Pomegranate seeds of hope at the Berlin Jewish Museum

Text and photos:ArchitectNga Vu

Summarizing the history of a nation from the mid-medieval and antiquity to the present day, helping to visualize and inspire visitors about that nation's culture, has never been easy, especially when it is the Jewish people, a nation without a homeland, always rejected but with enduring vitality and a strong, lasting cultural identity.

The Berlin Jewish Museum comprises two buildings. The old building (also known as the Kollegienhaus), built in the Baroque style and designed by architect Phillip Gerlach in the 18th century, now houses the entrance hall, ticket office, cloakroom, souvenir shop, and themed exhibition areas. The new building, the main exhibition space, was designed by architect Daniel Libeskind in an Aconite style starting in 1989, but the Berlin Jewish Museum officially opened its doors to the public in 2001. At first glance, the old building with its distinctive European architecture might give you a warmer and more welcoming feeling, but it is Daniel Libeskind's new building that truly impresses and surprises you. You will gradually feel this through both the museum's language and the language of its architecture as soon as you enter the exhibition area.

Basement: Hasty Snippets into History

The passageway down to the basement from the entrance hall leads you to the first exhibition area. On this floor, Daniel Libeskind designed the floor plan using three overlapping straight lines to form three main exhibition axes: the axis symbolizing continuity (Achse der Kontinuität), the axis symbolizing exile (Achse des Exils), and the axis symbolizing the Holocaust (Achse des Holocaust). The exhibition space is condensed, with themes along the three axes, likened to a traveler walking in seven-league boots, briefly visiting nearly two thousand years of Jewish history in Germany. The endpoint of each axis is a deliberate stopping or continuing point. At the end of the Achse der Kontinuität is a staircase leading to the upper exhibition floors; at the end of the Achse des Exils, visitors will find the Garden of Exils (Garten des Exils); and at the end of the Achse des Holocaust is the Holocaust Tower (Turm des Holocaust).

The Garden of Exile is the only uncovered space in the basement. Here, 49 square, gray concrete pillars, each 6 meters high, stand upright, contrasting with the sloping walkway. The number 49 is derived from 7 times 7, a sacred number in Jewish belief. Hemp willow trees, symbols of Jewish freedom and hope, are planted on each pillar, and in early summer, these trees bloom with tiny, star-like flowers, emitting a gentle fragrance, allowing lucky visitors to catch a glimpse of a few scattered blossoms and find peace and tranquility.

Standing amidst the countless heavy, cold, and towering gray columns, you'll find your perspective fragmented, the sky shrinking even though above remains the green of the foliage and the blue of the sky. The slope beneath your feet creates the illusion of swaying and instability, and the columns seem to be drifting and colliding with each other. The architect intended to bring sacred earth from Jerusalem to level the ground beneath the columns, but this idea encountered many obstacles and could not be implemented. In this garden, if you close your eyes, you will fleetingly encounter images, floating dreams, heavy nightmares, and the cruel reality that flashed through the eyes of Anne Frank when she hid in the house behind her father's company for nearly two years…

According to the museum's instructions, after leaving the basement, you won't go to the ground floor or the first floor, but instead you'll go up a grand staircase straight to the second floor (the highest floor of the museum) and then slowly descend. From here, you'll retrace your steps back in time to the Middle Ages and gradually make your way to the present.

Level Two – The Formation of Jewish Culture, the Struggle for Survival

The entire second floor depicts the life and culture of the Jewish people from the Middle Ages to before World War II. Between the minimalist black and white color scheme that permeates the design concept, rich, vibrant colors reflecting unique cultural characteristics emerge, full of light and joy. The formation of Jewish culture is depicted through exhibits taken from ancient life, such as models of old houses, ovens, household items, and clothing, as well as sacred objects like parchment scrolls containing the Bible, ancient Torah scrolls (the Jewish Bible), and Tefillins (leather cords used to bind hands and worn on the head during prayer to commemorate the liberation of the Jewish people from slavery in Egypt). Jewish customs, traditions, and religious rituals are also meticulously depicted through paintings, models, statues, and stories. All are displayed on or next to exhibits simulating the walls of a Synagogue.

