Thursday 24 April 2014

A-Z Blog Challenge - Unusual Memorials

During my travels, I have seen quite a lot of unusual monuments or memorials, so here are some of them:

The Brooding Soldier at St Julien, near Ypres, known as Vancouver Corner, commemorates the loss of over 2,000 Canadian soldiers during the 2nd battle of Ypres, 22-24 April, 1915. This was the battle when the Germans launched the first-ever large scale gas attack. It’s not easy to see on this photo, but the soldier at the top of the 11 metre column is standing with ‘reversed arms’ i.e. resting his hands on the rifle butt with the barrel pointing to the group.


The Soviet Memorial, in Treptow Park, Berlin, was built in 1946 as a ‘symbol of the victory of the glorious Soviet army over Hitler fascism.’ The plinth is granite from the demolished Reich Chancellry, and the bronze sculpture, over 13 metres (36 feet) high shows a Red Army solder with a German child in his arms. You get an idea of the size of this memorial from the small figures climbing up steps to the statue.

The Berlin Holocaust Memorial is only a short distance from the Brandenburg Gate. 19,000 square metres are covered with 2,711 concrete slabs arranged in a grid pattern, all about 8 feet wide, and varying in height from 8 feet to 16 feet. Evidently the design is intended to produce an uneasy, confusing atmosphere, and a sense of disorientation. To me, it just seemed very weird.

More moving was the memorial in Krakow, with 33 empty chairs (all 14m high) in what had been the Podgorze ghetto. They are in the square where the inhabitants of the ghetto were assembled to be sent to the extermination camps when the ghetto was liquidated. The chairs represent all the furniture that was thrown out of the surrounding apartments into the street. An alternative explanation I have heard is that they represent the empty chairs left by those who would never return.

Finally, a couple of memorials that seem to represent the ultimate irony of war. The stone memorial on the left marks the place where the first British shot was fired in the 1st World War, on August 22nd, 1914. The wall plaque about 50 yards away on the right marks the place where Canadian Infantry, who were pursuing the retreating Germans, ceased fire at 11am on November 11th, 1918. In the four years between those first and last shots in the small Belgian village of Casteau, hundreds of thousands lives had been lost in the trenches and battlefields on the Western and Eastern fronts.
August 22nd, 1914                                          November 11th, 1918

 

7 comments:

  1. Nice to meet you, Paula. Very Interesting Memorials. The saddest to me are the chairs in the ghetto in Krakow.

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  2. Very interesting, Paula, and I've never seen any of these. I too think the Krakow one is the most moving.

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  3. I agree with you both that the Krakow memorial chairs are the most evocative.

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  4. Interesting.As for 'moving' memorials, the Irish Famine memorials never cease to make me cry.

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    1. Agree, Tonette, especially his one in Dublin
      http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Famine_memorial_dublin.jpg

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  5. The Berlin one does seem a little unsure of what it's trying to say. Although I guess it must be hard to say sorry through architecture.

    mood
    Moody Writing

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    1. The Berlin one is definitely strange, Mood, but I'm not sure what else they could have there as a memorial. As you say, saying 'sorry' doesn't convert to architecture - but that's why I think the Krakow memorial is the most moving.

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