Empathetic Memorials: The Other

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PALGRAVE MACMILLAN
MEMORY STUDIES

Empathetic Memorials
The Other Designs
for the Berlin
Holocaust Memorial
Mark Callaghan
Palgrave Macmillan Memory Studies

Series Editors
Andrew Hoskins
University of Glasgow
Glasgow, UK

John Sutton
Department of Cognitive Science
Macquarie University
Macquarie, Australia
The nascent field of Memory Studies emerges from contemporary trends
that include a shift from concern with historical knowledge of events to
that of memory, from ‘what we know’ to ‘how we remember it’; changes
in generational memory; the rapid advance of technologies of memory;
panics over declining powers of memory, which mirror our fascination
with the possibilities of memory enhancement; and the development of
trauma narratives in reshaping the past. These factors have contributed to
an intensification of public discourses on our past over the last thirty years.
Technological, political, interpersonal, social and cultural shifts affect
what, how and why people and societies remember and forget. This
groundbreaking new series tackles questions such as: What is ‘memory’
under these conditions? What are its prospects, and also the prospects for
its interdisciplinary and systematic study? What are the conceptual,
theoretical and methodological tools for its investigation and illumination?

More information about this series at

http://www.palgrave.com/gp/series/14682
 Mark Callaghan

Empathetic Memorials
The Other Designs for the Berlin Holocaust
Memorial
Mark Callaghan
Birkbeck College, University of London
London, UK

Palgrave Macmillan Memory Studies

ISBN 978-3-030-50931-6    ISBN 978-3-030-50932-3 (eBook)
https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-50932-3

© The Editor(s) (if applicable) and The Author(s), under exclusive licence to Springer
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The registered company address is: Gewerbestrasse 11, 6330 Cham, Switzerland
 For Nellie Callaghan. Thank you for your love, support and remarkable
patience. You will remember our first experience of Berlin in 2010, the
difficulties we faced that year and how important it was to be away for a
few days. The Memorial to the Murdered Jews of Europe formed part of
our visit. It was during that very challenging autumn that I conceived of
the idea that eventually led to this book—a book that would not have been
possible without you.
 Chronology of the Berlin Holocaust
Memorial Competition

In 1988, television journalist Lea Rosh and historian Eberhard Jäckel

began a campaign for a German national memorial to the 6 million Jews
murdered during the Second World War. By the spring of 1989, the cam-
paign had gained the support of prominent Germans such as the Mayor of
Berlin, Walter Momper, and Senator of Culture, Anke Martiny.1 Donations
from prominent figures, such as Willy Brandt, Christa Wolf, and Walter
Jens, were also forthcoming, along with contributions from school coun-
cils, local unions, and also ‘The covenant of forced sterilization and eutha-
nasia victims’. Petitions containing thousands of signatures in support of a
memorial were also collected.2
By 1992, an estimated DM 15 million had been amassed, half of which
was publicly funded and the other half provided by private donors.3 Corporate
sponsorship was also prevalent with notable contributors being Marcus
Bierich of the Robert Bosch GmbH and Daimler CEO Edzard Reuter.4
By 1994, Rosh and Jäckel had also gained enough support in the
Bundestag that a competition was announced in Germany’s national press.
A field of international artists and architects submitted 528 proposals. All
designers were aware of the memorial’s pre-designated site, 19,000 square
metres of land close to the Brandenburg Gate. Competing artists and
architects were also aware of the memorial’s pre-designated title, The
Memorial to the Murdered Jews of Europe.
The jury, which was announced in April 1994, selected two designs: the
model by Christine Jackob-Marks, and the proposal by Simon Ungers. In
June 1995, it was announced that the Jackob-Marks design was the more
feasible of the two finalists, primarily for budgetary reasons. Some aspects

vii
viii CHRONOLOGY OF THE BERLIN HOLOCAUST MEMORIAL COMPETITION

of the Jackob-Marks design did, however, concern some of the German

Jewish community. Its gargantuan concrete plate, which would have been
inscribed with the names of all known victims, was designed to be raised
at one end, allowing for the mass of victim’s names to be seen by visitors.
This feature of the design was criticised for alluding to a rising tomb, an
unintended Christian iconography that contravened the memorial’s Jewish
associations.5 This led to the unsuccessful end of the competition, leading
to a two-year hiatus that included the 1996 colloquia where representa-
tives of all German political parties met to discuss how the suspended
memorial project could be revived.
In 1997, a more limited competition was initiated, with nineteen artists
and architects invited to submit designs. The revived scheme had a new
structure of decision-makers, the five-member Findungskommission
chaired by James Young, who recommended the design, American archi-
tects Peter Eisenman and Richard Serra, whose experiential model con-
sisted of 4000 concrete stelae.
On 25 June 1999, the government approved of Lea Rosh’s proposal to
assign the final decision for selecting a memorial to the Bundestag. Out of
559 MPs, 439 voted in favour of the motion to build Eisenman’s design,6
though the building of the proposal would be contingent on the inclusion
of an information centre, petitioned by Federal Cultural Representative
(Bundeskulturbeauftragter), Michael Naumann, who argued that the
abstract design was in need of contextualisation.
On 10 May 2005, Eisenman’s modified design, complete with under-
ground information centre and a reduced number of stelae, was unveiled.

