Travel

Holocaust Memorial Museum, Berlin

A memorial to the murdered Jews of Europe, yet while I look around there are still people jumping off the The Field of Stelae. These people are more than happy to have their picture taken at the memorial, just as they would if they were visiting Disneyland.

The museum is oddly placed, you look around and you can see hotels, cafes and souvenir shops all a stone’s throw away.

What makes this museum so special is the amount of space which has been dedicated to the Jews of Europe. However, even though the museum is important in order to educate people on a life far from their time, it was only constructed in 2005. The reason for this being, that many people were undecided as where to place the memorial, some were even undecided on whether it should be built at all.

Inside the museum there is a very solemn feeling, when you enter there is a wall of plaques explaining the rise of the Nazi party and the rise of their hatred for the Jewish community. This is the usual for most museums, but here everyone reads every single plaque and there is a queue to read the next one, whereas in most museums most people just read a few sentences before moving on.

You then enter a dimmed room, where the floor is lit, on the floor there are postcards and letters from people who knew they were going to die in concentration camps, the letters are all hand written, next to them is the translation. This is an extremely moving part of the museum as these are real stories of people who probably never returned from the concentration camps at; Belsen, Dachau, Auschwitz and Sachsenhausen.

The next room is also dark and in here there is a track on loop which is translated into many languages which again, are stories of people and their families who had been affected by the violence and fear mongering of the Nazi party.

I feel this is an excellent place to visit whist in Berlin, It’s a modern take on a museum. Museums like this are important for the education of following generations and an important reminder to past and current generations.

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