About half of the concrete pillars in Gemany’s central Holocaust memorial are showing deep cracks.
The news of the damage comes as the Memorial to the Murdered Jews of Europe in Berlin is dedicated Wednesday, nearly three years after it opened to the public.
The memorial itself, designed by American architect Peter Eisenman, apparently has not withstood Berlin’s weather test. The magazine Cicero hired an expert to examine the site, and found that 1,361 of the 2,711 pillars were in need of repair. The cracks reportedly resulted from the temperature contrast between the shaded and exposed sides of the pillars.
Neither the Memorial Foundation nor the concrete company wants to pay the repair cost, which is estimated at $725,000.
An online memorial book naming German Jews who died in the Holocaust will be dedicated at the memorial Wednesday. The book contains information in German about nearly 159,000 German Jews who were deported and murdered. It is updated continually and enables visitors to search by name, town or city, as well as dates of birth, deportation and death.