Notes
1. Simone Mangos, A Monumental Mockery: The Construction of the National
Holocaust Memorial, (Sydney: University of New South Wales Press,
2007), p. 20.
2. Interview with Günter Schlusche. Conducted by Mark Callaghan.
10.11.2012.
3. The final cost of the memorial, complete with Information Centre, would
total an estimated 25 million euros. www.stiftung-denkmal.de/en.html.
Accessed 17.10.2011.
4. Interview with Günter Schlusche. Conducted by Mark Callaghan.
10.11.2012.
5. Bill Niven, Germans as Victims: Remembering the Past in Contemporary
Germany (London: Palgrave Macmillan, 2010), p. 166.
6. Peter Carrier, Holocaust Monuments and National Memory in France and
Germany since 1989, (New York, Oxford: Berghahn, 2005), p. 145.
 Acknowledgements

There was no epiphany for my interest in the representation of atrocities

and memorialisation. Instead, this attraction emerged through a period of
study where I became more conversant with a range of media concerning
artists’ portrayals of trauma. This interest was enhanced by a developing
appreciation of theoretical concepts that complement an understanding
of said depictions and the ambition of adding to the discourse, which I
hope to have achieved with the publication of this book. Further to these
academic interests, I have often been drawn to memorialisation of events
and people, the stylistic changes within this medium, and the possible
effects that mnemonic forms can have on viewers, including the illusion
of permanence as an instinctive response to mortality, and, in relation to
this monograph, empathetic identification with the person being
commemorated.
The advice and support of Dr Silke Arnold-de Simine and Dr Gabriel
Koureas has been greatly appreciated throughout my work on this book.
I am thankful for their time, patience, and intelligent guidance.
I am also grateful to Dr Günter Schlusche who offered important
details concerning sources of primary information and provided significant
insights into his experiences and knowledge of the Berlin competitions.
My thanks also to all the artists and architects who gave their time for
interviews, this being Renata Stih and Frieder Schnock, Richard Gruber,
Karol Broniatowski, Jochen Gerz, Horst Hoheisel, Jochen Heufelder,
Peter Eisenman, and, on behalf of Simon Ungers, his sister Sophia Ungers,
who provided information for her late brother’s submission. I hope to
have done justice to these designs and expanded upon the work of these

ix
x ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

artists through critical analysis. Former Cultural Commissioner, Professor

Michael Naumann, and Findungskommission Chair, Professor James
Young, should also be acknowledged for their co-operation and willingness
to be interviewed.
All interviewees were generous with their time and played an essential
role in developing an understanding of their concepts, the thoughts
behind their respective submissions, and the ways in which the competition
and its surrounding issues developed. Stefanie Endlich deserves a special
thank you for her interview and also for providing images of several designs
for both competitions. Sarah Friedrich of the Memorial Foundation
should be acknowledged for her efforts in obtaining quality images of the
Information Centre and its exhibits.
There are many scholars whose work has been of value to my thinking,
informing this book in authoritative and indirect ways. To name but some,
appreciation is due to Aleida Assmann, Amy Coplan, Dominick LaCapra,
James Young, Bill Niven, Marianne Hirsch, Michael Rothberg, Alison
Landsberg, Jon Bird, Doreen Massey, Ann Kaplan, Dora Apel, and
Theodor Adorno.
My thanks to the reviewers at Palgrave Macmillan, and the sound advice
of Commissioning Editor Mala Sanghera-Warren and Editorial Assistant
Bryony Burns. Their assistance in the process of publication is greatly
appreciated.
And finally, I express much gratitude to Lisa Holland, Ryan Holland,
and Naya Tsatsou for their love and pragmatism, and many thanks also to
Barry Callaghan, Paul Holland, and Amy Holland for their love and for
knowing when not to ask how the book was progressing. My appreciation
includes all other close family and friends for their encouragement and
interest, and John O’Brien for keeping my spirits up.
 Contents

1 Introduction  1

2 Who Is the Memorial For? 11

3 Issues of Representation 83

4 Different Ways of Understanding Individual Victims:

Names, Photographs, and the Void153

5 Designs That Attempt to Resist the Completion of Memory195

6 Conclusion247

Index255

xi
 List of Figures

Fig. 2.1 Peter Eisenman’s winning model for the 1997 contest (after
revision at the request of The Bundestag). (Image provided by
Stefanie Endlich) 18
Fig. 2.2 The Memorial to the Murdered Jews of Europe, Berlin. Design by
Peter Eisenman. (Photograph: Mark Callaghan (2014)) 42
Fig. 2.3 Dani Karavan, Gelbe Blumen, Project for the Holocaust Memorial,
1995, environmental sculpture, Berlin, Germany,
©Studio Karavan 45
Fig. 3.1 Richard Gruber. Ferris Wheel. (Image courtesy
of Richard Gruber) 99
Fig. 3.2 The Memorial to the Murdered Jews of Europe. Design by Peter
Eisenman. Detail. (Photograph © Ryan Holland (2016)) 116
Fig. 3.3 Simon Ungers’ submission for the 1994 competition. (Image
courtesy of Sophia Ungers) 119
Fig. 3.4 The Room of Dimensions. (Image courtesy of The Memorial
Foundation)125
Fig. 3.5 One of the copied letters in the Room of Dimensions.
(Photograph: Mark Callaghan (2014)) 126
Fig. 3.6 The displayed, enlarged copy of Suzanne Burinovici’s postcard
to her daughter Claudine. Room of Dimensions. (Photograph:
Mark Callaghan (2014)) 127
Fig. 4.1 The foyer of the Information Centre. (Image courtesy of the
Memorial Foundation) 164
Fig. 4.2 The Room of Families. (Image courtesy of the Memorial
Foundation)167

xiii
xiv List of Figures

Fig. 4.3 Irina and Eugen Berkowitz. (Image courtesy of The Memorial
Foundation)169
Fig. 4.4 Adalbert Berkowitz. (Image courtesy of The Memorial
Foundation)170
Fig. 4.5 Auschwitz-Birkenau, June 1944: deportees arrive after a
journey of several days The Room of Families. (Image courtesy
of the Memorial Foundation) 172
Fig. 4.6 Christine Jackob-Marks’ submission for the 1994 competition.
(Image provided by Stefanie Endlich) 177
Fig. 4.7 The name of Berl Fiegelman. Room of Names. (Image courtesy
of the Memorial Foundation) 180
Fig. 5.1 Renata Stih and Freider Schnock’s submission, Bus Stop!, 1994.
(Image courtesy of ©Renata Stih and Freider Schnock) 200
Fig. 5.2 Bus Stop!’s Fahrplan (Timetable). 1994. (Image courtesy of
Renata Stih and Freider Schnock) 210
Fig. 5.3 Jochen Gerz’s submission, Warum (1997). (Image courtesy of
Jochen Gerz) 225
 CHAPTER 1

