Jewish Museum

Having read Malu's excellent Op, I thought I'd just write a little piece about my visit to the museum now it is filled with exhibits. This was last December (8 months ago) so things might have changed a bit more now. I, too, had visited the museum when empty of exhibits. I found that experience profoundly moving, and wondered how they would ever display anything in the subterranean corridors. There seemed so little room! The answer is, there aren't that many exhibits actually in those rooms - just small samples of books, identity cards, personal letters home etc which are set into the walls and help to give you a flavour of life as a ...

When I was in Berlin two years ago, I visited a completely empty museum. I wanted to revisit it last week and called the office to ask when there would be guided tours, but was informed that the museum was closed because the permanent exhibition was being prepared. “So it will never be empty again?” I asked, disappointed. The woman in charge tried to console me by saying that she could understand my feelings and she, too, regretted it deeply. A conversation of nuts? No, we belong to a crowd of more than 100.000 people who’ve been to the new Jewish Museum, a.k.a. the Libeskind Building, when it was not yet officially open, partly still a ...