The Cross
Within the Dachau Concentration Camp Memorial Site there now reside a number of churches. Included amongst these is The Church of Reconciliation, the Protestant church. Though it is noted that the general failure of the German Protestant Church to repudiate National Socialism made it inappropriate for there to be a representative building from Protestantism within the site for many years after the war and the ending of the Nazi regime.
On a visit to this site in 2019 I was struck, amongst the brutalist architecture of the church, by the form of the cross that was placed above the altar/communion table.
The depiction was unlike any I have seen elsewhere. The cross is formed by the space between four large blocks of metal. Between those a figure is, depending on one's perspective, either being crushed by the load bearing down from all directions, or bursting forth from that suffocating load. The depiction both involves resistance and resignation, oppression and redemption, there is something of both Good Friday and Easter Sunday about the image. Of both death and life.
