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Memorial to the Murdered Jews of Europe

Buildings and structures in MitteHolocaust memorials in GermanyHolocaust museumsJewish German historyJews and Judaism in Berlin
Monuments and memorials to the victims of Nazism in BerlinMuseums in BerlinOutdoor sculptures in BerlinPeter Eisenman buildings and structuresVandalized works of art
Memorial to the Murdered Jews of Europeabove
Memorial to the Murdered Jews of Europeabove

The Memorial to the Murdered Jews of Europe (German: Denkmal für die ermordeten Juden Europas), also known as the Holocaust Memorial (German: Holocaust-Mahnmal), is a memorial in Berlin to the Jewish victims of the Holocaust, designed by architect Peter Eisenman and Buro Happold. It consists of a 19,000-square-metre (200,000 sq ft) site covered with 2,711 concrete slabs or "stelae", arranged in a grid pattern on a sloping field. The original plan was to place nearly 4,000 slabs, but after the recalculation, the number of slabs that could legally fit into the designated areas was 2,711. The stelae are 2.38 m (7 ft 9+1⁄2 in) long, 0.95 m (3 ft 1+1⁄2 in) wide and vary in height from 0.2 to 4.7 metres (8 in to 15 ft 5 in). They are organized in rows, 54 of them going north–south, and 87 heading east–west at right angles but set slightly askew. An attached underground "Place of Information" (German: Ort der Information) holds the names of approximately 3 million Jewish Holocaust victims, obtained from the Israeli museum Yad Vashem.Building began on 1 April 2003, and was finished on 15 December 2004. It was inaugurated on 10 May 2005, sixty years after the end of World War II in Europe, and opened to the public two days later. It is located one block south of the Brandenburg Gate, in the Mitte neighborhood. The cost of construction was approximately €25 million.

Excerpt from the Wikipedia article Memorial to the Murdered Jews of Europe (License: CC BY-SA 3.0, Authors, Images).

Memorial to the Murdered Jews of Europe
Cora-Berliner-Straße, Berlin Mitte

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Latitude Longitude
N 52.513888888889 ° E 13.378888888889 °
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Denkmal für die ermordeten Juden Europas (Holocaust-Mahnmal)

Cora-Berliner-Straße 1
10117 Berlin, Mitte
Germany
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Memorial to the Murdered Jews of Europeabove
Memorial to the Murdered Jews of Europeabove
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Ebertstraße
Ebertstraße

Ebertstraße is a street in Berlin, the capital of Germany. It runs on a roughly north-south line from the Brandenburg Gate to Potsdamer Platz in the centre of the city. As one heads south down Ebertstraße, the Tiergarten, a large forested park, is to one's right, and the new United States Embassy to the left. Across the corner of Behrenstraße on the left is the Memorial to the Murdered Jews of Europe. Beyond that is the Ministergarten, which was once the gardens at the rear of the old Foreign Office building in Wilhelmstraße, and now the location of numerous modern office buildings. At the southern end of the street, past the corner of Lennéstraße on the right, is the new entertainment precinct around the rebuilt Potsdamer Platz. The street follows the line of the walls of the mediaeval Prussian fortress town of Berlin, linking the Brandenburg Gate with the Potsdam Gate, which stood where Potsdamer Platz now is. After the demolition of the walls it was laid out as a street. Following the Austro-Prussian War in 1866, it was named Königgrätzer Straße in honour of the Prussian victory over Austria at the Battle of Königgrätz. After World War I, this name was considered unsuitably militaristic, and the street was renamed "Budapester Straße" (the street south of the Tiergarten now called Budapester Straße was at that time an eastwards continuation of the Kurfürstendamm). After the death of the first President of the Weimar Republic, Friedrich Ebert, in 1925, it was renamed Ebertstraße in 1930, but in 1935, under the Nazi regime, it was called Hermann-Göring-Straße, after Reichsmarschall Hermann Göring, whose official residence was close by. In the mid-1930s almost the entire street was dug up for the building of the S-Bahn "north-south link" line from Unter den Linden to Yorckstraße, via Potsdamer Platz and Anhalter Bahnhof. The idea for such a link had first been mooted in 1914, but detailed plans were not drawn up until 1928, and then approval had to wait until 1933. Construction began in 1934, but determination to have it finished in time for the Berlin Olympic Games in 1936 meant safety measures were ignored: on 20 August 1935 a tunnel collapse just south of the Brandenburg Gate buried twenty-three workmen of whom only four survived; then on 28 December 1936 a fire near Potsdamer Platz station destroyed vital equipment. The section did not finally open until 15 April 1939. On 31 July 1947, after World War II, the street was renamed back to Ebertstraße. From 1961 to 1989 the Berlin Wall ran along most of its length.

Death of Adolf Hitler
Death of Adolf Hitler

On 30 April 1945, Adolf Hitler committed suicide by gunshot in the Führerbunker when it became clear that Germany would lose the Battle of Berlin, which resulted in Germany's surrender to the Allies and the end of World War II in Europe. His wife Eva Braun, whom he had married the day before, committed suicide with him via cyanide poisoning. That afternoon—in accordance with Hitler's prior written and verbal instructions—the couple's corpses were carried out of the Führerbunker and cremated in the garden of the Reich Chancellery. His death was announced in German radio broadcasts on 1 May. Hitler had served as the Führer of Germany since 1933 and of the Nazi Party since 1921. Witnesses who saw Hitler's body immediately after his suicide testified that he died from a self-inflicted gunshot wound, presumably to his temple. Hitler's personal adjutant Otto Günsche testified that while Braun's body smelled strongly of burnt almonds—an indication of cyanide poisoning—there was no such odour about Hitler's body, which instead smelled of gunpowder. Dental remains found in the Chancellery garden were matched with Hitler's records in May 1945 and are the only portion of Hitler's body that are known to have been found. The Soviet Union restricted the circulation of information about Hitler's death and released many conflicting reports on the subject. Historians have largely rejected or have attempted to reconcile these reports as part of a deliberate disinformation campaign by Joseph Stalin to sow confusion. Soviet records allege that the burnt remains of Hitler and Braun were recovered, which does not agree with witness accounts that the bodies were almost completely reduced to ashes. In June 1945, the Soviets began promulgating two contradictory narratives: that Hitler died by cyanide or that he had survived and fled to another country. West Germany issued a death certificate for Hitler in 1956 following an extensive review. However, conspiracy theories about Hitler's death continue to attract interest.