Massive Berlin Holocaust memorial opens

BERLIN, May 10 (UPI) -- A sprawling Memorial to the Murdered Jews of Europe opened in central Berlin Tuesday near the buried bunker of World War II leader Adolph Hitler.

Designed by U.S. architect Peter Eisenman, the memorial consists of 2,700 gray concrete slabs over 21,520 square feet, or about two soccer fields near the bunker, the Brandenburg Gate and the Reichstag, or parliament building, Sky News reported.

The memorial cost $35.5 million over its near 20-year history, which was paid for by taxpayers.

Eisenman said he fought hard to prevent the carving of names of some 6 million Jews killed in World War II onto the slabs.

"I fought to keep names off the stones, because having names on them would turn it into a graveyard and I did not want that," he said.

The BBC said among the hurdles the memorial faced were delays when a former Nazi bunker was found on the site and again when it emerged one of the construction companies involved had supplied gas to the death camps.