Thank god for the holocaust.
A Holocaust museum that cannot be missed
By Nathan Guttman
When Rene Lichtman, a 65-year-old Holocaust
survivor, drives on Orchard Lake St. and passes
through the Detroit suburb of Farmington Hills, he
turns his head toward the opposite side of the
road and steadies his gaze only after driving by
the new Michigan Holocaust Memorial building. "It
is painful; it is like having a concentration camp
in your backyard," he says. As a boy in France
during World War II, Lichtman was hidden by a
Christian family; today he works in education, and
specializes in teaching the lessons of the
Holocaust.
One thing which can be said about the Holocaust
Memorial facility, which will be dedicated next month,
is that it is extraordinary: its exterior walls were built
out of brick reminiscent of concentration camp stone;
barbed wire runs around the facility, and stripes have
been painted on one of the walls in a pattern
similar to that of camp prisoners' clothing.
These and other elements (towers that recall
furnace chimneys, train tracks, stark trees and
six huge glass windows) have stirred
controversy in the Motor City.
The museum's lack of subtlety is no accident.
Its forthright character was cultivated
deliberately by Rabbi Charles H. Rosenzveig,
the museum's planner and founder. "We wanted
people to stop and ask: `What is this'," he
says. "When I see the cars slowing down in
front of the building and the drivers looking
and talking about it, I am pleased."
The building's exterior perches on the edge of
the road, so its Holocaust-like features cannot
be missed by travelers. The building's
designers have deliberated crowded as many
Holocaust symbols as possible into the building
- the most conspicuous being the wall, the
chimneys and the barbed wire fences. The fence
is not authentic, yet it creates a dramatic
effect: the building as a whole indeed
resembles a concentration camp. The facade's
center represents the sole departure from the
red brick unity of the facility - the huge wall
in this area has gray and blue strips, which
are supposed to evoke the pattern of prisoner
uniforms at the camps. A large yellow Star of
David was erected last week in the museum's
main square.
"We didn't want people to think this is a
concentration camp," says Joel Smith, one of
the project's architects. He believes the
purpose of the overt symbols on the facade is
to ensure that a visitor's experience begins
before he or she enters the building. "A
building with some metaphors is a wonderful
thing," says Smith.
His colleague, architect Ken Neumann, says the
building deliberately sends a blunt message.
"There are too many neutral buildings," he
says.
But not everyone in Detroit's 100,000-strong
Jewish community is pleased with the new
museum's exterior design. "The exterior is
plain kitsch," complains Professor Sidney
Bolkosky, who heads a center for Holocaust
documentation at the University of Michigan.
"It is as if they took every cliche that came
to mind and put it in the building plans."
Bolkosky reports that Holocaust survivors with
whom he is in contact have dismissed the
building as a grotesque monstrosity, while
survivors have wondered aloud about how the
local Jewish community allowed such a facility
to be built.
The architects are not perturbed by such barbs.
Neumann apologizes to anyone who might be
offended by the design, but he insists that
messages about the Holocaust must be delivered
by the facility's exterior design.
There also have been questions regarding the
museum's location. Orchard Lake St. is far from
a customary locale for a historical museum. En
route to the museum, a visitor drives buy a
fried chicken restaurant, a discount electrical
appliances outlet and some gas stations and
banks before reaching the museum, which is
itself sandwiched between a Chinese restaurant
and a bagel store. "I think it should have been
in the city's museum district, downtown,"
opines Daniel Katz, a young man from the local
Jewish community who lives nearby.
Sanford Stacey thinks it would have been better
to build the museum at its original site within
a compound of facilities run by the Jewish
community. Lloyd Strausz fears that the
facility's proximity to the street will
increase the likelihood of being defaced by
vandalism.
Rosenzveig believes the museum's location
abuting the street will attract attention and
bring visitors. The building is accessible to
the public, and buses will bring tens of
thousands of school pupils to the museum each
year. Moreover, real estate prices in the area
were low, which influenced the decision to
locate there.
Rosenzveig is not worried about anti-Semitic
provocation. A native of Poland, he survived
the Holocaust by wandering and hiding. He
arrived in the United States after the war, and
settled in Detroit, where he has worked as a
rabbi and in education. In 1984, he dedicated
the Detroit museum - one of the first of its
kind in country - at its initial location.
Since then, he has dedicated himself to the
project - the new museum has become his
personal crusade. Rosenzveig raised $17 million
to establish it, made final decisions about the
facility's design, and took responsibility for
its internal contents, which are no less
forthright than its exterior (for instance,
inside the museum, visitors pass by one wall
which compares responses made by different
countries and churches in the world during the
Holocaust to those given 50 years after the
catastrophe: the message emphasizes the world's
abandonment of the Jews at the time of the
Holocaust).
Generally, the museum calls attention to roles
played by European states in the annihilation
of the Jews. "The message is that anti-Semitism
is embedded in society, and if you don't
control it, it can lead to a Holocaust,"
Rosenzveig says.
Some visitors object that investments made for
the museum were excessive, while the final
product is too simplistic. The research level
reflected in the museum's exhibits is
questionable, these critics say. "There is no
indication that anybody over there read books
and reviewed research done in the last years,"
objects Bolkosky.
Rosenzveig is non-plussed. He cites the huge
public interest shown in the new facility even
before it has officially opened to patrons.
This public interest, the museum's main
champion, points out what is more important
than anything else for the museum: to draw the
attention of passers-by so they might stop and
learn something about the Holocaust before
returning to their car before driving off to
the nearest fast food joint.
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