Introduction

Empathetic Memorials – The Other Designs for the Berlin Holocaust

Memorial revisits the Berlin Holocaust Memorial Competitions of the
1990s, with a special focus on submissions that engage with issues of
empathy, the role of the secondary witness, viewer interpellation, and cul-
tural memory. Its central drive is the analysis of provocative designs that,
through research and integration of theoretical frameworks, develop new
understandings of Holocaust memorialisation and new understandings of
the frameworks themselves. The work challenges the field of memory
studies by showing a relationship between empathy and cultural memory
that safeguards victims’ suffering, preventing misappropriation in which
viewers could mistake the victim’s situation as their own perceived victim-
hood. This materialises from the question of how memorial designs that
do not include images of suffering can be ‘completed’ by viewers’ memory
of other Holocaust representations and how this could influence their
capacity to relate to victims’ experiences.
One of the key aims is the exploration of questions concerning the
potential elicitation of empathy by analysing Holocaust memorial designs
that have the capacity to kindle empathic responses. This involves analys-
ing a range of designs, none of which proposed to include an image of
suffering. The goal is to frame this within the perspective of would-be visi-
tors’ visual and also somatic experience, as several of the featured designs
offer this kind of empathetic encounter. As a result of this approach,

© The Author(s) 2020 1

M. Callaghan, Empathetic Memorials, Palgrave Macmillan Memory
Studies, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-50932-3_1
2 M. CALLAGHAN

debates are brought together concerning representation of the Holocaust

and the consequences of memorials evoking empathy.
A recurring problem with the study of empathy is the lack of consensus
in regard to what empathy is.1 In The Age of Empathy: Lessons for a Kinder
Society, Frans de Waal proposes a broad conceptualisation of empathy,
arguing for the inclusion of several psychological phenomena, including
mirroring processes, bodily synchronisation, and emotional contagion (a
process of self-oriented perspective-taking).2 This over-arching conceptu-
alisation is not applied to my analysis of the potential elicitation of empa-
thy. Of more relevance is Amy Coplan’s definition—‘empathy proper’
(‘successful empathy’)—which she distinguishes from emotional conta-
gion, with ‘empathy proper’ being a complex imaginative process whereby
viewers (appropriate to this study, this involves visitors to memorials),
‘simulate the victim’s situated psychological states whilst maintaining clear
self-other differentiation’3—where the secondary witness evokes the vic-
tim’s experience from the other’s perspective.
The ethical stakes of representing the pain of others periodically ema-
nates from Theodor Adorno’s post-Auschwitz aporia, where he deter-
mines that writers and artists have a moral obligation to represent atrocities
whilst also being mindful that depictions of suffering can stimulate aes-
thetic pleasure, that a victim’s experience can somehow be attractive, even
gratifying, causing a suspicious avidity.4 Images of suffering can, though,
be a revelatory experience, prompting questions about the cause of suffer-
ing (Sontag 2004), and can make one cognisant of atrocities, even leading
to vigilance (Kaplan 2005). In an enduring, oscillating debate, counter-
points include the position that explicit images of suffering can be so
repellent that viewers refrain from engagement with the subject being pre-
sented (Apel 2002), and whilst empathising with victims can be effective
in terms of emotional and visceral appeal, there is also the risk that one is
claiming (consciously or not) the victim’s experience (LaCapra 1998). As
Dominick LaCapra raises the concern, the beholder can become a ‘surro-
gate victim’, thus becoming a ‘falsifying voice’, which is the basis for his
argument that empathy should be unsettled and critically interrogated in
order for the viewer to avoid ‘empathic over-arousal’5—an effect that may
result in viewers’ being focused on their own emerging distress rather than
the victims’, an involuntary process so painful that viewers may no longer
be empathetic (Hoffman 2001). This is the primary reason for my selec-
tion of Coplan’s work on empathy, as the self-other differentiation allows
 1 INTRODUCTION 3

for a distance from the victim that negates the ‘empathic over-arousal’ that
LaCapra writes of.6
A memorial design’s capacity to induce empathy therefore involves
debates concerning secondary witnessing—when the observer relates to
the experience of the primary witness conveyed through accounts and
imagery—and empathy, which might cause a form of secondary trauma
shared with the victim.7 As a corollary of this, the key concepts of ‘empathic
unsettlement’ (LaCapra 2001), and different forms of empathy—‘self-­
oriented’ and ‘other-oriented’ perspective-taking (Coplan 2011a), are
probed and mapped, identifying the consequences of recalling canonised
representations of the Holocaust in memorial designs that take visitors
closer to the victims’ experience but without representing this mimetically.
This is not an examination of whether one style is more effective at
conveying the Holocaust than another, or to take a righteous standpoint
regarding long-standing debates concerning the morality of using explicit
imagery. Instead, designs are examined that do not depict suffering in
order to see how they might still evoke empathy for victims. This pays
attention to several designs, including the question of whether, in the
realm of the visual, despite lacking any image of human distress, selected
proposals might actually provoke images of anguish.
This exploration contributes to the discourse by introducing a further
understanding of the relationship between cultural memory and empathy.
Whilst the initial response of some visitors might be one of alarm, discon-
certed, even reeling, from the sight of, for instance, a permanent-lit cre-
matoria tower, empathy, by way of its relationship with cultural memory,
becomes inherent in this and other provocative submissions due to asso-
ciations with canonised representations. Taking into account the models
of post-memory (Hirsch 2012) and secondary witnessing (Apel 2002) as
the prevalent forms of memory transmission for those who did not witness
the Holocaust, the discourse is furthered by evaluating memorial designs
where representations of violence and suffering are notably absent, yet,
can still be visualised through cultural memory, defined by Aleida Assmann
as a form of memory that includes artefacts, sites, rituals, and texts,8 and
where popular media has the potential to create and frame images of the
past, which will be drawn upon by entire generations (Erll 2008). By
doing this, the aim is to go beyond the debate concerning the ethical haz-
ards of representation, drawing from key submissions from the Berlin
competitions that help us to understand the intrinsic role of cultural mem-
ory and that several of the featured designs of this monograph are more
4 M. CALLAGHAN

