It
is a fitting tribute to the many Jews who perished in the
Holocaust that they are remembered by the many memorials that
have been erected throughout the world, that their names often
have been etched in stone 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 the memorial may take the form
of a plaque that has been affixed to the wall of a synagogue
or former ghetto, or at the site of mass graves or "killing
fields."
Each memorial is dedicated to
either a town that lost its Jewish population to the Nazi
regime and their collaborators, or to the many Jews themselves
who once inhabited these towns and were brutally killed. These
were our landsleit, 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 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 and 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, we are grateful. |
