The building, designed by the architect Moshe Safdie, is several times larger than the old building that has housed the institution since it opened in 1957. There were several reasons for this change. Since the 1950s, the tragedy of the Holocaust has moved significantly back in time, and in order to be perceived as acutely, other, more dramatic, means of influencing the viewer are needed - which is fully consistent with Safdie's project. Also, many similar memorials have appeared in the world - in particular, the Holocaust Museum of J. M. Singing in Washington and the Jewish Museum in Berlin, Daniel Libeskind, and the leadership of the Jerusalem Institute fear that these large-scale organized complexes "overshadow" the first and main memorial. This is all the more important because new buildings appear outside Israel, which, it would seem, has a priority in perpetuating the tragedy of the Jewish people. The complex of the new museum is located around a long, laconically designed concrete tunnel. Its walls taper upward so that only a narrow beam of light illuminates the interior. The floor slopes downward as a corridor leads visitors between rooms on either side of it, "chapters" of the history of the Nazi persecution of Jews. At the same time, the tunnel narrows - thus, the viewer gets a feeling of being driven out, similar to the feelings of victims of genocide. Towards the end of the tunnel, the floor level begins to rise again, the walls suddenly spread apart, stories about the dead give way to stories about those who survived. Finally, the visitor walks out of the museum onto a platform overlooking Jerusalem, a sort of end-point of Holocaust history.
2024 Author: David Durham | [email protected]. Last modified: 2024-01-09 00:51
