Congregation Beth El 1010 Charleston Drive Tyler Texas 75703
Date:
Dedicated April 18, 1993
Notes:
Save Outdoor Sculpture, Texas survey, 1993.
Image on file.
(On base:) Linda Gissen (On front of base: Hebrew letters)/REMEMBER signed
The information provided about this artwork was compiled as part of the Smithsonian American Art Museum's Inventories of American Painting and Sculpture database, designed to provide descriptive and location information on artworks by American artists in public and private collections worldwide.
Summary:
A monument to the Jewish victims of the Holocaust consisting of five concentric circles, mounted one above the other to form a cone shape. Each ring is made up of small figures portraying such landmark events as the anti-Semitic Nuremburg Laws enacted by Germany in the early 1930's; the Nazis infamous book-burning rituals; and the shattering devastation of "Kristallnacht." Soaring flames and barbed wire are symbolic of imprisonment, torture, and genocide. At the top of the memorial is a figure holding aloft a torah, and the topmost scene is of children playing. The scenes that follow are of increasing horror. The concentration camps are symbolically represented by the front gates of Auschwitz, emblazoned with the words "Arbeit Macht Frei" (work makes you free). Also represented are the death trains transporting prisoners. At one level is a depiction of the German troops' mass arrests of the Jews, and at another level are the Allied armies, liberating the camps which contain the skeletal survivors. Hope and promise for the future are symbolized by a depiction of barbed wire transforming into branches of laurel and olive trees.
