Holocaust Study:
Visit to the New England Holocaust Memorial

December 2006

Miss C and I visited the New England Holocaust Memorial, along Boston's Freedom Trail. It was an incredible experience. These photos don't do it justice, but hint at some of the power of this memorial. [See also my blog post about our Holocaust Study.]

		The six glass towers each represent a concentration camp, and the steam arising from the grate under each represents... well, the gas chambers. To walk through these is moving beyond belief.

The grate below the tower representing Auschwitz-Birkenau

Each tower/concentration camp has numbers engraved in its glass panes —
the ones that were burned into the arms of people imprisoned there

At the base of a flagpole with the American flag:

April 29, 2003: The Freedom Trail, Boston

We have raised this flag in tribute to all the American and other Allied soldiers who liberated us from the brutal Nazi tyranny and opened the gates to our trail to freedom in America. —Israel Arbeiter, President, American Association of Jewish Holocaust Survivors of Greater Boston

The New England Holocaust Memorial is placed in Boston, near the Freedom Trail, surrounded by important symbols of American history and human rights, to be used by generations to witness history and reaffirm the basic rights of all people. The Memorial was built through the generous contributions of hundreds of citizens, including the following leaders...

Most infants and children were killed immediately upon arrival at the camps. The Nazis murdered as many as one and a half million Jewish children.

The stone above reads: April 29, 1945: DACHAU CONCENTRATION CAMP. I was an emaciated fourteen year old boy when an American soldier lifted me into his strong arms. He looked into my tired eyes, with compassion, shared his food with me and gave me a small American flag of freedom. —Stephan B. Ross, Holocaust Survivor

The plaque below it reads: April 12, 1945: OHRDRUF CONCENTRATION CAMP. The things I saw beggar description... The visual evidence and the verbal testimony of the starvation, cruelty, and bestiality were so overpowering as to leave me about sick... I made the visit deliberately, in order to be in a position to give first hand evidence of these things, if ever, in the future, there develops a tendency to charge these allegations merely to propaganda. —Dwight D. Eisenhower, Supreme Commander, Allied Expeditionary Forces, 34th President of the United States

"I will give them an everlasting name." —Isaiah 56:5

This memorial is dedicated to the six million Jewish men, women, and children who were murdered by the Nazi Third Reich between 1933 and 1945 in what the world has come to call the Holocaust or Shoah.

The Nazis intended the destruction of Jewish life to be total and permanent. Jews were to have been removed from history and memory. In this memorial, we create a marker for the six million — a place to grieve for the victims and for the destruction of their culture — a place to give them an everlasting name.

We seek to encourage a universal understanding of all that happened in that period. Nearly eleven million people, of all races, religions, and nationalities, were murdered by the Nazis. Among the victims were Gypsies, Jehovah's Witnesses, political dissidents, homosexuals, and the mentally and physically disabled.

Survivors of the death camps, those who courageously aided them, and those soldiers who liberated them with compassion were caught up in this great tragedy, and they carry the burden of those memories throughout their lives.

We acknowledge each unique experience, as well as the horror of the collective history. The memory of the Holocaust is the legacy and responsibility of all Humanity. — (various names)

Between 1933 and 1945, the Nazis created a regime of hate and victimization in Germany that eventually consumed most of Europe. Driven by racist beliefs, they killed as many as eleven million men, women, and children in their quest to dominate Europe and to create a "pure and superior" race. The Nazis singled out the Jews for total extermination — their very existence to be erased from history and memory. Before their defeat in 1945, the Nazi regime murdered six million Jews — more than half of Europe's Jewish population.

Those who have perished have been silenced forever. Those who have witnessed and survived the horrors carry with them the burden of memory. Through their voices, we seek to comprehend the acts of inhumanity that can stem from the seeds of prejudice.

To remember their suffering is to recognize the danger and evil that are possible when one group persecutes another. As you walk this Freedom Trail pause here to reflect on the consequences of a world in which there is no freedom — a world in which basic human rights are not protected. And know that whereever prejudice, discrimination and victimization are tolerated, evil like the Holocaust can happen again.