting, claustrophobic grid is designed to evoke a visceral sense of isolation, loss of order, and the incomprehensible scale of the Holocaust, during which six million European Jews were murdered by the Nazi regime.

Look closely at the surface of the stelae: they are treated with a special anti-graffiti coating. In an ironic twist of history, the chemical company that produced the coating, Degussa, was revealed during construction to have been the parent company of Degesch, which manufactured the Zyklon B gas used in Nazi extermination camps during World War Two. After agonizing debate, survivor organizations chose to proceed, embracing the uncomfortable complexities of remembrance.

Pause for a silent moment in this stone forest before we emerge onto Gertrud-Kolmar-Straße.