than mere provocations; they represent the possibility of stimulating

empathic responses by evoking associations with Holocaust imagery and
narratives which are in cultural circulation.
This comprises submissions that proposed to employ concentration
camp icons, namely cattle-trucks, and in one design, an imitation crema-
toria tower, made of metal, painted black. The idea of projecting pre-­
Holocaust photographs of victims across the memorial site was also
proposed, meaning portraits of the murdered would have been shown,
each one afforded forty seconds, each one showing a victim before their
suffering began. The relationship between cultural memory and empathy
is also explored through an abstract design featuring the names of mass-­
murder sites, where the names would be projected using natural light
through perforated I-beams, compared to the winning model by Peter
Eisenman, which, by contrast, makes no reference to the genocide at all.
This original approach to Eisenman’s blueprint also pays attention to how
this concept was another, in effect, alternative design, as the original model
was subject to significant changes.9
The idea of an uncanny Holocaust memorial is also realised, discerned
through analysis of a design resembling Vienna’s late nineteenth-century
Ferris wheel. The Ferris wheel memorial design for Berlin would, how-
ever, feature cattle-trucks for its gondolas, thereby causing both the leisure
contraption and a Holocaust icon to be estranged, no longer appearing as
expected, thus disturbing previous associations. Whilst an empathetic
effect remains possible, perusal of this design is more concentrated on its
relation to Freud’s concept of The Uncanny and how this memorial comes
to represent a new, fearful way of encountering concentration camp ico-
nography, how its threatening signifiers of the past call into consciousness
that which has been repressed.
This focus on alternative designs is imperative as many of the submis-
sions disclose important factors concerning the fragile and volatile mem-
ory of the Holocaust, new possibilities for remembrance, and, as a result,
significant insights regarding the ways in which designers approached the
memorialisation of this event and the transgressing multiplicity of
approaches to memory and commemoration that their designs offered.
Further to this, attention is paid to the connected interests between the
post-War generation juries and the German counter-monument artists of
the same generation. Known for resisting what they see as the instruc-
tional, demagogic tendencies found in fascist monuments, this sub-genre
is explored through several designs that were submitted for the Berlin
 1 INTRODUCTION 5

competitions. Commonalities emerge through analysis, which includes

issues of co-authorship and viewer interaction, exemplified by the proposal
of having a robot inscribe public answers as to why the Holocaust hap-
pened, programmed to carve the responses onto the memorial site’s sur-
face over eighty years. Other challenging ideas, that qualify as being
counter-monuments, even defied the competitions’ pre-set location;
designs that proposed, in one example, to dedicate a section of autobahn
to Jewish Holocaust remembrance, and a further, more confrontational
idea that, had it been commissioned, would have tested the limits of
Germany’s commitment to commemorate the genocide, this being the
demolition of the Brandenburg Gate. Issues of empathy are pertinent to
this section of the monograph too, as one counter-monument submission
proposed to transport visitors by red tourist buses to several of the former
concentration camps. This prompts discussions regarding empathetic
identification with victims and the notion of a more authentic understand-
ing of the Holocaust via these transportations and their subsequent desti-
nations—a submission that was opposed to what its designers regarded as
the ‘artificial’ pre-designated site in Berlin where none of the murders
took place, seeking instead to expand empathic communication, to edify
as much as possible.10
The discourse concerning empathy, presented in this monograph, is
not exclusive to memorial designs. The Information Centre beneath
today’s memorial (Peter Eisenman’s field of concrete stelae) features sev-
eral letters written by victims to their loved ones; in each case, a final letter
knowing they will never see them again. They too have the capacity to
induce empathetic responses, including the notion of ‘idiopathic empathy’
(Bennett 2003), where empathy is contingent on the viewer sensing that
the victim was sufficiently like them in order for the viewer to imagine
being in their place. In this concept of empathy, an absence of this connec-
tion might result in victims being disregarded. Examination of the victims’
letters is especially germane, as the emotive impact of the letters brings
into prominence questions concerning the ‘wrong’ sort of compassion
and the limits of empathy in terms of ethnic, geographic, and social dis-
tance, which could preclude compassion (Dean 2004). Crucially, it also
brings into focus whether one has to sense a ‘likeness’ with the victim (in
this case a writer of the letter) in order to empathise, and how this form of
empathy corresponds to Coplan’s ‘empathy proper’. An essential compari-
son is made between the victims’ letters exhibited in the Information
Centre and the disingenuous form of empathy that can cause a ‘false
6 M. CALLAGHAN

