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New England Holocaust Memorial facts for kids

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New England Holocaust Memorial
2017 New England Holocaust Memorial from west.jpg
The memorial as seen from the Boston City Hall Plaza stairs (2017)
General information
Address 98 Union St
Town or city Boston, Massachusetts
Inaugurated October 22, 1995
Height 16.5 m (54 ft)
Design and construction
Architect Stanley Saitowitz

The New England Holocaust Memorial in Boston, Massachusetts, is dedicated to the Jewish people who were murdered by Nazi Germany during the Holocaust.

Description

New England Holocaust Memorial 3
The memorial at grade level

Founded by Stephan Ross, a Holocaust survivor, and erected in 1995, the memorial consists of six glass towers under which visitors 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.

Holocaust04
Panel of Memorial

Each tower symbolizes a different major extermination camp (Majdanek, Chełmno, Sobibor, Treblinka, Bełżec, and Auschwitz-Birkenau), as well as menorah candles, the six million Jews murdered in the Holocaust (one million per tower), 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. A digital tour, which explains some holocaust history and meaning behind the monument, is available through QR codes as of July 2021.

The New England Holocaust Memorial is located a few steps off the Freedom 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

Poem by Martin Niemoeller at the the Holocaust memorial in Boston MA
Engraving of the poem First They Came...

On some of the panels of the glass towers are messages, for instance the Sobibor tower includes the following:

See also

Kids robot.svg In Spanish: New England Holocaust Memorial para niños

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