The memorial is a Field of Stelae covering an area of 19,000 square metres and containing 2,711 concrete blocks of varying heights (photos below) and an Information Centre located below the south-eastern corner of the stelae. The ceiling of the Information Centre undulates in unison with the undulations of the stelae field above it.
Within the Information Centre, a Room of Dimensions exhibits extracts from personal diaries, letters and last notes written during the Holocaust set into the floor (below) and a Room of Families shows various Jewish lifestyles of the time, using the example of 15 families.
Turteltaub Family
The photos (below) show one family of Austrian Jews, the Turteltaubs and their fate.
In 2008 we visited the site of the Warsaw Ghetto, now a park with a large stone and bronze memorial (two photos below). Standing in that place with knowledge of the fate of the majority of its residents, young and old, was a very sobering experience.
Reading some of the records exhibited in the Berlin Holocaust Memorial reminded me of Warsaw and the dreadful persecution of Polish Jews by the Nazis. The Polish death toll estimated to be between 2.9 and 3.1 million far, far exceeds the death toll of Jews elsewhere in Europe.
The photograph below shows the locations of Nazi concentration camps across Europe and nearby.
A note alongside the map states that it was incomplete due to some of the Eastern European countries being less than cooperative in identifying camp locations within their borders.
If the ghost of the little Austrian corporal with the toothbrush mustache haunts the bunker then it's only a short walk across the road to the Holocaust Memorial where he can sit and ponder the fate of his vision of a Thousand-Year Reich.
And, maybe it's karma, Germany being called upon to again contribute financially to bailing out the Greeks and those other European countries with debt problems that they directly or indirectly brutalised in WW2. Maybe a form of war reparations when most needed.