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   World Holocaust Memorials

*INTRODUCTION*  

*EXHIBITION*


It is a fitting tribute to the many Jews who perished in the Holocaust that they are remembered through the many memorials that have been erected over the past decades throughout the world, that their names often have been etched in stone in order to commemorate in perpetuity their lives and the existence of the towns they once called home. 

Memorials have been erected in many different types of locations.  Jewish cemeteries throughout the world hold many of these memorials, though a memorial may take the form of a plaque that has been affixed to the wall of a synagogue or former ghetto, or on a marker at the site of a mass grave or "killing field."

Each memorial is dedicated to either a town that lost its Jewish population to the Nazi regime and its collaborators, or to the many Jews themselves who once inhabited these towns and were brutally killed. These were our  landslayt, our ancestors who were cruelly denied a full life and then ultimately a proper Jewish burial. For them, there are few extant markers or gravestones in their native land that say "I lived." By erecting memorials, we hope to remind those who might visit them today and in the years ahead of the millions who lost their lives before their time. We say to our ancestors that we know you lived, and we honor you. We rescue them from the recesses of our collective consciousness in the hopes that we can ensure that such horrors will never be forgotten. By erecting such memorials, we recognize those who perished in some tangible and permanent way, while at the same time creating an awareness, as well as an opportunity to educate those who have, to this point, an inadequate knowledge of what had occurred many decades ago.

The Museum has one of the finest, if not the finest, online collection of Holocaust memorial photographs from throughout the world. This exhibition could not have come to fruition without the generous contributions of photographs from supporters of this Museum. For this generosity and good will, we are grateful.

 

 



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