Holocaust Memorial

The Holocaust Memorial was designed by Kenneth Treister, a Jewish sculptor and architect in Miami Beach. It opened to the public in 1990.




I walked over to the Memorial from the Botanical Gardens following the signs through the parking lot. The first thing I came to was a little grid of trees. It reminded me of the entrance to the Kimbell Art Museum in Fort Worth, only smaller and cleaner because there was pavement on the ground. A woman, very enthusiastic about the memorial, came to me and was excited to explain that the stone was from Jerusalem. She talked and walked me to a group of high schoolers that were listening to a holocaust survivor explain his story, pointing to the images etched into a curving black marble as he went along.



I joined the group and didn’t fit in at all. I had just come from my modeling agency, so I was in a small, tight slip dress and full makeup, feeling fully conscious of my, uh, somewhat suggestive/sexy look. It bothered me that I kept thinking these kids were judging me and forming opinions about me based on what I was wearing. I didn’t quite know how to be, but my discomfort didn’t deter me from listening to the old man talk about his liberation (on my birthday, April 11th).



The procession was a beautiful space. The water reflected on one side and the curving black marble wall on the other. It immediately reminded me of the iconic black marble wall at the Vietnam Memorial in Washington D.C. A wooden trellis provided shade and a play of light, sitting overgrown with vines supported between greek-style columns on one side and the wall on the other.



The middle of the path is marked by a circular dome; a choir of children singing in Hebrew reverberates. From this dome, another pathway guides a visitor to the main sculpture, on a sort-of island in the middle of the water. The perspective on this pathway is exaggerated, the walls cut in, ceiling and floors slope down; narrow, angled slits in the stone create sharp, slashes of light.



The main focus of the memorial is a giant bronze hand with people in anguish, pain, hurt, etc. coming out of the base and spilling out onto the ground. This sculpted and sits in the center of a circular space, surrounded by the same reflective black granite. This time, instead of the granite telling a story with photos and facts, the words printed are just names of those who have died. About a little more than half the marble panels are filled with names. (Again, I couldn’t help but think the architect was influenced by the Vietnam Memorial).



You leave the space the same way you came, through the corridor with haunted children singing to the dome, then continue on the original pathway, finishing the circle you had started around the water under the trellis, along the marble wall.



After walking the whole memorial, I decided I’d sit in and watch the DVD on the creation of the memorial with the high schoolers, so I could better blog about the experience. I shouldn’t have bothered. The DVD was so bad, I walked out early and tried to shake it off. The narrator used too many adjectives and it focused only on the sculpture, which I found to be the least creative/intriguing/meaningful part of the entire memorial. It’s just that I think the architect did do some good moves in the space, and then I’m watching the DVD rolling my eyes, second guessing and doubting my good experience, since the film made it sound gimmicky and tacky.



It’s amazing how much influence other people’s thoughts/words/ideas have over my experience and comprehension of a place. In this case, the memorial seemed less powerful when I listened to the architect talk about it. Most of the time however, I buy right into reviews and praise and what places were ‘meant’ to convey; I need to step up my self-trust and gut feelings about places before I let other people form my opinions for me!



“It is easy in the world to live after the world’s opinion; it is easy in solitude to live after our own; but the great man is he who in the midst of the crowd keeps with perfect sweetness the independence of solitude.” – Emerson, 1841 “Self Reliance”