| Is it the German government's responsibility to build a memorial to the Jewish victims of the Third Reich? |
| If a memorial to the genocide of European Jewry is to be built, it should be created and constructed by German Jews. |
Pictures of competition entries from the Berliner Morgenpost
In 1988, a talk show hostess named Lea Rosh proposed an enormous memorial to the Jewish victims of the Nazi regime as a response to the parliamentary compromise involving the Neue Wache. In 1995, an international design competition was launched which had 527 artists and architects competing not only to fill the allotted space with their designs, but also to display in concrete the definition of a Holocaust victim.
A decade and three design competitions later, construction has yet to begin. Unable to agree on a design, the Kohl government has postponed the building of the memorial indefinitely in the midst of criticism by German historians and intellectuals, including prominent personalities of the German Jewish community.
It is clear that this is simply another stepping stone in an attempt to embody a broad national consensus on a German Holocaust memorial -- an idea which has in the past half a century since the atrocities were committed, proved virtually impossible.
The building of this memorial, which was supposed to be decided on in March of 1998, has again been postponed due to disagreement within the Berlin Senate and with Helmut Kohl.
| A Holocaust memorial must reflect the enormity of the tragedy. The size of the Holocaust is immeasurable. |
 |
There should be a national memorial specific to the Jews. There should be specific national memorials to Sinti Gypsies, homosexuals, asocials ... |