likeness between them and us’ (Young 1993). Citing the United States
Holocaust Memorial Museum’s use of identity cards, issued to visitors and
designed to facilitate spectators’ identification with victims’ suffering,
James Young draws attention to a ‘lazy and false’ empathy in which one
simply takes the other’s place. By comparing the victims’ letters with the
identity cards, this monograph shows the profound differences between
these sources of empathy, that the immediacy of the victim’s handwritten
words engenders a form of empathy that goes beyond the need for a sym-
bolic proximity to the sufferer whilst further highlighting the inadequacies
of the identity cards. Equally, as the letters offer the immediacy of the
victim’s emotions, their desperate pleas and instructions to the recipient, a
perusal of empathy that is independent of historical context is paramount.
Whilst some of the aforementioned memorial designs are indelibly linked
to images of suffering despite them having no depictions of distressed
humans, the letters exhibited in the Information Centre offer emotional
encounters that are not contingent on awareness of canonised representa-
tions of the genocide, or even knowledge of the Holocaust.
The emotive accounts of victims presented in the Information Centre
create a direct contrast with Eisenman’s field of concrete pillars on the
site’s surface. The relationship between these two entities is analysed from
the distinct perspective of how the memorial is understood as being in
partnership with the Information Centre, rather than being separate,
largely unrelated, components. With a concentration on Eisenman’s
abstract field of stelae, the discussion expands on Paul Williams’ survey of
memorial museums (Williams 2007), by appraising the apparent paradigm
of having an abstract memorial with accompanying museum. Eisenman’s
modified design and its Information Centre are not entirely the bilateral
arrangement of memorial and museum that one might believe it to be.
The monograph explores how they complement and contrast with each
other in terms of offering two different experiences—the open, potentially
anxiety-provoking, non-instructive experience of the abstract memorial,
and the instructive experience found in the Information Centre.11 Also
pertinent is the consideration afforded to features of some alternative
designs that can be observed in the Information Centre.
As with the creation of any national memorial, the outcome demands
reflection and assessment. With a new approach to the Berlin competition
that analyses several alternative designs, this monograph considers what
could have been built in the pre-designated location of the former
Ministerial Gardens, close to the Brandenburg Gate.12 By examining a
 1 INTRODUCTION 7

cross-section of submissions, the monograph analyses designs that sought

to challenge the idea of even having a centrally located memorial; along
with other, highly contentious proposals, such as those featuring iconog-
raphy associated with the concentration camps; and further submissions
that represent the gamut of styles and approaches to memorialisation.
These alternative designs prompt the question of how the competition
relates to political memory in terms of Pierre Nora’s assertion that political
memory is ‘anchored in national narratives’ that include memorials,13 and
Aleida Assmann’s definition of political memory as being selections from
the past which ‘strengthen a positive self image’.14 Drawing on archival
research and interviews with a range of protagonists, debates are also
revealed concerning who the memorial should be dedicated to, and how
the idea of a memorial relates to Vergangenheitsbewältigung (Coming to
terms with the past), thus highlighting a need for German introspection
and the motivation to cultivate a new German self-image.
In terms of methodology, the material in this monograph is determined
by an analysis of the alternative designs, together with the formal submis-
sions by the artists, and my interviews with them. Interviews with jury
members, James Young and Stefanie Endlich, provide important insights
into the competition and the preferences and anxieties of the selectors,
and my interview with Michael Naumann, who served as Commissioner
for Cultural Affairs (Bundeskulturbeauftragter) from 1998 to 2001, is also
essential in this regard. Official responses to these designs by the jury
(where available), along with examination of German press articles, is also
fundamental to the methodology. The aim is not to act as a retrospective
jury member, promoting alternative designs as a preference to Eisenman’s
selected model, but rather to examine what other Memorials to the
Murdered Jews of Europe15 would have contributed in terms of viewer
interaction, empathy for victims, and new ways of understanding the rep-
resentation of the Holocaust.

Notes
1. Amy Coplan, ‘Will the real empathy please stand up? A case for a narrow
conceptualization’, in The Southern Journal of Philosophy. Vol. 49
(September 2011) pp. 40–65 (41).
2. Ibid.
Another random document with
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The Project Gutenberg eBook of Atomic!
This ebook is for the use of anyone anywhere in the United States
and most other parts of the world at no cost and with almost no
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under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included with this
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you are located before using this eBook.

Title: Atomic!

Author: Henry Kuttner

Illustrator: Virgil Finlay

Release date: May 25, 2022 [eBook #68167]

Language: English

Original publication: United States: Standard Magazines, Inc, 1947

Credits: Greg Weeks, Mary Meehan, Alex White & the online
Distributed Proofreaders Canada team at
https://www.pgdpcanada.net

*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK ATOMIC! ***

ATOMIC!
 By HENRY KUTTNER

Illustrated by Virgil Finlay.

[Transcriber's Note: This etext was produced from

Thrilling Wonder Stories, August 1947.
Extensive research did not uncover any evidence that
the U.S. copyright on this publication was renewed.]

