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What Are The Voids In The Jewish Museum

Decent Essays

On the tour of the Jewish museum, we discussed the idea of what the voids and gaps throughout the museum are to symbolize to the visitors. When the tour guide asked the group what do these voids/gaps represent, I replied that the voids are to represent the missing individuals and the Jewish history. These voids extend throughout the entire height of the museum to represent the void that is being felt throughout the sequential generations.The discussion on how these voids represent the loss of Jewish history through the Nazi regime’s event of burning down of major institutions, destroying documents and the destruction of artifacts belonging to the Jewish community. The discussion on the voids/gaps within the Jewish museum is an interesting topic because most people would not think a lot of the symbolism behind them. Andrew Gross mentions that they “enact a scripted collapse of meaning, displacing history into the registers of architecture, personal experience and memory” (p.85). As I watched some of the visitors, I noticed most would peer into these voids and shrugged them off while walking away. These voids add to the story of the museum and to the Jewish history in Germany, by representing the missing part of this history. It also represents the disruption in the German …show more content…

These “voids act out or embody the absence of the Jews who once lived in Berlin and the Jewish culture that once flourished here; moving through these spaces makes absence manifest inexperience” (p.84). It is an empty area where once/where there could have been some historical artifacts or documents. The lost of these individuals lead to the loss of the memories that these individuals have and there will always be an unfulfilled void in the next generations. The voids are set up in a way to make the visitors experience the lost of the missing history through the emptiness of the

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