Extension to Libeskind's Jewish museum

pp. 197-256

in: Arleen Ionescu, The memorial ethics of Libeskind's Berlin Jewish museum, Basingstoke, Palgrave Macmillan, 2017

Abstract

On my first visit to the Berlin Jewish Museum in August 2011, after walking along the zigzags and through the voids, I felt the need "to link" and, like the Museum's so many physical bridges, to re-establish connections between the fragmented realities that had been displayed in front of my eyes. When exiting from the Holocaust Tower, thinking of Derrida's "[d]eep down, deep down inside, the eye would be destined not to see but to weep", I experienced what the French philosopher called "the truth of the eyes, whose ultimate destination they would thereby reveal".¹ Thus, the tears that veiled my sight also unveiled what is proper to the eye.