This has been taken to symbolize both the Star of David and the six million Jews who died in the Holocaust. I was not interested in resuscitating the forms of the Holocaust. With these loose parameters in mind, as well as an avoidance of any neo-classical alignment with Albert Speer's architecture of the Third Reich, Freed began drawing specific proposals. Freed's building evokes the chronology of the Holocaust from the moment that the visitor enters the museum. It communicates alienation, terror, and the claustrophobia of the people herded into cattle cars, and the disorienting selection process at the gates of the camps after their interminable trip.
Visitors go into the building through one of two entrances.
Directions are not clearly labelled. This experience is evocative of the arrival of the victims at the death camps, confused about where to go and what is ahead. Above and around are moving walkways, promoting the sense of being watched be strangers. There is a skylight that has been twisted and distorted. The walls are punctuated with planes of glass that bear the names of the countries whose citizens were murdered by Nazis.