Not that long ago, just last October the Holocaust Monument was inaugurated in Bucharest. Peter Jacobi, a Romanian born sculptor who lives in Germany for the moment, has come up with an interesting concept. In fact, the site is almost empty, and thus you get the sense of disappearance; moreover, the place gives you the creeps.
It is an apparent concrete bunker, deeply dug into the earth, accessed by climbing down a few steps. Inside, the names of those who were deported and who died are inscribed. On both the right and left of the bunker, you can see some tombstones and fragments of inscriptions collected from various graveyards from Transnistria; they are exhibited in some rooms whose sizes cannot be grasped since you cannot enter – they are shut all the time. I cast a glance through the window and hardly read the Cyrillic letters, yet I understood that some belonged to adolescents and kids. The entire memorial is a discourse in a sober, restrained note, being focused on the idea of remembering the deceased, while the explanations are concise. On the one hand, the Romanian government did their duty and got involved into admitting the trauma, the tragedy of the deported Jews and Gypsies. I suppose they offered the site for the monument (it is a 3,000 sq m terrain, in a very good location), and an amount of money to cover the execution, if not the entire sum, which is indeed a considerable financial effort.
However, there are certain things that the Romanian authorities could not understand. The white plastic box for the guard, the undying bobby or bodyguard should have been part of the project. As anyone might know, through the smallish pane of such boxes, very much like those used as eco-toilets, one can see a TV set broadcasting entertainment shows or a hanging coat or some newspaper. My dislike of this plastic box is not just an aesthetic snobbery; it points to lack of piety. Its place is to give shelter to a (rude) guardian, and not a guide. It is a guardian, and he is armed. In Bucharest, this is the most striking thing to see on a vacant place. We understand fast that this goes deeply against the significance of the monument and the memory of the ones who vanished. Maybe, you’ll tell me that a guardian is needed, and I’ll deny it. At the Holocaust Monument designed by Peter Eisenman from Berlin, which is much bigger and more exposed to violent libels and attacks than the one in Bucharest, the presence of the guardians is clearly limited from the monument, and, certainly, they do not have a white plastic box. Where do they stay? I have no idea, and that is not for the visitors to bother either. It is much colder in Berlin than in Bucharest, and it rains, too, three times more, but there, the guardians (because there isn’t just one) patrol all the time, at night, too, yet they do it somehow off the monument, they do not tread on it, as the ones in Bucharest do. I cannot understand why we should have such feelings of deep sympathy for the poor guard, because the same happens with the one from Carol Park, that guarding the exquisite cannons from World War I, flanking the Monument to the Unknown Hero; there you can also see two ‘plastic houses’ with the same unfortunate appearance. In other words, when it comes to these serious things as the guards’ everyday life, no one gives a damn on those aesthetic airs and graces.
Everything should be put in place as fast as possible, the shelter (and entertainment) needs taken care of instantly, the primary needs of national security demand the destruction of any kind of value … we are under siege, aren’t we? You cannot play around with governmental institutions! Neither can you do so with national companies; just think about the Holocaust Monument and its whereabouts, the tin mushrooms from the sewerage national network, the never-failing electric switch box, the Romanian habit of being penny wise and pound foolish that does not explain the all too minimal investment on the lamps that get on your nerves sometimes. We cannot get rid of such utter foolishness seemingly stuck to every public space or monument. The electric switch box (usually grey and with traces of kicking soles and graffiti), the green mushroom from the sewerage main, the rustic wooden flowerbox or some garbage cans are put there by force. Be it in parks, streets, squares such state of affairs is getting rather preposterous due to the pompous, booming and frightful importance given to each and every bit of oddity. No one can understand who allows all these mega-kings and public institutions to pollute the public space and pointlessly destroy our space. Quite the contrary, we would shrug our shoulders and think that the way it should be.
Maybe there is hope for a change, and this year has just started…
Photo: Adrian Dobre
Translation: Magda Teodorescu
