Holocaust Museum architect speaks at U.

James Ingo Freed said that when he designed the United States Memorial Holocaust Museum in Washington, his intent was to make visitors feel the anxiety of an actual concentration camp. In a thick German accent, Freed delivered his "Memory and History: a discussion of the United States Holocaust Museum," to a packed house in Meyerson Hall last night. The principal architect for the museum, Freed focused his speech on his objectives while designing the building. In 1939, at the age of nine, Freed and his four-year-old sister fled Nazi Germany and moved to Chicago with relatives. "When my family and I came to the United States, we never spoke German again, and we never spoke of the Holocaust," Freed said. He viewed his commission to design the museum as an opportunity to explore many of his childhood memories of Nazi Germany. Initially, Freed tried to research the Holocaust from his New York City office, but eventually realized that he had to see the concentration camps first hand. For three months, Freed traveled to Germany twice a month. "When I went to Auschwitz, I felt it in my body, I felt in in my stomach, I felt it in my legs," Freed said. But he added that he had to distance himself from the camps, and "take refuge in architecture" when visiting them. "I wanted to do something visceral with the museum. I wanted the experience to go through your body, through your pores," he said. "I had one overriding goal. I didn't want it to be a theme park or a replication. It had to have the flesh and blood of the Holocaust, somehow, somewhere --but not directly visible. "We could never design anything as symbolic as the Holocaust," he added. "It was like a red plague." Freed also spoke of a courtyard at Auschwitz that he could not forget. He said he felt one of the main corridors in the museum was influenced by this courtyard. When visitors arrive at the museum, they are taken via elevators -- which resemble the cattle cars in which prisoners were taken to the camps -- to the fourth floor. They must then walk all the way out, he explained. Freed added that this is meant to resemble the technology and efficiency with which prisoners were delivered to and killed in the camps. "You enter a universe that is not quite as civilized as the one you left," he said. "This building is meant to keep you inside. You're not supposed to be able to see outside." He also explained that he intentionally designed the museum to face Arlington National Cemetery. Freed, who explained that he has had Parkinson's disease for 20 years, used a slide show and motion picture projection for most of his lecture.

Please note All comments are eligible for publication in The Daily Pennsylvanian.