Quite Symbolic These Cracks

Cracks - just like what Galut life is all about.

More than half the concrete pillars making up Berlin's sombre Holocaust Memorial have cracked, a news report said Monday, and municipal officials said that repairs could not begin till the spring. The sea of 2,711 pillars or stelae, suggest to the visitor the vast number of Jewish lives wiped out by the Nazis.

The magazine Cicero said a check completed this month found damage in 1,361 of the stelae, up from fewer than 450 a year ago.

Designed by US architect Peter Eisenman, Germany's national monument to the Holocaust victims was completed in May 2005.

The exact cause of the cracks, some only hairline and others more than 2 millimetres across, is under dispute. The row about blame prevented work beginning before the winter to fix the damage. Cicero said the latest check was conducted by a concrete expert, Joachim Schulz, who warned that rainwater in wintertime could turn to ice in the gaps and make them worse. Some stelae might have to be completely replaced, a logistical nightmare for those at the centre.