The Holocaust Memorial Park is a public

Holocaust The Holocaust, also known as the Shoah, was the genocide of European Jews during World War II. Between 1941 and 1945, Nazi Germany and its collaborators systematically murdered some six million Jews across German-occupied Europe; a ...

memorial park located at the water's edge between Emmons Avenue and Shore Boulevard in Sheepshead Bay Brooklyn. The nearby communities of

Sheepshead Bay Sheepshead, Sheephead, or Sheep's Head, may refer to: Fish * ''Archosargus probatocephalus'', a medium-sized saltwater fish of the Atlantic Ocean * Freshwater drum, ''Aplodinotus grunniens'', a medium-sized freshwater fish of North and Central Am ...

, Manhattan Beach, and

Brighton Beach Brighton Beach is a List of Brooklyn neighborhoods, neighborhood in the southern portion of the New York City Borough (New York City), borough of Brooklyn, within the greater Coney Island area along the Atlantic Ocean coastline. Brighton Beach i ...

were settled after

World War II World War II or the Second World War, often abbreviated as WWII or WW2, was a world war that lasted from 1939 to 1945. It involved the vast majority of the world's countries—including all of the great powers—forming two opposin ...

by a large Jewish population, many of whom were immigrants and survivors of the Holocaust. The Memorial Park is the only public Holocaust memorial park in

New York City New York, often called New York City or NYC, is the List of United States cities by population, most populous city in the United States. With a 2020 population of 8,804,190 distributed over , New York City is also the L ...

. It is a New York City-owned park maintained by the Parks Department. The Brooklyn-based non-profit organization “The Holocaust Memorial Committee” has control over the park's markers.

History

The Park was first designated as a Holocaust Memorial Park in 1985 by then-Mayor

Edward I. Koch Edward Irving Koch ( ; December 12, 1924February 1, 2013) was an American politician, lawyer, political commentator, film critic, and television personality. He served in the United States House of Representatives from 1969 to 1977 and was mayo ...

. It originally consisted of a grove of established London plane trees and a seating area. After a planning process led by local non-profit organization, The Holocaust Memorial Committee, Brooklyn Borough President

Howard Golden Howard Golden (born November 6, 1925) is an American lawyer and Democratic politician who served as the Borough President of Brooklyn from January 3, 1977 to December 31, 2001. He concurrently served as chairman of the Brooklyn Democratic Pa ...

allocated $933,000 toward the construction of a permanent memorial designed and built by the City. Construction of this memorial began in 1994 and it was dedicated on June 22, 1997, by Mayor

Rudolph Giuliani Rudolph William Louis Giuliani (, ; born May 28, 1944) is an American politician and lawyer who served as the 107th Mayor of New York City from 1994 to 2001. He previously served as the United States Associate Attorney General from 1981 to 198 ...

Howard Golden,

Abraham Foxman Abraham Henry Foxman (born May 1, 1940) is an American lawyer and activist. He served as the national director of the Anti-Defamation League from 1987 to 2015, and is currently the League's national director emeritus. From 2016 to 2021 he served a ...

, National Director of the

Anti-Defamation League The Anti-Defamation League (ADL), formerly known as the Anti-Defamation League of B'nai B'rith, is an international Jewish non-governmental organization based in the United States specializing in civil rights law. It was founded in late Septe ...

and a Holocaust survivor, and other officials.

Design features

The memorial designed by landscape architect George Vellonakis consists of a 14 1/2-foot tower sculpture of granite and exposed steel with a bronze “Eternal Flame” on top. The word “Remember” encircles the top of the tower. The tower stands on three circular pedestals of granite, bearing the names of the countries where people were persecuted during the Holocaust. A twenty-one-foot granite slab extending is inscribed with a brief history of the Holocaust. At the end of the slab is inscribed: The tower is bordered on both sides with two crushed gravel surface gardens of 234 granite markers, inscribed with names, places, and historical events related to the Holocaust. These are intended to evoke tombstones with broken edges to represent the shattered lives of Holocaust survivors. Each is different in form and size, to recall the diversity of those persecuted by the Nazis. Members of the public can have the names of friends or family members lost during the Holocaust inscribed on one of the adjacent historical markers for $360 donation to the Holocaust Memorial Committee. Donors are asked to provide the victim's name and a brief history of his or her Holocaust experience. The committee then meets to verify the authenticity of the proposed inscription. Thousands of names have already been inscribed on the granite markers. Among the granite markers are markers for places like

Auschwitz Auschwitz concentration camp ( (); also or ) was a complex of over 40 concentration and extermination camps operated by Nazi Germany in occupied Poland (in a portion annexed into Germany in 1939) during World War II and the Holocaust. It con ...

Bergen-Belsen Bergen-Belsen , or Belsen, was a Nazi concentration camp in what is today Lower Saxony in northern Germany, southwest of the town of Bergen near Celle. Originally established as a prisoner of war camp, in 1943, parts of it became a concentrati ...

, Belzec,

Buchenwald Buchenwald (; literally 'beech forest') was a Nazi concentration camp established on hill near Weimar, Germany, in July 1937. It was one of the first and the largest of the concentration camps within Germany's 1937 borders. Many actual or su ...

Babi Yar Babi Yar (russian: Ба́бий Яр) or Babyn Yar ( uk, Бабин Яр) is a ravine in the Ukrainian capital Kyiv and a site of massacres carried out by Nazi Germany's forces during its campaign against the Soviet Union in World War II. The fi ...

Mauthausen Mauthausen was a Nazi concentration camp on a hill above the market town of Mauthausen (roughly east of Linz), Upper Austria. It was the main camp of a group with nearly 100 further subcamps located throughout Austria and southern German ...

