Room of Dimensions
Plan of the exhibition
In the first exhibition room, the European dimension of the Holocaust is presented by a running band of the number of Jewish victims in all the countries under National Socialist domination (according to 1937 borders) and exemplary quotations from memoirs of those persecuted.
There were no traces left by most of those deported to their deaths. Between 5.4 and 6 million Jews were murdered in Europe under the National Socialists. The figures are based on documents of the perpetrators and statistical data gathered by the then 20 and today 28 European states which the victims came from. Those figures also have gaps. The perpetrators intentionally eliminated anything pointing to the people murdered and their lives. Documents were destroyed or lost during the war.
Only a small number of the Jewish children, women and men murdered were able to leave behind texts that speak of their personal suffering, written in great distress and sometimes in the last moments before death. They were intended to inform relatives and the world about what had happened to them. The diaries, farewell letters or notes, often presented only in fragments, today cast light on their experiences, feelings and actions in the face of violence and mortal threat.