The Holocaust Tower
exception of a cleverly hidden fire stair and a small window at its top. A sharp beam of light enters the space from above, and the sounds of the city are faintly audible as one occupies this physical dead-end space.9
The first axis that we will discuss is the Holocaust Axis, which terminates at a black door, behind which lies the Holocaust Tower [Figures 6.4, 6.18].8
Minimal connection to the outside world is available from here, and one is left to retrace their steps back to the three underground axes from which they came. The black door also acts as a foreshadowing device for the experience it guards - allowing neither visual nor physical continuity to the space which exists behind it.
As has been discussed throughout this book, Libeskind’s poetic concept manifests itself throughout every aspect and detail of his work extending, in this case, even to its documentation. If one looks closely at this photograph of the Holocaust Tower, the faint outlines of museum visitors are visible – a product of the long shutter speed required for the photograph’s exposure. However, these faint outlines are also indicative of the ghosts of the Holocaust, the very victims that this branch of the museum’s progression is designed to commemorate. This void is a free-standing bare concrete structure that is set apart from the rest of Libeskind’s extension. The tower is representative of the exterminated victims of the Holocaust, and is several storeys tall, forming a pentagonal plan, which is enclosed, unheated, and entirely empty, with the
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