ABSTRACT
Once, not so long ago, Germany had what it called a “Jewish Problem.” Then it had a paralyzing Holocaust memorial problem, a double-edged conundrum: How would a nation of former perpetrators mourn its victims? How would a divided nation reunite itself on the bedrock memory of its crimes? In June 1999, after ten years of tortured debate, the German Bundestag voted to build a national “Memorial for the Murdered Jews of Europe” on a prime, five-acre piece of real estate between the Brandenburger Tor and Potsdamer Platz, a stone’s throw from Hitler’s bunker. In their vote, the Bundestag also accepted the design—a waving field of pillars—by American architect, Peter Eisenman, which had been recommended by a five-member Findungskommission, for which I served as spokesman.
