El monumento duelo de vida ante la muerte

Aguirre Elorriaga, Juan Jesús

Publication year:

2024

Publication place:

Donostia-San Sebastián

Characteristics:

BIBLID [ISSN: 1137-439X, eISSN: 2243-9940 (2024), 42, 31-50]

ISSN:

1137-439X; eISSN: 2243-9940

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Summary

The postmortem processes (rite and mourning) that are usually reproduced in the private and individual sphere are repeated in the erection of the monuments and also in the ‘Memorial to the Murdered Jews of Europe in Berlin’. Located in a place significant for the former location of institutions of the Nazi regime, where some of the events to be remembered took place, it is a spatial experience different from other memorials. Those who enter the group of blocks that make it up, walk along an undulating floor with irregular relief, feeling the loneliness and isolation of the victims of the Holocaust. The urban landscape he proposes is that of a symbolic ghetto (life) and cemetery (death) that gradually come together without perceiving (as in life itself), in a short space, the transformation of one into the other. Open construction, open to the city and integrated into it, without specific entrances or exits, or pre-set itineraries. It brings us closer to something that is real, that cannot be symbolized by words, because it is inaccessible, but it moves and tears.