Collective oblivion or space as an expression of the artist’s awareness? Karol Broniatowski’s sculpture, documented in photographs by Marian Stefanowski

But that day I thought only
of the loneliness of the dying, 
of how, when Giordano
climbed to his burning
he could not find
in any human tongue
words for mankind,
mankind who live on.

Czesław Miłosz, Campo di Fiori[1]

In extreme situations, even fear is no excuse and passivity becomes a crime (...) These death factories, where mass murders were conducted, stood for the contempt for human life. And this contempt is still alive today. (...). The only difference is that today, we have to teach young people that life is the foremost, most valuable commodity.

Lecture by Marek Edelman at the colloquium “Pamięć żydowska, pamięć polska” [“Jewish Remembrance, Polish Remembrance”], Tygodnik Powszechny, 1995

Deaths must be counted in ones.

Christian Boltanski

The most tragic expression of the “völkisch” policies in Germany was the destruction of the Jews. The word “holocaust” (holos – entire, kaustos – burned) entered common linguistic usage during the 1960s. Today, we can precisely trace the stages at which the plans for the “final solution” were implemented, although, as Nora Levin writes, “understanding what happened will perhaps never be possible.” The analysis of collective memory reveals the inclination by humans to deny and suppress inconvenient facts, whereby reports from the past are only credible when they are authentic. If, therefore, the past is the time that defines us and our fantasies are created in the same regions of the brain as our memory, depending on what we imagine, when we think of future scenarios, we will never be able to escape from the past. The increasing support for populist, fascist politicians certainly makes it more difficult to conduct historical research at certain levels, yet despite this, it is more urgent that we do so than ever before. If we regard the Holocaust as a failure of European civilisation, we must not stay silent in the face of today’s toxic fascination with nationalism.

The holy rabbis taught that humanity should not aspire to wait for a world that may yet come in the future, but that we should actively participate in life, in order to first improve and develop ourselves, then our immediate environment, and finally the whole world, in such a way that each of us departs from this world, we leave it a somewhat better place than it was when we arrived. The mystical Jews believed that when the soul comes before God, five questions are asked, the fourth of which is: Did you live your life in the belief that you could change the world for the better?

The image-dominated societies of the 21st century are reliant on sensitive artists who are capable of presenting reality in such a way that it breaks through the social barriers of indifference, enters our comfort zone and destroys it in order to confront us with the problem of the potential risks we face. Art that uses a range of different media, particularly “critical art”, does not evade the dialogue with reality, yet its task is not to deliver ready answers, but rather to pose inconvenient questions. To be aware of the unending sorrow and not to forget the Holocaust is an inherent part of the culture of remembrance. It is the obligation of every European. In his novel “Foucault’s Pendulum”, Umberto Eco asks directly: is it really possible to read the past, or does it just seem as though we can?

From Platform 17 at Berlin-Grunewald station, which Rabbi Walter Rothschild called the “SS station”, over 50,000 Berlin Jews were deported to various places of annihilation in eastern Europe (“Osttransporte”) between October 1941 and March 1945. The first transport left in the direction of Łódź on 18 October 1941; the final train, to Sachsenhausen, departed on 5 January 1945. This dark history has made this one of the saddest places in Berlin.

War does indeed rob people of memory, but no war ends with the signing of a peace treaty. Memories continue to live on deep inside people, and history teaches us that... it teaches us nothing. Despite their moral obligation and imperative to tell the truth, for a long time, the German people, who are known for their glorification of rationality and efficiency, had no clear idea of how they wished to commemorate the victims of the crimes with dignity. In 1953, a commemorative plaque was attached to an administrative building belonging to the Deutsche Bundesbahn railway company, which played an inglorious role during the Nazi era. The inscription it contained made a specific and poignant reference to the Nazi crimes. It was the only public event of its kind in divided Berlin during the Cold War, and was recorded for posterity in just two official photographs. In 2016, thanks to the efforts of the Aktives Museum, 25 other photos by an unknown author were rediscovered. The creation of the places of remembrance in Berlin has a long and turbulent history.

In 1987, the commemorative plaque from 1953, which had been stolen at the beginning of the 1980s, was replaced by a new one. In the same year, at the initiative of the Protestant congregation, an additional plaque was unveiled in the square in front of the station building. However, these were no more than one-off gestures, which had nothing to do with the increasingly intense efforts to create permanent reminders of what had occurred in Berlin’s public spaces. Demands for such measures had not only been made for years by the relatives of those murdered, but also by well-meaning citizens, influential politicians such as Ignatz Bubis, intellectuals such as the liberal rabbi Walter Rothschild, and by journalists and artists, including Wolf Bierman. After many debates, which became increasingly rancorous after 1980, at a time when the only response to the darkest period of history were empty promises, severe, emotionally charged confrontation was nothing unusual.[2] At the end of 1987 and the beginning of 1988, the district administration of Charlottenburg-Wilmersdorf praised a competition for the construction of a monument to the deported Jews, and ultimately awarded the first prize to the design offered by the sculptor Karol Broniatowski and the architect Ralf Sroka.