Warm-Up: Current Event in Berlin

It looks like I misread the last blog-post assignment we had to do (though I have no regrets touring around the virtual Berlin Philharmonie). To my fortune, something interesting has cropped up:

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/europe/4531669.stm

60 years after the end of WWII, a holocaust memorial is being placed in an area that divided East and West Berlin. The work consists of 2700 concrete slabs.














Figure 1. Picture of Holocaust memorial.

As usual, there is controversy (in both the expected and unexpected ways):
“The stones have been treated with an anti-graffiti agent that authorities hope will ward off vandals and neo-Nazi sympathisers.
Even the anti-graffiti agent provoked controversy: initially the architect felt graffiti could benefit the memorial; later it emerged that the company supplying the agent once manufactured poison gas for use in Nazi death camps.”

Yet another area added to my list of “places to go” in Berlin.