What nuclear war may do to the world

we know is a closed book to mankind—but
here’s what coming eras may bring!
 CHAPTER I
The Eye
The alarm went off just after midnight. The red signal showed
emergency. But it was always emergency at first. We all knew that.
Ever since the arachnid tribe in the Chicago Ring had mutated we’d
known better than to take chances. That time the human race had
very nearly gone under. Not many people knew how close we’d been
to extinction. But I knew.
Everybody in Biological Control Labs knew. To anyone who lived
before the Three-Hour War such things would have sounded
incredible. Even to us now they sound hard to believe. But we know.
There are four hundred and three Rings scattered all over the world
and every one of them is potentially deadly.
Our Lab was north of what had been Yonkers and was a deserted,
ruinous wilderness now. The atomic bomb of six years ago hadn’t hit
Yonkers of course. What it struck was New York. The radiation
spread far enough to wipe out Yonkers and the towns beyond it, and
inland as far as White Plains—but everyone who lived through the
Three-Hour War knows what the bomb did in the New York area.
The war ended incredibly fast. But what lingered afterward made the
real danger, the time-bomb that may quite easily lead to the wiping
out of our whole civilization. We don’t know yet. All we can do is
keep the Labs going and the planes out watching.
That’s the menace—the mutations.
It was familiar stuff to me. I recorded the televised report on the
office ticker, punched a few buttons and turned around to look at Bob
Davidson, the new hand. He’d been here for two weeks, mostly
learning the ropes.
My assistant, Williams, was due for a vacation and I had about
decided to take young Davidson on as a substitute.
“Want to go out and look it over, Dave?” I asked.
“Sure. That’s a red alarm, isn’t it? Emergency?”
I pulled a mike forward.
“Send up relief men,” I ordered, “and wake Williams to take over. Get
the recon copter ready. Red flight.” Then I turned to Davidson.
“It’ll be routine,” I told him, “unless something unexpected happens.
Not much data yet. The sky-scanners showed a cave-in and some
activity around it. May be nothing but we can’t take chances. It’s
Ring Seventy-Twelve.”
“That’s where the air liner crashed last week, isn’t it?” Dave asked,
looking up with renewed interest. “Any dope yet on what became of
the passengers?”
“Nothing. The radiations would have got them if nothing else did.
That’s in the closed file now, poor devils. Still, we might spot the
ship.” I stood up. “The whole thing may be a wild-goose chase but
we never take any chances with the Rings.”
“It ought to be interesting, anyhow,” Dave said and followed me out.
We could see it from a long way off. Four hundred and three of them
dot the world now, but in the days before the War no one could have
imagined such a thing as a Ring and it would be hard to make
anyone visualize one through bare description. You have to feel the
desolation as you fly over that center of bare, splashed rock in which
nothing may ever grow again until the planet itself disintegrates, and
see around that dead core the violently boiling life of the Ring.
It was a perimeter of life brushed by the powers of death. The sun-
forces unleashed by the bombs gave life, a new, strange, mutable
life that changed and changed and changed and would go on
changing until a balance was finally struck again on this world which
for three hours reeled in space under the blows of an almost cosmic
disaster. We were still shuddering beneath the aftermath of those
blows. The balance was not yet.
 From time to time we work them over with flame throwers

When the hour of balance comes, mankind may no longer be the

dominant race. That’s why we keep such a close watch on all the
Rings. From time to time we work them over with flame-throwers.
Only atomic power, of course, would quiet that seething life
permanently—which is no solution. We’ve got Rings enough right
now without resorting to more atom bombs.
It’s a hydra-headed problem without an answer. All we can do is
watch, wait, be ready....
The world was still dark. But the Ring itself was light, with a strange,
pale luminous radiance that might mean anything. It was new. That
was all we knew about it yet.
“Let’s have the scanner,” I said to Davidson. He handed me the
mask and I pushed the head-clips past my ears and settled the
monocular view-plate before my eyes, expecting to see the darkness
melt into the reversed vision of the night-scanner.
It melted, all right—the part that didn’t matter. I could see the
negative images of trees and ruined houses standing ghostly pale
against the dark. But within the Ring—nothing.
It wasn’t good. It could be very bad indeed. In silence I pulled off the
mask and handed it to Davidson, watched him look down. When he
turned I could see his troubled frown through the monocular lens
even before he lowered the scanner. He looked a little pale in the
light of the instrument board.
“Well?” he asked.
“Looks as if they’d hit on something good this time,” I said.
“They?”
“Who knows? Could be anything this time. You know how the life-
forms shoot up into mutations without the least warning. Something’s
done it again down there. Maybe something that’s been quietly
working away underground for a long time, just waiting for the right
moment. Whatever it is they can stop the scanners and that isn’t an
easy thing to do.”
“The first boys over reported a cave-in,” Davidson said, peering
futilely down. “Could you see anything?”
“Just the luminous fog. Nothing inside. Total blackout. Well, maybe
daylight will show us what’s up. I hope so.”
It didn’t. A low sea of yellow-gray fog billowed slowly in a vast circle
over the entire Ring as far as we could see. Dead central core and
outer circle of unnatural life had vanished together into that mist
which no instrument we had could penetrate—and we’ve developed
a lot of stuff for seeing through fog and darkness. This was solid. We
couldn’t crack it.
“We’ll land,” I told Davidson finally. “Something’s going on behind
that shield, something that doesn’t want to be spied on. And
somebody’s got to investigate—fast! It might as well be us.”
We wore the latest development in the way of lead-suits, flexible and
easy on the body. We snapped our face-plates shut as the ground
came up to meet us and the little Geiger-counter each of us carried
began to tick erratically, like a sort of Morse code mechanically
spelling out the death in the air we sank through.
I was measuring the ground below for a landing when Davidson
grabbed my shoulder suddenly, pointing down.
“Look!” His voice came tinnily through the ear-diaphragms in my
helmet. I looked.
Now this is where the story gets difficult to tell.
I know what I saw. That much was clear to me from start to finish. I
saw an eye looking up through the pale mist at us. But whether it
was an enormous lens far below or a normal-sized eye close to us I
couldn’t have said just then. My distance-sense had stopped
functioning.
I stared into the Eye....
The next thing I remember is sitting in the familiar lab office across
the desk from Williams, hearing myself speaking.
“... no signs of activity anywhere in the Ring. Perfectly normal—”
“There’s that lake, of course,” Davidson interrupted in a
conscientious voice. I looked at him. He was turning his cap over
and over in his hands as he sat there by the wall. His pink-cheeked
face was haggard and there was something strained and dazed in
the glance he turned to meet mine. I knew I looked dazed too.
It was like waking out of a dream, knowing you’ve dreamed, knowing
you’re awake now—but having the dream go on—being powerless to
stop it. I wanted to jump up and slam my fist on the desk and shout
that all this was phony.
I couldn’t.
Something like a tremendously powerful psychic inhibition held me
down. The room swam before me for a moment with my effort to
break free and I met Davidson’s eyes and saw the same swimming
strain in them.
It wasn’t hypnosis.

