Jews and Other Others at the Holocaust Memorial in Berlin

Irit Dekel

ABSTRACT Is the Holocaust Memorial in Berlin a Jewish space? How are Jews presented there? What are the points of interest about Jews in the memorial from the perspective of the foundation that runs it as well as from various visitors’ perspectives? This article focuses on interac- tion and performance at the memorial, an understudied topic in com- parison to what the memorial presents in its installation and the debates that preceded its realisation. I argue that the memorial’s form and location create interpretation strategies that are based on the dialectics of representation and non-representation, emotional ex- perience versus knowledge about the Holocaust. This is differently manifested in the action of various groups visiting the memorial. Inter- pretation strategies rest on Jews being a category of memory. In sub- stantiating this claim, I focus on the experience of German visitors, compared to that of Jewish visitors and claim that whereas Jews’ expe- rience of the site is directly linked to sharing intimate knowledge about the Holocaust, Germans tend to talk about the site metaphorically and in emotional terms, confirming the memorial’s own ontology.