| « Previous | Home | Next » | holocaust tower 03 April, 2006 |
 photo: david lindley within the jewish museum, a series of inter-connecting passageways, lined with small alcove displays, tell the tragic story of ordinary jewish families and individuals; their lives prior to the nazis taking power and the fate that awaited them afterwards; life and death. at the end of one such passageway a heavy door leads into the 'holocaust tower'. as you pass through the door it is completely dark and for a moment you're extremely disoriented, unable to make anything out. gradually though your eyes adjust and you see the limits of your new circumscribed life as a jew: four cold grey walls surround you; the only light a narrow chink in the roof high above you and unattainable - ladder rungs are embedded in the walls offering you a way to get up there but, cruelly, they start way above the reach of any mortal man: there is no escape. the walls form an unequal rectangle; one wall being far longer than the the parallel leg means the corner there is sharply pointed. if you walk to this point the sensation is incredibly weird - it's like the scene in a movie where the hero is walking along a hotel corridor when the corridor suddenly seems to recede to infinity in front of him - the walls closing in whilst the point still seems far off. the tower is extremely moving and effective in it's aim to symbolise the emptiness and hopelessness of the jews trying to live their lives during that awful time......the only thing is that we could walk back out through that door. | |
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Posted by davidlindley Archived under: berlin |
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