We don’t win our posts in Bio Control until we’ve been through
exhaustive tests and a lot of heavy training. None of us are
hypnosis-prone. We can’t afford to be. It’s been tried.
We can’t be hypnotized except under very special circumstances
safeguarded by Bio Control itself.
No, the answer wasn’t that easy. It seemed to lie in—myself. Some
door had slammed in the center of my brain, to shut in vital
information that must not escape—yet—under any circumstances at
all.
The minute I hit on that analogy I knew I was on the right trail. I felt
safer and surer of myself. Whatever had happened in that blank
space just passed my instinct was in control now. I could trust that
instinct.
“... break-through, just as the boys reported,” Davidson was saying.
“That must be what started the lake pouring up. Nothing stirring there
now, though. I suppose the regular sky-scanners are watching it?”
His glance crossed mine and I knew he was right. I knew he was
talking to me, not Williams. Of course the lake couldn’t be hidden
now that it was out in plain sight. We couldn’t make a worse mistake
than to rouse interest in ourselves and the lake by telling obvious lies
about it....
What lake?
Like a mirage, swimming slowly back through my mind, the single
memory came. Ourselves, standing on the raw, bare rock of the
deathly Ring-center, looking through a rift of mist like a broad, low
window a mile long and not very high.
The lake was incredibly blue in the dawn, incredibly calm. Beyond it
a wall of cliff stretched left and right beyond our vision, a wall like a
great curtain of rock hanging in majestic folds, pink in the pink dawn,
looming about its perfect image reflected in the mirror of the lake.

The mirage dissolved. That much I could remember—no more.

There was a lake. We had stood on its rocky shore. And then—
what? Reason told me we must have seen something, or heard or
learned something, that made the lake a deadly danger to mankind.
I knew that feel of naked terror deep in my mind must have a cause.
But all I could do now was follow my instinct. The basic human
instincts, I told myself, are self preservation and preservation of the
species. If I rely on that foundation I can’t go wrong....
But—I didn’t know how long I’d been back here. I didn’t know how
much I’d said, or how little—what orders I’d given to my
subordinates, or whether anything in my outward aspect had roused
any suspicion yet.
I looked around—and this time gave a perfectly genuine start of
surprise. Except for Williams and myself the office was quite empty.
In this last bout with my daydreaming memory I must really have lost
touch with things.
Williams was looking at me with—curiosity? Suspicion?
I rubbed my eyes, put weariness in my voice.
“I’m tired,” I said. “Almost dozed off, didn’t I? Well—”
The sound of the ticker behind Williams interrupted my alibi. I knew
in a moment what was happening. A televised report had come into
my own office which my secretary was switching to the ticker for me.
That meant it was important. It also meant—as I had reason to hope
an instant later—that the visor was shut off in my office and the news
clicking directly here for our eyes alone.
Leaning over Williams’ shoulder, I read the tape feeding through.
It read—
UNIDENTIFIED ACTIVITIES IN PROGRESS AROUND
NEW RING LAKE. SUGGEST DESTROYERS WORK
OVER AREA.
FITZGERALD.
The bottom dropped out of my stomach. Only one thing stood clear
in my mind’s confusion—this must not happen. There was some
terrible, some deadly danger to the whole fabric of civilization if
Fitzgerald’s message reached any other eyes than ours. I had to do
something, fast.
Williams was rereading the tape. He glanced up at me across his
shoulder.
“Fitz is right,” he said. “Of course. Can’t let anything get started down
there. Better wipe it out right now, hadn’t we?”
I said, “No!” so explosively that he froze in the act of reaching for the
interoffice switch.
“Why not?” He stared at me in surprise.
I opened my mouth and closed it again hopelessly, knowing the right
words wouldn’t come. To me it seemed so self-evident I couldn’t
even explain why we must disregard the message. It would be like
trying to tell a man why he mustn’t touch off an atom bomb out of
sheer exuberance—the reasons were so many and so obvious I
couldn’t choose among them.
“You weren’t there. You don’t know.” My voice sounded thick and
unsteady even to me. “Fitz is wrong. Let that lake alone, Williams!”
“You ought to know.” He gave me a strange look. “Still, I’ve got to
record the report. Headquarters will make the final decision.” And he
reached again for the switch.
I’m not sure how far I would have gone toward stopping him. Instinct
deeper than all reason seemed to explode in me in the urgent
forward surge that brought me to my feet. I had to stop him—now—
without delay—taking no time to delve into my mind and dredge up a
reason he would accept as valid.
But the decision was taken out of our hands.
A burst of soundless white fire flashed blindingly across my eyes. It
blotted out Williams, it blotted out the ticker with its innocent, deadly
message. I was aware of a killing pain in the very center of my
skull....

