SHOAH MEMORIAL BOLOGNA COMPETITION
Bologna, Italy
To celebrate "Memorial Day" in 2015, the seventieth anniversary of the liberation of Auschwitz concentration camp, Bologna's Jewish Community and the Union of Italian Jewish Communities sponsored the creation of a Shoah Memorial to be located on a significant site in the city. The objective was to create a place to keep the memory of the Shoah.
BOOK OF MIRRORS
The “Book of Mirrors” will recall the murders of over 11 million people during the time of the Shoah from 1933 to 1945 through a series of 145 free standing, double-sided mirrors.
Each mirror page consists of a one-meter wide and two-meter high chromium plated or mirror-polished stainless steel plate that is securely fixed to the ground.
11,081,250 victims is a number whose magnitude is difficult to imagine without seeing it. Likewise, it is hard to grasp the reality that these murders happened during the relatively short period of 12 years.
The “Book of Mirrors” shall visualize both these facts: 145 mirrored panels will represent the 145 months from April 1933 to May 1945 during which the Shoah took place. Each panel will be perforated by approximately 7,700 circular holes representing the average number of victims per month.
The mirror as a structure reflecting an asymmetric image of reality serves as the perfect instrument to evoke remembrance. Each perforation removes a small piece of the mirror image; each perforation makes the reflected image less readable - the illusion of the mirror image is disrupted by the reality of loss.
The perforations are blemishes on the reflection, disturbing the illusion of the mirrored reality, disrupting the innate nature of the mirror as an instrument of vanity.
While the regimented array of mirrors is reminiscent of the organized structure of the Nazi killing machine, the perforations symbolizing the victims are arranged informally on each mirror page. Each mirror symbolizes one month, each row of 12 mirrors one year of the duration of the Shoah.
All perforations are arranged in varying repeating horizontal patterns. These horizontal patterns recall pages in a book and emphasize reoccurring and repetitive mass extinction events. Each row carries a slightly different theme of patterns distinguishing each year from the next within the overall context of horizontality. Each column describes minute variations of the theme from one month to the next.
As one enters the memorial from its corner, the numbers of mirrored surfaces increase with each row until they fully engulf the visitor with multiple reflections. Because of the diagonal arrangement of the field, one will not be immediately aware of the mirrors’ arrangement in rows and columns.