In the future Memorial of Silence, an art gallery was created

Prague - The upcoming Memorial of Silence at the station in Prague Bubny, where thousands of Prague Jews waited for deportation to death, has added a gallery to its activities. From today, works by several artists are installed in it, which will deliberately be exposed to the influences of the surroundings, and on October 3, it will officially open the operation of the gallery Layers of Memory. The Memorial of Silence has been in preparation for several years, with organizers estimating the cost of building a place that should fight against the forgetting of human cruelty at 125 million crowns. The future form of the memorial will be presented at The Chemistry Gallery in Holešovice on October 16, on the anniversary of the first Jewish transport from Prague. ČTK was informed today by Pavel Štingl, director of the organization Memorial of Shoah.

The organizers approached 15 architectural firms, and the jury selected the ARN studio of Jiří Krejčík. Last year, Štingl stated that the station would be redesigned according to the project of Roman Koucký's office and that construction should begin this year. The actual construction work is expected to take about 70 million from the mentioned sum.

"At the beginning, we had a contract stating that we would borrow the building and return it in 50 years. Therefore, we couldn't afford to commission anything other than the more or less cleaning of the building, which we were allowed to commission without competition. For this, we also received a zoning decision and building permit," Štingl said today.

"In the meantime, many things have changed, the station is no longer owned by Czech Railways but by the Railway and Transport Infrastructure Administration, the owner of the surrounding land," he describes the project's development. The tracks were supposed to disappear from the site, and the memorial intended to keep only their remnants. "The tracks are here indefinitely, as a study of spatial development has not yet been commissioned... We started negotiating with the SŽDC so we could expand to the other side, in front of the station, and so we could approach the building not as a station, but as a cultural facility with a different significance," said Štingl.

The foundation of the station as a place of memory, which will be an exhibit in itself, will be preserved. The Memorial of Silence is being created primarily because, according to its initiators, Prague is one of the few European capitals that does not publicly commemorate the victims of the Holocaust.

Because the station is state property, the greatest burden of financing will likely fall on the state. Štingl is negotiating with the Ministry of Culture, the relevant item is planned in the ministerial budget for 2018. Part of the funds could come from the city council, Prague 7 promised one million crowns this year and initiated the naming of a street near Bubny station after Sir Nicholas Winton, the savior of Jewish children. Two years ago, a sculpture by Aleš Veselý was erected in front of the station as a cornerstone of the building. It is called the Gate of Irreversibility and resembles a ladder made of tracks leading to the sky.