Obj. ID: 50487
Memorials Block 22 Holocaust Monument to Jewish Victims (1993) in Buchenwald, Germany
Memorial Name
Buchenwald - Block 22 Holocaust Monument to Jewish Victims (1993)
Who/What is Commemorated?
Jewish victims of Buchenwald
Description:
The monument fills the site of block 22 of the camp, where Jewish prisoners were housed. The barrack is gone, but the site has been transformed by an abstract and symbolic land sculpture, that is contained by a low framing wall, upon which visitors place memorial stones.
From a distance, the site looks only like a long rectangular plot of rubble, but as one approaches, a depression becomes visible sloping downward to one side of the barrack plot. Due to the horizontal alignment of the monument, the design only becomes apparent when approaching the structure. One side of the excavated area, facing the depression, is exposed. To the viewer, it seems to be part wall and part archaeological section, into which pieces of olive wood from Israel have been cast. It becomes apparent that the barrack plot has been dug out as a trench and then intentionally refilled with stones. These come from the Buchenwald quarry, where many of the Jewish inmates performed forced labor.
At ground level, set flat on a wide gravel border around the block, are stone letters that spell out in three languages Psalms 76:8 (“So that the future generations may be known, the children who are born, that they arise and tell their children.,”) Written in Hebrew, German and English in large single detached letters, the full text can only be read and understood by walking the entire length of the memorial.
Inscriptions:
Identiacal inscriptions in German, Engish, and Hebrew:
Commissioned by
State of Thuringia
sub-set tree: 
Olive wood
Following an international competition in January 1993, the design by the artist Tine Steenand architect Klaus Schlosser from Frankfurt was selected and then realized in a six-month execution period. The memorial was dedicated on the 55th anniversary of the Kristallnacht. The memorial commemorates the 75,000 Jewish men and women who were interred at the Buchenwald Concentration Camp and its subcamps, the 11,800 Jews murdered there, and the six million dead of the Holocaust.
Artist Steen and architect Schlosser explained their concept:
“At the National GDR Memorial, the commemoration of the victims of Buchenwald was organized by nationalities. The fates of racially persecuted individuals, in particular European Jews, are not visible in this design. After 1990, ideas were explored for an appropriate means of commemoration. Instead of altering the GDR monument, it was decided to erect a Jewish memorial at the historical site of their suffering within the former inmates' camp…Our idea is to reveal something hidden within the structure through a cut, so to speak, in order to make the location and its topography itself the subject. Any vertical emphasis on a single element would detract from that character of the entire site in favor of one spot…. We think that only through restraint and artistic abstraction can those clichés be avoided that turn the meaning of the monument into its opposite.”
Azaryahu, Maoz. “RePlacing Memory: The Reorientation of Buchenwald.” Cultural Geographies 10, no. 1 (January 2003): 1–20.
"Jewish Memorial,"
Gedenkstätte Buchenwald, https://www.buchenwald.de/en/geschichte/historischer-ort/gedenkstaette/juedisches-mahnmal.
Niven, Bill. “Redesigning the Landscape of Memory at Buchenwald: Trends and Problems.” In The GDR and Its History: Rückblick und Revision, die DDR im Spiegel der Enquete-Kommissionen (German Monitor), edited by Peter Barker,( vol. 7, issue 49, 159–183)
Schlosser, Klaus, and Tine Stehen. “Das Jüdische Mahnmal in Buchenwald.” VIA REGIA – Journal for International Cultural Communication, Issue I (June 11, 1993). Published by the European Culture and Information Center in Thuringia., https://www.via-regia.org/bibliothek/pdf/heft11/schlosser_mahnmal.pdf (accessed February 6, 2025)