On May 12, 2005, 20 years ago, the first visitor was welcomed to the Information Center beneath the Field of Stelae of the Holocaust Memorial. Two days earlier, on May 10, 2005, the opening ceremony took place in the presence of Holocaust survivors and numerous guests from society and politics. It was Sabina van der Linden who, as the only survivor of her family and as the »voice of the six million abused and murdered Jews, including one and a half million children,« captivated the 1,700 guests that day. She had traveled from Sydney to Berlin.
»Today,« says the initiator of the Holocaust Memorial, Lea Rosh, on the occasion of the 20th anniversary: »I feel gratitude and also humility. I am simply glad that this memorial exists because it is this sign of confronting our history.« »But the most important thing for me remains,« Rosh continues, »that the victims are not forgotten and that we remember them here.«
Julia Klöckner, President of the German Bundestag, emphasizes immediately after taking over the chairmanship of the Board of Trustees of the Foundation Memorial to the Murdered Jews of Europe: »Places of remembrance and admonition are important across generations. Visibility and confrontation – this memorial also radiates that. Rightfully so. Numerous visitor groups to our German Bundestag literally cannot avoid it. Experienced horror, human abysses may fade individually, but can always sprout and break out elsewhere. The Memorial to the Murdered Jews fights impressively against exactly that.«
»Indeed, it is also important to emphasize that this visible sign, this symbolic expression of German responsibility for six million murdered Jewish children, women, and men,« says Uwe Neumärker, Director of the Memorial Foundation, »is one of the most visited places in Berlin.« »The visitor numbers over the last 20 years – over 7.9 million guests in the exhibition beneath the Field of Stelae alone – illustrate the significance that this memorial has taken on in the capital and thus in Germany.«
Number of visitors
The visitor numbers for the Field of Stelae are not statistically recorded, but presumably almost every one of the 12.7 million Berlin visitors passes by the memorial. Last year, 309,950 visitors came to the exhibition in the Information Center (before Corona in 2019, 480,000 visitors). The bookings for educational programs have already reached pre-Corona levels again: 2024 (2,050 booked programs) compared to 2019 (2,182 booked programs).
Events and Publications – 20 Years of the Memorial and 80 Years Since the End of the War
In remembrance of 80 years since the end of the war and liberation from National Socialism, as well as on the occasion of the 20th anniversary, the Memorial Foundation invites you to several events this year and publishes another volume in its eyewitness series.
The meeting with eyewitness Ingeburg Geißler, who was liberated in Theresienstadt on May 8, 1945, on May 7, 2025 at the Thuringia State Representation represents a highlight in the anniversary year. The conversation will be led by Uwe Neumärker. The State Secretary for Media and Europe and Plenipotentiary of the Free State of Thuringia to the Federal Government, Stephan König, is the host of the evening.
Furthermore, Nina Kunzendorf will on June 4, 2025 read from the eyewitness account of Jeanette Wolff »Sadism or Madness« in the reading room of the library in the Marie-Elisabeth-Lüders-Haus. Jeanette Wolff’s account, with a foreword by Bärbel Bas, is already the 24th volume in the Memorial Foundation’s eyewitness series. The book is published by the Foundation together with the German Bundestag.
For 20 years, Germany has been remembering the up to six million victims of the Holocaust with the Memorial to the Murdered Jews of Europe. The memorial goes back to a civic initiative led by publicist Lea Rosh and historian Eberhard Jäckel in the late 1980s. On June 25, 1999, the German Bundestag passed the resolution for the construction of the memorial according to the design by Richard Serra and Peter Eisenman.
The Foundation Memorial to the Murdered Jews of Europe was founded 25 years ago, on April 6, 2000. Five years later, on May 10, 2005, the so-called Holocaust Memorial with the Information Center was handed over to the public. According to its statutory mandate, »to ensure the remembrance of all victims of National Socialism and their commemoration,« the Foundation oversees the Memorial to the Persecuted Homosexuals (2008), the Memorial to the Sinti and Roma Victims of National Socialism (2012), as well as the Memorial and Information Point for the Victims of National Socialist »Euthanasia« Killings (2014) and the Memorial for the Persecuted and Murdered Jehovah’s Witnesses, approved by the Bundestag in 2023. Furthermore, traveling exhibitions of the Foundation commemorate the victims of Nazi military justice (2007) and »The Denied,« those persecuted as »asocials« and »professional criminals« (2024).
