Holocaust memorial architect's gas chamber joke misfires
The American designer of Germany’s long-delayed national Holocaust memorial has apologised for a joke that local Jewish leaders said made light of the Nazi gas chambers.
Peter Eisenman, who is himself Jewish, quipped at a meeting of the project’s trustees in Berlin last month that his dentist told him his gold fillings came from the same German company whose former subsidiary supplied Zyklon B cyanide tablets for the gas chambers during the Second World War.
Eisenman said he made the remark after a fresh debate erupted at the meeting over the use of the Degussa company to provide the anti-graffiti coating for the Berlin memorial’s planned 2,700 vertical concrete slabs – a dispute that halted the project for several weeks last autumn.
“Under the circumstances, it was ironic,” Eisenman said in New York. “Maybe there is an enormous difference between American Jewish humour and present-day German Jewish humour. I’ve said repeatedly that to anyone who took it as insensitive, I certainly apologise for that.”
Though the latest spat seems unlikely to cause new delays, it underscored the sensitivities involved in the 15-year-old Berlin project to commemorate the six million Jews who perished in the Holocaust.
German Parliament President Wolfgang Thierse, head of the memorial’s board of trustees, expressed dismay about the uproar.
Several German Jewish leaders expressed outrage about Eisenman’s remarks. The former head of Berlin’s Jewish community, Alexander Brenner, said that Eisenman should ask himself whether he is “still acceptable” for the projects.
Eisenman said he has apologised for the remarks to Thierse, and he offered an apology to the German Jewish leaders.
But, he said, “there’s no way that I feel morally or politically that I should resign.”
Eisenman clashed with Brenner in November after Brenner opposed the memorial panel’s decision to go ahead with using Degussa for the anti-graffiti coating after an anguished debate.
Thierse said today he accepted Eisenman’s apology – and admonished Jewish leaders for trying to restart the debate, saying he was “appalled” at their published remarks.
“A new policy debate about the memorial shortly before its completion makes very little sense,” he said in a statement.
Construction on the Memorial to the Murdered Jews of Europe finally began last April after lengthy disputes about the design, financing and politics of the project. Plans call for completion by May 8, 2005 – 60 years after Nazi Germany’s defeat.
