Genocide and Crimes Against Humanity | Architecture

Architectural spaces designed for Holocaust museums and occasionally those to commemorate genocide have been instrumental in altering the design of the museum building, especially in advanced industrial societies where expense for museum space is an affordable luxury. Museums in the Western Hemisphere and Europe have changed from structures built simply to contain artifacts, art, and conceptual works to become memory forms in their own right. Because of the huge displacement of peoples in the twentieth century, which included many artists and architects who fled authoritarian regimes, the builders of museums to the crimes of genocidal regimes have felt the need to make the museum building itself a memorial space to the event.

Standing in contrast to the modern museum space, often built in a location where genocide itself did not occur, are the places of destruction themselves. The Auschwitz extermination camp, for example, became the Auschwitz State Museum. The same transition to a museum has occurred in other camps, such as Prison S-21 in Cambodia, which became the Tuol Sleng Museum of Genocide. The architecture of the killing sites often has a strong impact on museums built as memory spaces.

One of the best and first examples of the intersection of memory and the present was James Ingo Freed's design for the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum in Washington, D.C., Freed, himself a refugee from Germany, visited Auschwitz in October 1986. The powerful effect of the physical space of the camp and its industrial motif convinced him that the future United States Holocaust Memorial Museum could not be a traditional museum structure. It was this careful analysis of the Auschwitz camp that led Freed to develop plans for the Washington museum that would embody symbolic aspects of the concentration camp in the memory space. This included the well-known symbols of watchtowers, glass, and barbed wire, but also the red brick of Auschwitz I, and the use of steel and other elements. However, he did not wish these symbols to be overstated so as to create a narrative with a single conclusion.

The completed United States Holocaust Museum space has been called "a place of disorientation" (Linenthal, 1995, p. 89). Cantilevered walkways, exposed steel beams, doorways that recall the centers of annihilation at Auschwitz, all help to create a memory of the site of genocide. Within this is the space for the historical narrative. However, the exhibition space at the United States Holocaust Museum does not provide for a continuous chronological narrative of the history of the Holocaust. The story is broken up by the use of modern technologies to provide fragments of events and personal stories, plus an installation tower of photographs, sometimes called the "Tower of Life," designed by Yaffa Eliach to commemorate the memory of her hometown, Eishyshok.

Daniel Libeskind's extension of the Berlin Jewish Museum, renamed the Berlin Jewish Museum addition, has prompted an important discourse about the role of architectural space in the twenty-first century. Libeskind's concept is based on a theory of absence, the absence of the Jews from Germany, which he converted into architectural "voids." The architect himself called the greater project "Between the Lines" because of what he perceived to be a complex web of connections and disconnections between Germans and Jews as a result of the Holocaust (Libeskind, 1992, p. 86). Technically, the result was not a Holocaust Museum, rather a Jewish Museum. But because the building was situated in a unified Berlin after the fall of both Nazism and communism, many refer to it as the Berlin Holocaust Museum.

From an aerial perspective Libeskind's design for the Berlin Museum appears to be a fractured Star of David. The inspiration for this came from Walter Bejamin's One Way Street, which provided a motif for the zig-zag and underground crisscrossing design that leaves the visitor disoriented. Within the space of the museum, the dominant features are the voids. These are empty spaces that literally go nowhere. Libeskind has written that in this space, "the invisible, the void, makes itself apparent as such" (1992, p. 87). In addition, the architect described the main spaces as:

There are three underground "roads" which programmatically have three separate stories. The first and longest "road", leads to the main stair, to the continuation of Berlin's history, to the exhibition spaces in the Jewish Museum. The second road leads outdoors to the E.T.A. Hoffmann Garden and represents the exile and emigration of Jews from Germany. The third axis leads to the dead end—the Holocaust Void (Libeskind, 1992).

The zinc-clad Berlin Museum with its irregular windows was completed in 1998 and opened to visitors without any displays within. More than 400,000 people came to see the empty spaces until the museum's formal opening with a permanent exhibition on Jewish life in Germany on September 9, 1991.

For many years the Imperial War Museum in London has maintained a special museum space dedicated to the liberation of the concentration camp at Bergen-Belsen by British forces in April 1945. In deciding to establish a large and permanent exhibition about the Holocaust, which opened in June 2000, the curators focused on the role of the British as bystanders to genocide as well as liberators, and stressed the necessity of including original artifacts, something which the design for the United States Holocaust Museum chose to play down. Considerations about the building itself were moot, as the structure is a well-established museum that focuses on British military history. The result is perhaps a return to the essence of what a museum is supposed to be—more about what is displayed and how it is displayed, than the architectural features of the structure. Like other Holocaust museums, the Imperial War Museum exhibition features the extensive testimony of Holocaust survivors, in this case, those living in England.

Other Holocaust museums exist in North America (e.g., Vancouver, Los Angeles, Houston, El Paso, Detroit, St. Petersburg, Florida, and New York) that are smaller in size and often situated in remodeled, already existing structures. In some cases the museum buildings are new and overemphasize some of the symbols of the Holocaust, such as chimneys and barbed wire. Displays in these museums are remarkably similar and justified for their pedagogical role in local communities. Few Holocaust museums have concern for art except as a document from the victims.

In Milwaukee, Wisconsin, a museum has opened that chronicles the history of slavery; it is called America's Black Holocaust Museum. A museum initiated by the Armenian-American community is being developed in Washington, D.C.; located in a former bank building, it will serve as an educational center, library, and museum documenting the Armenian genocide of 1915 through 1922. In Rwanda the places of destruction have become both memorials and museums, while construction of a museum dedicated to telling the story of that country's genocide began in 2002 in Kigali. In Quebec architect Moshe Safdie designed the Museum of Civilization, which is "is committed to fostering in all Canadians a sense of their common identity and their shared past. At the same time, it hopes to promote understanding between the various cultural groups that are part of Canadian society" (Museum of Civilization website). However, this museum has started to discuss the possibility of including displays on the Holocaust, Armenian genocide, Cambodia, Rwanda, and genocide in the Ukraine. During 2002 a discussion and debate commenced in Ottawa, Canada, about the construction of a Canadian Museum of Genocide.

SEE ALSO Documentation; Memorials and Monuments; Memory

Stephen C. Feinstein