There are places I lead a group through, and there are places I lead a group into. The Memorial to the Murdered Jews of Europe is the second kind. You do not view it from a distance. You walk into it, and it closes over you, and that is the point.
I want to write about this place carefully, because it asks for care. It is a site of remembrance and mourning, a monument to six million murdered Jewish men, women, and children. It is not a sight to be seen. For a rabbi or an educator preparing to bring a community here, how you approach it matters as much as the place itself. Let me share what I have learned from standing in this field with many groups, and how to lead yours through it with the gravity it demands.
What the Memorial Is
The memorial stands in the center of Berlin, near the Brandenburg Gate, on ground that once lay close to the heart of the Nazi government. It opened in 2005 after years of national debate about how Germany should remember the Jews it murdered. The location is deliberate. This act of remembrance sits in the open, at the center of the capital, where it cannot be avoided or set aside.
The memorial was designed by the architect Peter Eisenman. It consists of 2,711 concrete pillars, called stelae, laid out in a grid across a large sloping field. The stelae vary in height. At the edges they are low, near the ground. As you move inward, the ground dips and the pillars rise far above your head, until they tower over you and the city disappears from view.
There is no list of names on the stelae. No inscriptions. No explanatory text in the field itself. Eisenman left it abstract on purpose, so that it does not instruct you what to feel but instead places you inside an experience of disorientation, isolation, and unease.
Walking Into the Field
I prepare every group before we enter, and I will tell you what I tell them.
As you walk in, the paths between the stelae are narrow, just wide enough for one person. You cannot walk arm in arm. The ground beneath you undulates, rising and falling, so your footing is never quite settled. The pillars grow taller around you until you are below the surface of the field, enclosed by gray concrete on every side, the sound of the city muffled, the people you came with vanishing and reappearing in the gaps.
You lose your group. You lose your bearings. You are alone among the stelae. This is not a flaw in the design. It is the design. The architect created a place where you feel, in your body, something of isolation and of a world ordered into a vast and crushing system. No photograph prepares anyone for it. You have to be inside it.
I ask groups to enter in silence and to move through slowly, separately, letting the field do its work. We gather again on the far side. Then we talk.
The Place of Information Below
Beneath the field, at one corner, is the Place of Information, the Ort der Information. If the field above is abstract, this underground space restores the names, the faces, and the individual lives.
It holds several rooms, each carrying a different part of the memory. The Room of Dimensions presents the testimony of victims, letters and final words from people in the moment of their persecution, the human voice speaking from inside the catastrophe. The Room of Families follows individual Jewish families across Europe, showing ordinary life before the Shoah and tracing what was done to each member. The Room of Names reads aloud, continuously, the names of murdered Jews along with the brief facts of each life, a recitation so long that reading every name would take years. The Room of Sites documents the places where the murders were carried out across the continent.
I always bring a group below after the field, in that order. The field gives the overwhelming scale, the sense of six million as a number too large to hold. The Place of Information returns the individuals, so that the group leaves understanding that the number is made of names. Each stele above stands for no one in particular and for everyone. Each name below is a single irreplaceable life.
Leading a Group With the Dignity This Place Requires
This is the part I most want to pass on to a rabbi or an educator, because the conduct of a group shapes the encounter for everyone in it.
Brief your group beforehand. Tell them what this place is and what it is not. It is a memorial to murdered people. It is not a backdrop for photographs, not a place to climb on the stelae, not a place for anything but reverence. Sadly, the openness of the field invites careless behavior from some visitors, and a prepared group can hold a different standard. I ask my groups to move through as if they were in a cemetery, because in spirit that is what this is.
Enter in silence. Let people walk alone. The memorial works through solitude, and conversation breaks it. Silence is the right and respectful way through.
Make space for ritual. Many of the groups I lead want to say Kaddish, recite Psalms, or have their rabbi speak. I build time for this, usually after coming back together. To say Kaddish at the center of Berlin, for the six million, with a congregation gathered, is among the most sacred moments of any trip I run. I treat it that way and protect the space for it.
