Do We Remember?
Welcome to my random musings about the world, on a weekly-to-occasional basis.
Where we are: After a few days in Adelaide, we arrived in Melbourne today, and are settled in an apartment here for the next few weeks. I’m looking forward to staying in one place for a bit. Send me good writing vibes, please!
Do We Remember?
There’s a museum in Tallinn, Estonia that I highly recommend. It’s on the grounds of the 19th century Patarei Fortress, built to defend the country from sea attack. It became a prison, and was eventually taken over by the NKVD/KGB.
For decades, enemies of the Soviet government of Estonia were held in the cells at Patarei. It was a transit camp during the German occupation in the Second World War; many of Estonia’s Jewish population were held there before being shipped off to concentration camps deeper in Nazi territory.
After the break-up of the Soviet Union and a long period of neglect (denial, or a need to forget, or perhaps just a strong need to focus on more essential projects of change?), the former fortress/prison was eventually preserved as a museum.
The day Lee and I went to Patarei Fortress, there were only a couple other visitors, and we wandered mostly alone through one of the creepiest, most evocative prison museums I’ve ever seen.
What made it different from so many other prison museums, I think, was the artifacts. A lot of the stuff was still there. Rusty bed frames, toilet holes, chipped sinks, the occasional rotting table or chair. None of it was artfully arranged; the explanatory signage was grim and matter-of-fact—it even had an eerie sound track. You never quite knew when you were going to hear murmuring voices, or faint sobbing. It felt as if the doors had been thrown open in the early 1990s and those who could leave did, and in the intervening years it had just sat, decaying in wind and rain and cold. Which is probably exactly what happened.
It was a powerful testament to a dark era in European history.
As we were leaving, emotionally exhausted, we saw signage indicating that a construction project is underway to turn the fortress/museum into an event space.
My instinctive reaction, at first, was—eeuw no—too morbid. But I’ve thought about it a lot since then, and I think I understand the logic. The day we were there, there were very few visitors. I suppose the hope is that having festivals or weddings or concerts there will be a way to help preserve the buildings, if the alternative is to tear them down entirely.
There’s a burnt-out shell of a building in Beirut that locals refer to as The Egg. It was a movie theater in the 1960s, until the civil war. It straddled the demarcation line between the fighting factions, and now it looms over the city, a great hulking concrete edifice, blackened and completely riddled with bullet holes. You’d think it an eyesore, but we were told people like to go there now for art installations and films. Every day, as Beirutis go about their lives, The Egg silently reminds them of what that war was like, what they’ve been through, what they’ve survived.
Bad things happen in the world, and I think it’s essential—beyond my own macabre voyeurism—to preserve our collective memory of the bad things.
[Note: as of April 2023, the Patarei Fortress complex is closed to the public while the renovation is underway.]
Take care,
Lisa
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