Holocaust Memorial in Berlin

Yesterday I visited the Holocaust Memorial, which is just down the road from the Brandenburg Gate and a must-do if you're visiting here. The experience is pretty moving to say the least and the monument is one you will probably never forget. Here's some of the stuff I learned about it that I thought I'd share:

It was only recently finished, after some heavy controversy. Firstly, upon digging up the ground to lay the museum's foundation, the excavators found a hidden Nazi bunker- some say it was used by Hitler, some say it was used by his propaganda minister, Joseph Goebbels. Naturally, some people found this to be a horrible final insult while others wanted to literally 'bury' the Nazis once and for all. They continued building there.

Next: to prevent anti-Semetic feelings from potentially defacing a memorial, a special chemical was sprayed onto all the concrete slabs, making it easy to clean off any graffiti. However, A German chemical company, Degussa AG, which provided an anti-graffiti coating for the slabs, was the focus of the monument's latest controversy. Degesch, a subsidiary of Degussa, supplied Zyklon B hydrogen cyanide gas pellets to German concentration camps during the war. The Zyklon B pesticide gas, which was used to delouse clothes during the war, was also allegedly used to kill inmates in gas chambers.

There are now 2,752 slabs of concrete, about eight feet wide and three feet thick and range between one foot and 16 feet in height, said to represent the individualism of all the people murdered in the Holocaust. Some say it looks like a massive graveyard. Of course it's a very solemn monument but from my personal experience, I initially looked over the 5 acre stretch of land covered with concrete slabs and the graveyard resemblance did strike me at first. I didn't 'get' what the memorial really was about. But walking through, I think I got the message. As you're walking through this concrete labrynth, the slabs get higher and higher around you and even though it's perfect daylight around you, you suddenly realize it's dark all around you and you have to find your way out. I think I got the message.

Anyway, I realized a lot of people (mostly youngish as well) had the same problem I had: knowing all about the Holocaust but now knowing why or how it began. Not that it's that important to know the exact the reason why/how it started so much as it's way more important to know what happened in order to never let history repeat itself, but I just wanted to know the details that our shitty history classes in America never teach us:

Cliff Notes: The Nazi regime at the time was just looking for someone to blame for the humiliating state of Germany after World War I.

Long Version: The ideology and political programme of Nazism, the movement that seized power in Germany in 1933, was founded from the first on an abiding hatred of Jews as Untermenschen, or "sub-humans." They were accused of orchestrating the "stab in the back" that stripped Germany of victory in World War I and imposed upon it the humiliating surrender terms of the Versailles Treaty (1919). Exploiting deep anti-semitic strains in German and European culture (see Goldhagen, Hitler's Willing Executioners), along with the catastrophic economic conditions of the late 1920's and early 1930's, the Nazis under their supreme leader or Führer, Adolf Hitler, succeeded in winning a plurality in 1932 parliamentary elections. In January 1933, Hitler was appointed Chancellor by the ageing German president, Paul von Hindenburg. When Hindenburg died in August 1934, Hitler took over as president, and set about using his police and paramilitaries to murder political opponents and ethnic "traitors" alike. Jews and "Bolsheviks" (communists) were at the top of the list for incarceration in the first "concentration camps."