Jewish Museum Berlin

'Shalechet' ('Fallen Leaves') by Menashe Kadishman

The Jewish Museum Berlin (Jüdisches Museum Berlin) is a museum in Berlin covering two millennia of German Jewish history. http://c. ... http://c. ... Download high resolution version (1600x1200, 381 KB) Taken by Burn the asylum in Feb. ... Download high resolution version (1600x1200, 381 KB) Taken by Burn the asylum in Feb. ...   Berlin? (pronounced: , German ) is the capital of Germany and its largest city, with 3,426,000 inhabitants (as of January 2005); down from 4. ... The word Jew (Hebrew: יהודי) is used in a wide number of ways, but generally refers to a follower of the Jewish faith, a child of a Jewish mother, or someone of Jewish descent with a connection to Jewish culture or ethnicity; and often a combination of these attributes. ...

The Jewish Museum in Berlin was originally founded in Oranienburger Strasse in 1933. It was closed in 1938 by the state police. The idea to revive the museum was first voiced in 1971, and an "Association for a Jewish Museum" was founded in 1975. A Jewish department of the Berlin Museum was opened after the Berlin Museum first displayed an exhibition on Jewish history in Berlin in 1978. In 1999 the Jewish Museum Berlin was granted status as an independent institution. A building by Daniel Libeskind was finished in 1998 and officially opened in 2001; the foundation stone for the extension building to the Berlin Museum was laid in November 1992. It has now become a lively center for Jewish history and culture. The aluminium clad east face of the Imperial War Museum North in Manchester. ...

Libeskind's design created an open area enclosed by the internal walls of the museum, called the memory void for those affected by the Holocaust. Menashe Kadishman's 'Shalechet' ('Fallen leaves') installation filled this void with 10,000 coarsely made iron faces. Visitors are permitted to walk on the work. Doing so creates an almost 'industrial' noise, something with deep meaning. Concentration camp inmates during the Holocaust The Holocaust was Nazi Germanys systematic genocide (ethnic cleansing) of various ethnic, religious, national, and secular groups during World War II. Early elements include the Kristallnacht pogrom and the T-4 Euthanasia Program established by Hitler that killed some 200,000 people. ... Shalechet (Fallen Leaves) by Menashe Kadishman in the Jewish Museum Berlin (b Tel Aviv, 1932). ...

The director of the museum is Professor W. Michael Blumenthal, who is originally from Berlin and was US Secretary of the Treasury under President Jimmy Carter.

Further reading

• The Last Jews in Berlin, by Leonard Gross (ISBN 0-553-23653-9)

External links

• Website of the museum