Designed by world-renowned architect Daniel Libeskind, the Danish Jewish Museum memorializes the story of Danish Jews who were saved from Nazi persecution by their fellow Danes in October 1943.

Construction of the Museum began in March 2003 and the museum opened in June 2004The space’s evolving function influenced Libeskind’s design. The museum’s layout incorporates a pedestrian walk between the new and old libraries, outdoor summer seating for a café, and intimate conversation spaces at the ground level of the entrance. The whole building is organized as a series of planes, each corresponding to a particular field of religious discourse. Together, the planes, named Exodus, Wilderness, The Giving of the Law, and The Promised Land, carve interior corridors of fractured passageways and slanted floors. 

These corridors comprise the museum’s exhibition spaces and, as they wind, they form the letters for the Hebrew word Mitzvah, meaning “good deed.” According to the museum’s website, the form of the building stands as a commentary on the artifacts and artworks it houses, paralleling how accompanying texts often illuminate different aspects of the Talmud. Libeskind describes the space as a “sort of text running within a frame made up of many other surfaces – walls, inner spaces, showcases, virtual perspectives.