New England Holocaust Memorial facts for kids
The New England Holocaust Memorial in Boston, Massachusetts, is dedicated to the Jewish people who were murdered by Nazi Germany during the Holocaust.
Contents
Description
Founded by Stephan Ross, a Holocaust survivor, and erected in 1995, the memorial consists of six glass towers under which a visitor may walk. Engraved on the outside walls of each tower are groups of numbers representing the six million Jews murdered in the Holocaust. Inscribed on the inner walls are quotes from survivors of each camp. Underneath the towers, steam rises up through metal grates from a dark floor with twinkling lights on it.
Each tower symbolizes a different major extermination camp (Majdanek, Chełmno, Sobibor, Treblinka, Bełżec, and Auschwitz-Birkenau), but can also be taken to be menorah candles, the six million Jews murdered in the Holocaust (one million per column), and the six years that the mass extermination took place, 1939-1945.
Each tower consists of twenty-four individual panels of glass. Twenty-two of the panels are inscribed with seven digit numbers and two of the panels are inscribed with messages. In total there are 132 panels from the six towers inscribed with numbers; however, each panel is identical. A single panel contains 17,280 unique numbers which are subsequently repeated throughout the memorial. Numbers are arranged in eight by ten blocks, with each block consisting of sets of six numbers arranged in a six by six grid. In total there are 2,280,960 non-unique numbers listed on the 132 panels.
The New England Holocaust Memorial is located near the Freedom Trail, and is only a few steps off the trail, making it a popular tourist attraction.
The site is maintained by the Boston National Historic Park and is located in Carmen Park, along Congress and Union Streets, near Faneuil Hall. Carmen Park was named in recognition of William Carmen's service to the community and his vision and leadership in creating the New England Holocaust Memorial.
Messages
On some of the panels of the glass towers are messages. Some of the messages:
"Look at these towers, passerby, and try to imagine what they really mean - what they symbolize - what they evoke. They evoke an era of incommensurate darkness, an era in history when civilization lost its humanity and humanity its soul ..."
"We must look at these towers of memory and say to ourselves, No one should ever deprive a human being of his or her right to dignity. No one should ever deprive anyone of his or her right to be a sovereign human being. No one should ever speak again about racial superiority ... We cannot give evil another chance." - Elie Wiesel
ILSE, A CHILDHOOD FRIEND of mine,
once found a raspberry in the camp
and carried it in her pocket all day
to present to me that night on a leaf.
IMAGINE A WORLD in which
your entire possession is
one raspberry and
you gave it to your friend.
Images for kids
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The June 2017 vandalism of the New England Holocaust Memorial.
See also
In Spanish: New England Holocaust Memorial para niños