Dachau concentration camp , , commandant = List of commandants , known for = , location = Upper Bavaria, Southern Germany , built by = Germany , operated by = ''Schutzstaffel'' (SS) , original use = Political prison , construction ...

Treblinka Treblinka () was an extermination camp, built and operated by Nazi Germany in occupied Poland during World War II. It was in a forest north-east of Warsaw, south of the village of Treblinka in what is now the Masovian Voivodeship. The camp ...

Sobibor Sobibor (, Polish: ) was an extermination camp built and operated by Nazi Germany as part of Operation Reinhard. It was located in the forest near the village of Żłobek Duży in the General Government region of German-occupied Poland. As an ...

Theresienstadt Theresienstadt Ghetto was established by the Schutzstaffel, SS during World War II in the fortress town of Terezín, in the Protectorate of Bohemia and Moravia (German occupation of Czechoslovakia, German-occupied Czechoslovakia). Theresienstad ...

Majdanek Majdanek (or Lublin) was a Nazi concentration and extermination camp built and operated by the SS on the outskirts of the city of Lublin during the German occupation of Poland in World War II. It had seven gas chambers, two wooden gallows, a ...

and more. For events and facts like the Wannsee Conference, the

Death marches A death march is a forced march of prisoners of war or other captives or deportees in which individuals are left to die along the way. It is distinguished in this way from simple prisoner transport via foot march. Article 19 of the Geneva Conven ...

, the

Nuremberg Laws The Nuremberg Laws (german: link=no, Nürnberger Gesetze, ) were antisemitic and racist laws that were enacted in Nazi Germany on 15 September 1935, at a special meeting of the Reichstag convened during the annual Nuremberg Rally of th ...

, the

Evian Conference Evian ( , ; , stylized as evian) is a French company that bottles and commercialises mineral water from several sources near Évian-les-Bains, on the south shore of Lake Geneva. It produces over 2 billion plastic bottles per year. Today, Evia ...

Kristallnacht () or the Night of Broken Glass, also called the November pogrom(s) (german: Novemberpogrome, ), was a pogrom against Jews carried out by the Nazi Party's (SA) paramilitary and (SS) paramilitary forces along with some participation from ...

, the

Warsaw Uprising The Warsaw Uprising ( pl, powstanie warszawskie; german: Warschauer Aufstand) was a major World War II operation by the Polish resistance movement in World War II, Polish underground resistance to liberate Warsaw from German occupation. It occ ...

and more. People like

Raoul Wallenberg Raoul Gustaf Wallenberg (4 August 1912 – disappeared 17 January 1945)He is presumed to have died in 1947, although the circumstances of his death are not clear and this date has been disputed. Some reports claim he was alive years later. 31 J ...

Anne Frank Annelies Marie "Anne" Frank (, ; 12 June 1929 – )Research by The Anne Frank House in 2015 revealed that Frank may have died in February 1945 rather than in March, as Dutch authorities had long assumed"New research sheds new light on Anne Fra ...

Michael Ber Weissmandl Michael Dov Weissmandl ( yi, מיכאל בער ווייסמאנדל) (25 October 190329 November 1957) was an Orthodox rabbi of the Oberlander Jews of present-day western Slovakia. Along with Gisi Fleischmann he was the leader of the Bratislava ...

Mordechai Gebirtig Mordechai Gebirtig ( yi, מרדכי געבירטיג), born Mordecai Bertig (4 May 1877 – 4 June 1942), was an influential Polish poet and songwriter of the interwar period. He was shot by Germans in the Kraków Ghetto, occupied Poland, during t ...

and more. Poems and messages by famous people like

Abraham Sutzkever Abraham Sutzkever ( yi, אַבֿרהם סוצקעווער, Avrom Sutskever; he, אברהם סוצקבר; July 15, 1913 – January 20, 2010) was an acclaimed Yiddish poet. ''The New York Times'' wrote that Sutzkever was "the greatest poet o ...

Elie Wiesel Elie Wiesel (, born Eliezer Wiesel ''Eliezer Vizel''; September 30, 1928 – July 2, 2016) was a Romanian-born American writer, professor, political activist, Nobel Peace Prize, Nobel laureate, and Holocaust survivor. He authored Elie Wiesel b ...

Simon Wiesenthal Simon Wiesenthal (31 December 190820 September 2005) was a history of the Jews in Austria, Jewish Austrian Holocaust survivor, Nazi hunter, and writer. He studied architecture and was living in Lwów at the outbreak of World War II. He surviv ...

Dwight D. Eisenhower Dwight David "Ike" Eisenhower (born David Dwight Eisenhower; ; October 14, 1890 – March 28, 1969) was an American military officer and statesman who served as the 34th president of the United States from 1953 to 1961. During World War II, ...

the Partisan Anthem, First they came ... and more. As well as for numerous Jewish prewar communities.

Annual gathering

Since the dedicated Annual gatherings take place at the memorial on occasions throughout the year for remembering, memorial programs, and to honor leaders, educators, and heroic figures. Such as on

International Holocaust Remembrance Day The International Holocaust Remembrance Day, or the International Day in Memory of the Victims of the Holocaust, is an international memorial day on 27 January that commemorates the victims of the Holocaust, which resulted in the murder of on ...

Vandalism

The Memorial Park has been vandalized several times over the years. One such incident was in 2012 when vulgar language graffiti was sprayed on the Memorial. Another incident took place in 2019 when the Memorial Park was again vandalized with graffiti.

References

External links

The Holocaust Memorial Committee

The Holocaust Memorial Committee facebook page
{{DEFAULTSORT:Holocaust Memorial Park Holocaust memorials Holocaust commemoration The Holocaust World War II memorials in the United States The Holocaust and the United States Museums and exhibits about antisemitism