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In 1964, the first public memorial of the Holocaust in the United States was unveiled at a solemn ceremony in Philadelphia. The bronze sculpture on black granite titled "Six Million Jewish Martyrs" is the work of the artist Nathan Rapoport, who fled his native Poland when the Nazis invaded Warsaw. He was commissioned by a group of Holocaust survivors and Jewish civil officials from the Philadelphia area. The sculpture, which represents images of resistance, innocence and faith, remained unchanged along the Benjamin Franklin Highway.
Now, after more than half a century, Holocaust Remembrance Square has been expanded and enhanced to focus on both commemoration and education. With new presentations and an interactive application, visitors can hear testimonials from survivors, liberators and witnesses badociated with the Philadelphia community.
The new square opened on Monday during a ceremony featuring local dignitaries and Holocaust survivors.
Some highlights of the expansion:
SIX PILLARS:
The centerpiece of the square is called the "six pillars". Organized in pairs, the pillars contrast the atrocities of the Holocaust with constitutional protections and American values. The idea is to remind visitors that if America is true to the Constitution, genocide like the Holocaust will not happen here, said Eszter Kutas, acting director of the Philadelphia Holocaust Remembrance Foundation.
For example, a pillar is dedicated to human equality and contains a quote from the Declaration of Independence. He is opposed to a pillar describing the idea of Nazis of a master race.
The six pillars contain quotes from prominent figures like George Washington, Dwight Eisenhower and Philadelphia-based concentration camp liberator Leon Bbad.
CONCENTRATION CAMP LIBERATOR, BLACK PHILADELPHIA
Leon Bbad was 20, an army corporal who had grown up in Philadelphia, embittered by the humiliation and degradation of racism. Buchenwald has changed his life.
He helped to liberate the Nazi extermination camp in April 1945 and declared that, for the first time, he understood that racism and the human suffering that it causes are a universal evil.
"Some of them just wanted to touch you, be close to you," Bbad remembers survivors in an interview with The Associated Press in 1985. "They stood around you and looked at you with those lean eyes and deep. "
Mr Bbad, who died in 2015 at the age of 90, has remained silent on Buchenwald for more than 20 years. It opened for the first time in 1968 when a Holocaust survivor came to speak at Benjamin Franklin High School, where he was director.
From that day and for decades, he spoke of the atrocities he witnessed.
TRAIN TRACKS IN TREBLINKA
Part of the original railway line that led to the Treblinka extermination camp in Nazi-occupied Poland is embedded in the pavement of the square.
"It's to remind visitors of the millions of evictions that have occurred," Kutas said.
The Nazis built six main death camps, all located in occupied Poland: Auschwitz, Belzec, Chelmno, Majdanek, Sobibor and Treblinka. The Nazis murdered about 700,000 and 900,000 Jews in the Treblinka gas chambers during the war.
The camp is perhaps the most egregious example of the "final solution", the Nazi plot to rid Europe of its Jews. It was designed for the sole purpose of exterminating Jews, as opposed to other facilities that had at least the facade of a prison or labor camps. The victims of Treblinka were transported in cattle cars and gbaded to death almost immediately after their arrival.
Only a few dozen prisoners managed to escape from Treblinka.
SAPLING OF THERESIENSTADT TREE
"The children imprisoned at the Theresienstadt camp received a young tree from a camp teacher and fed it, knowing that they might not see it maturing," Kutas said. These children were later deported to Auschwitz and killed, she said, but the tree continued to flourish in the concentration camp in Czechoslovakia then occupied by the Germans.
A young tree from this tree was planted two weeks ago in the square, to represent life and hope for the future, "a reminder of how we should raise our children," Kutas said. .
She added that there were between half a dozen and a dozen young trees from the Theresienstadt tree planted around the world, some in Israel, Germany, San Francisco and Chicago.
INTERACTIVE TEACHING
The Philadelphia Holocaust Remembrance Foundation is badociated with the USC Shoah Foundation to bring educational content and technology to the renovated square.
An application specially developed for the spot will allow visitors to use their mobile devices to connect to video testimonials from survivors and Holocaust witnesses. The videos will be taken from the USC Shoah Foundation's visual history archive, which lists over 54,000 Holocaust eyewitness accounts, as well as photos, documents, maps and other educational materials.
The application will activate as the visitor moves on the esplanade and provide context and explanation of the elements of the site. Each user can customize the application to create an age-appropriate experience.
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