CHAPTER II
The Other Peril
Someone was shaking me.
I sat up dizzily, meeting a stare that I recognized only after what
seemed infinities of slow waking. Davidson, his pink face frightened,
shook me again.
“What happened? What was it? Jim, are you all right? Wake up, Jim!
What was it?”
I let him help me to my feet. The room began to steady around me
but it reeled sharply again when I saw what lay before the ticker, the
tape looping down about him—face down on the floor, blood still
crawling from the bullet hole in his back....
Williams never saw who got him. It must have been the same flash
that blinded me. I felt my cheek for the powder burn that must have
scorched it as the unseen killer fired past my face. I felt only
numbness. I was numb all over, even my brain. But one thing had to
be settled in a hurry.
How much time had elapsed? Had that deadly message gone out
while I lay here helpless? I made it to the ticker in two unsteady
strides. The tape that looped the fallen Williams still bore its
dangerous message.
Whoever fired past my cheek had fired for another reason, then,
than this message. Of course, for how could anyone else have
known its importance? There was a bewildering mystery here but I
had no time to think about it.
I tore off the tape, crumpled it into my pocket. I flipped the ticker
switch and sent a reverse message out as fast as my shaking hand
could operate the machine.
FITZGERALD URGENT URGENT MEET ME AT RING
POST 27 AM LEAVING HEADQUARTERS NOW DO
NOTHING UNTIL I ARRIVE URGENT SIGNED J. OWEN.
Davidson watched me, round-eyed, as I vised for a helicopter. He
put out his hand as I turned toward the door. I forced myself to stop
and think.
“Well?” I said.
He didn’t speak. He only glanced at Williams’ body on the floor.
“No,” I said. “I didn’t kill him. But I might have if that had turned out to
be the only way. There’s trouble at the lake.” I hesitated. “You were
there too, Dave. Do you know what I mean?” I wasn’t quite sure what
I was trying to find out. I waited for his answer.
“You’re the boss,” was all he said. “Still, it wasn’t any mutation that
did—this. It was a bullet. You’ve got to know who shot him, Jim.”
“I don’t though. I blanked out. Something ...” My mind whirled and
then steadied again with a sudden idea. I put a hand to my forehead,
dizzy with trying to remember things still closed to me.
“Maybe something like a mutation had a part in it at that,” I
conceded. “Maybe we’re not alone in wanting to—to keep the lake
quiet. I wonder—could something from the Ring have blanked me
out deliberately, so I wouldn’t see Williams killed?”
But there wasn’t time to follow even that speculation through. I said
impatiently, “The point is, Dave, one man’s death doesn’t mean a
thing right now. The Ring....” I stopped unable to go on. I didn’t need
to.
“What do you want me to do?” Davidson asked. That was better. I
knew I could depend on him, and I might need someone dependable
very soon.
“Take over here,” I said. “I’m going to see Fitzgerald. And listen,
Dave, this is urgent. Hold any messages Fitzgerald sends. Any!
Understand?”
“Check,” he said. His eyes were still asking questions as I went out.
Neither of us could answer them—yet.
The desolation spun past below me, aftermath of the Three-Hour
War, ruined buildings, ruined fields, ruined woods. Far off I could
catch a pale gleam of water beyond the seething edge of the Ring.
I’d been en route long enough to make some sort of order in my
mind—but I hadn’t done it. Evidently more than time would be
required to open the closed doors in my brain. I had been in the Ring
today—I had seen something or learned something there—and
whatever I learned had been of such vital and terrible import that
memory of it was wiped from Davidson’s mind and mine until the
hour came for action.
I didn’t know what hour or what action. But I knew with a deep
certainty that when the time for decision came I would not falter.
Along with the terror and the blackness in my mind went that one
abiding knowledge upon which all my actions now were based. I
could trust that instinct.
Fitzgerald’s copter was waiting. I could see his lead-suited figure,
tiny and far below, pacing up and down impatiently as I dropped
toward him. My copter settled lightly earthward. And for a moment
another thought crossed my mind.
Williams! A man murdered, a man I knew and had worked with. A
man I liked. That should have affected me much more deeply than it
did. I knew why it hadn’t. Williams’ death was unimportant—
completely trivial in the face of the—the other peril that loomed
namelessly, in all its invisible menace, like a shrouded ghost rising
from the lake beyond us.

Fitzgerald was a big blond man with blue eyes and a scar puckering
his forehead, souvenir of our last battle with mutated marmosa in the
Atlanta Ring. His transmitter-disc vibrated tinnily as I got out of the
copter.
“Hello, chief. You got my second message?”
“No. What was it?”
“More funny stuff.” He gestured toward the Ring. “In the lake this
time—signs of life. I can’t make anything out of it.”
I drew a deep breath of relief. Davidson would have stopped that
message. It was up to me now to find a way to keep Fitzgerald quiet.
“We’ll take a look at the lake, then,” I said. “What’s your report?”
“Well....” He shifted uneasily from one foot to the other, glancing at
me through his face-plate as if he didn’t quite expect me to believe
him. “It’s a funny place, that lake. I got the impression it was—well,
watching me.
“I know it sounds silly but I have to tell you. It could be important, I
suppose. And then when I was making a second turn over the water
I saw something, in the lake.” He paused. “People,” he added after a
moment.
“What kind of people?”
“I—they weren’t human.”
“How do you know?”
“They weren’t wearing lead suits,” he said simply, glad of a chance to
pin his story down with facts. “I figured they were either not human or
else insane. They heard my ship. And they went into the lake.”
“Swimming?”
“They walked in. Right under the water. And they stayed there.”
“What did they look like?”
“I didn’t get a close look,” he said evasively, his eyes troubled as
they avoided mine.
I was aware of a strange, mounting excitement that swelled in my
throat until I could hardly speak. I jerked my head toward the lake.
“Come on,” I said.
There lay the blue water, moving gently in the breeze. The cliffs like
folded curtains rose beyond it. There was no sign of life in sight as
we crossed the bare, pitted rocks. Fitzgerald eyed me askance as
we clumped toward the water in our heavy lead-lined boots. I knew
he expected doubt from me.
But I knew also that he had told the truth. The lost memory of danger
sent its premonitory shadows through my mind and I believed, dimly,
that I too had seen those aquatic people, sometime in that
immediate past which had been expunged from my brain.
We were halfway across the rocks, our Geiger-counters clicking
noisy warning of the death in the air all around us, when the first of
the lake people rose up before us from behind a ledge of rock.
He was a perfectly normal looking man—except that he stood there
in khaki trousers and shirt, sleeves rolled up, in the bath of potent
destruction which was the very air of the Ring. He looked at us with a
blankness impossible to describe and yet with a strangely avid
interest in his eyes.
When we were half a dozen paces away he raised his arm and,
without changing expression, in a voice totally without inflection, he
spoke.