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.