Build in time to process. I never schedule the memorial tightly. Afterward a group needs quiet, a walk, a chance to sit together. The Place of Information is emotionally heavy, and people carry it out with them. Give them somewhere to put it.
A Word on Language and Remembrance
I am deliberate about how I speak at this memorial, and I ask group leaders to be as well. We do not call this a stop. We do not call it a highlight. We remember here. We come to honor the memory of the murdered and to stand as witnesses, so that the words “never again” are not abstract but spoken on the very ground where remembrance is most needed.
There is a particular weight to mourning the six million in Berlin, the capital from which their murder was directed. And there is a particular meaning in a Jewish group standing here, alive, praying, remembering. The murderers intended that no Jew would remain to mourn. Your group’s presence is itself an answer. The memory endures. The people endure.
Where It Fits in a Berlin Itinerary
This memorial is one part of Berlin’s landscape of remembrance, alongside the Jewish Museum Berlin, the Topography of Terror on the site of the former Gestapo headquarters, and the Sachsenhausen memorial north of the city. I do not place two such heavy encounters on the same day. Each deserves its own space and its own time to process.
I also believe that remembrance should be held together with the knowledge that Jewish life in Germany did not end. After the memorial, an encounter with Berlin’s living Jewish community, the New Synagogue, Shabbat with a congregation, the renewal of Jewish life in this city, gives a group the fuller truth. The full arc, the thousand years before, the destruction, and the revival, is laid out in our Jewish heritage in Germany guide, with the practical side of Shabbat covered in our kosher and Shabbat in Germany guide.
Heritage Tours leads each group through this memorial with the preparation, the silence, and the space for ritual that it requires. Group leaders travel free with fifteen or more participants.
You can learn more on our Germany destination page or see how we structure group heritage tours.
FAQ: The Memorial to the Murdered Jews of Europe
What is the Memorial to the Murdered Jews of Europe?
It is Germany’s central memorial to the six million Jews murdered in the Holocaust, opened in 2005 in the center of Berlin near the Brandenburg Gate. Designed by the architect Peter Eisenman, it consists of 2,711 concrete pillars, called stelae, set in a grid across a sloping field. Below the field is the Place of Information, which holds the testimony, the families, the names, and the sites of the victims. It is a place of mourning and remembrance.
Why are there no names on the memorial itself?
The field of stelae was left abstract on purpose, without names or inscriptions, so that it places visitors inside an experience of disorientation, isolation, and unease rather than instructing them what to feel. The names and individual lives are restored below, in the Place of Information, especially in the Room of Names, where the names of murdered Jews are read aloud continuously. The two spaces work together: the field conveys the scale, the rooms restore the individuals.
How should a group leader prepare a community for the visit?
Brief the group beforehand on what the memorial is, a site of mourning, not a backdrop for photographs or a place to climb on the stelae. Ask everyone to enter in silence and move through alone, as the design works through solitude. Make space for Kaddish, Psalms, or words from the rabbi after gathering again, and build in quiet time to process afterward. A prepared group holds the dignity the place requires.
What is the Place of Information?
The Place of Information, beneath the field, restores the human individuality the abstract stelae withhold. Its rooms present victims’ own testimony and last words, follow individual Jewish families across Europe, read aloud the names and brief life facts of murdered Jews in a recitation that would take years to complete, and document the sites of murder across the continent. Visiting it after the field ensures a group leaves understanding that the overwhelming number is made of names.
How does this memorial fit with the rest of a Berlin heritage trip?
It is one part of Berlin’s landscape of remembrance, alongside the Jewish Museum Berlin, the Topography of Terror, and Sachsenhausen. Two such weighty encounters should never share a single day. Many groups follow the memorial with an encounter with Berlin’s living Jewish community, holding remembrance of the murdered together with the truth that Jewish life in Germany endures.
If you are preparing to bring your community to this memorial, I would consider it a responsibility to help you do it with the care it asks for. How a group is led through this place stays with people for the rest of their lives. I would be honored to help you lead yours well.
Contact us whenever you are ready to start the conversation.