If you carefully follow the black dots and arrows at your feet, you will be able to determine the age and content system of each exhibition area as well as throughout the entire museum. On the second floor, if you look closely, you will be able to visualize the early, arduous days of the Jewish people in a foreign land. They lived mostly in poverty in rural areas until they had to push themselves to civilize their community by focusing more on scientific research, astrology, philosophy, gradually changing harsh laws to achieve greater equality for women… and then seizing opportunities to develop and prosper, to infiltrate and establish themselves among the aristocracy of one of the most powerful and conservative empires in Europe.

Following the museum's directions, going down to the first floor, you will understand the causes of the large-scale Holocaust across Europe and how that genocide unfolded.

Level 1 – Efforts to achieve equality for Jews in German society

On the first floor, the architectural materials and even the museum materials are more modern. The exhibition space features Impressionist paintings, modern sculptures, film photographs, printed books, a room with a piano and a Christmas tree... as we often see today. Exquisite silver and gold objects, massive synagogue models, and the names of now-famous Jewish artists, thinkers, and wealthy merchants appear more frequently, showing that from the mid-18th century onwards, the Jewish community lived in increasing prosperity and power, meaning they could more easily exert a wider cultural influence.

The museum cleverly designed a Kinderinzel (children's island) to represent the transition from the flourishing period of the Jewish people to the darkest period – the Holocaust. Within this area are colorful, circular "multimedia islands" where visitors can sit and relax. Each island has its own theme and acts as a small encyclopedia, appealing to both children and adults. The children's island is like the last sunny days, allowing visitors to relive the warmest and happiest moments before facing the most turbulent and brutal events.

The Holocaust-related section is the darkest part of the overall picture of Jewish history, as well as in the museum's overall design concept. However, since the museum primarily aims to celebrate Jewish ethnicity and culture, its depiction of the Holocaust uses a great deal of metaphorical language and symbolism, with high evocative and symbolic power, rather than meticulously recounting statistics and presenting heartbreaking photographs.

Here, only a black wall highlights and strings together the main historical milestones. Otherwise, the museum cherishes the almost anonymous and very ordinary figures—Jewish children, women, personal stories, or family narratives. Opening a suitcase with a picture of a Jewish child, you'll read a loving letter left by their parents, find a faded photograph, or even see a teddy bear that was once an inseparable companion for Jewish children.

Concluding the exhibition space on the first floor are the lives of the newly revived Jewish people, numbering over 100,000 today living in German society. Here, they have been welcomed back and found ways to re-establish their roots and rise again.

The Ground Level – The Void of Remembrance

The museum features a single, all-encompassing opening in the ceiling, known as the Leerstelle des Gedenkens (The Void of Remembrance). Above, the space is dimly lit, dark, and eerily dark, like a sealed tower. Below, the floor is covered with nearly 10,000 faces, each with a different expression, cast from thick iron and designed by Menashe Kadishmann. The Holocaust is considered an unfillable void in German history. Each face represents a Jewish person who perished in the genocide. If visitors choose to walk on this floor, the faces will collide, creating a loud rattling sound. This is the intention of the designer and the museum, so that the souls of the persecuted Jews will be welcomed back and never forgotten.

Conclusion and lasting impressions

Few museums possess such intelligent and unified architectural and layout ideas. You'll need at least half a day to see everything this museum has to offer. The Berlin Jewish Museum is a prime example of a modern museum with a high level of interaction with visitors. You'll find that every corner of the museum holds surprises and interesting spaces; you can touch many artifacts, open and close them, write your name in Hebrew and print it out, play games, even crawl under the stairs on a red cushion to watch TV or slip through a tunnel…

But above all, the image that lingered sweetly in my mind was that of the pink pomegranates made of cardboard, on which tourists wrote their own wishes and hung them on a large pomegranate tree model. For the Jewish people, the pomegranate is a sacred fruit, symbolizing prosperity and passion. On New Year's Day, Jewish people eat a pomegranate and hope that the coming year will bring as many blessings as the pomegranate seeds.

Beside the LCD screens displaying images of rustling leaves, beside the tactile green fabric leaves, and the paper pomegranates inscribed with the shared, yet genuine, wishes of countless tourists from all over the world in various languages, I was deeply moved and felt incredibly small. Here, I left a message: May the world be at peace!

The Thanh