A Sculpture of Love and Anguish: The Holocaust Memorial, Miami Beach

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.. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. One day, a man or a woman who tells his sanctuary of remembrance, and one day, what it all through. It's what the killer really does to us. As a pig pig,

let's help with them only in the other tender. With this user, what are the other? There you go, the mower, you make a difference. I hope that visitors will bring their children. I hope they will look at the pictures, pictures. All the patients who have parents lying in the street, they just mother shielding their children. They grew up as a mother, there's no in themselves, while poor men in the old man who looks like my grandfather and everyone else. Look at his face, look at all the faces. Look, and you will realize that there exists that is suffering, that there are centers suffering. Go on to us, but gradually which is

museum is flying, green convey is beyond work, and beyond imagination, but not beyond memory. And only those who are there know will know what is man being there. In 1985, a small group of survivors and other private citizens headed by Norman Brannon secured land from the city of Miami Beach in order to erect a memorial to the six million Jews who perished in the Holocaust. They turned to scout a Kenneth Trister with this immense challenge of conveying the unimaginable of remembering downthinkable. Through reflection and startling artistic sensitivity, Trister himself, a Jew, though not a survivor,

has given us his vision. When there's nothing more than a concept, a request to create a lasting memorial of an event as shattering as the Holocaust. How does the artist begin? From where does he draw the central image that will be at the very heart of the finished war? This is the story of how one artist responded to that challenge. Now there's an artist to pick the horror of war within the boundaries of a wooden frame.

How does he turn cold unmarked bronze into the gates of hell? How does an artist look at an empty field and envision such silly majesty? And how feels such vast silence with such glorious music? A very socially conscious work of art has a dominant theme. It's very soul around which the rest revolves. Here is the towering arm that rises from the center to anchor the entire world.

The arm bears more than a hundred intertwined figures each portraying its own testimony. The towering arm is encircled by other freestanding victims. The viewer is irresistibly swept up into the total scene becoming a part of the terrible drama. A monument, a memory when six million Jews became the tragic victims of the Holocaust. While it is impossible to depict even one second of this overwhelming human tragedy, the artist is driven to try on behalf of all of us. So before the first catch was drawn, what were the images the world had of this most infamous event in human history that might serve as inspiration no matter how painful. You and beings cried out and no one had an unspeakable pain and death and no one saw hands reached out but there was no one to hold and then it was too late for them it was over.

From scenes of such unspeakable brutality, how then did the artist envision this? Imagine you're in a concentration camp in Poland in the middle of the war surrounded by the Nazis no communication with the outside world and you're suffering and you're a martyr you're giving up your life each one probably died thinking that no one would ever care no one would ever know no one would ever remember. Slowly on paper figures emerged each representing a life each part of another helping reaching out. I realized these remaining women who were just

beginning their lives together young men who had dreams ambitions young ladies for whom life was just taking its first steps families for whom everything was promised filled with possibilities rich in expectations. So the memorial is a beautiful garden in honor of beautiful people remembered in how they lived and not how they died the transition from thought to paper the three-dimensional reality would take place here in a found relocated in Mexico owned by a family named Portia the creative process constantly holding taking on a vibrant life of its own

figures given emotions brought to life by group of skilled artisans on their master's touch and where once fire had been the destroyer here it would become the crucible of life what was never forgotten was that these were people that had one smile shared tears loved each other human beings whose lives were filled with joy who cared for each other the beauty of each life

can be seen every face with the passions clear they smatter given eloquent life by skilled life would have to be chosen to each other bronze pieces one by one the final bronze pieces were nearing completion it was time to begin placing each one in its size location first by bolting then by welding and then by grinding so it all becomes one and as the work progressed haunting images of holocaust heroes started to become manifest

the smoke and the flames of the kills all too similar to the death camp crematory the discarded molds and body forms piled in the corner disturbingly reminiscent of victims bodies and of mass graves the final step applying the various patina colors for every figure every part of the total sculpture so i had to think about the color for instance the patina of green it's a blue green which is the way bronze turns and copper turns when it's exposed to the weather in certain areas but i didn't want a chance that it would turn by itself and maybe these faces become ugly may they become street maybe they look chick you know like scarred so i did the patina myself i put the colors on myself we changed the surface of the of the bronze

to make it a patina so by using blue green brown gold orange patinas every figure is different every face is different and when i put the patina on it dripped i let it drip was the tears and i love water lilies i love the fact that water lilies you know float on this reflection pond they bloom during the day they close at night then others night blooming waters come out at night and have the opposite cycle so this water lily pond is full of these white floating flowers which are reminiscent of the souls of those that left one day again someone brought me to a boganville of plants full of thousands of white flowers the end of one branch is several red flowers it's obvious as simple as it is the white is the six million but some survive not a lot

a few survive thousand here a thousand there the red flowers represent the survivors so there's a symbol that came from from god from nature like so many works of art the profound effect of the Miami Beach Holocaust memorial on the visitor can be lie the subtleties and the complexities of its workings when first strikes you is the serenity of a space they're reflecting pool water lilies palm trees boganvilleia the radiant Jerusalem stone the effect is calming and reflective perhaps not what one might expect from a memorial involving

such horror but that is precisely the point when i started to conceive the memorial i thought it was a sensual that i honor the people that died and not let the Nazis design the Holocaust memorial many artists depict the holocaust in its horde in concrete bob wire and the ghastly images only when i started thinking about i realize that these are beautiful people in a beautiful civilization and the memorial therefore should be beautiful it's in their honor and so Trister created an environmental garden one that allows the visitor to stop admire the beauty and reflect the design strongly affects the visitor as he journeys through its spaces spaces that lead through a carefully constructed physical and emotional odyssey in order to really involve somebody number one i have to make them

forget about their everyday life so i try to isolate the person as he walks through with walls with screens of trees with depressed patios or courtyards so that you i took away this surrounding neighborhood destroyed it i wanted someone in the two and a half acres to get involved in in nineteen thirty nine nineteen forty nineteen forty one year and so i made a series of pace and each path leads them to the next stage your first led to this pathway by an initial sculpture it is of a mother and her two children the children clink to her in fear the mother gathers them to her to protect them from the gathering menace while behind them are inscribed on francs now famous words there in spite of everything i still believe that people are really good at heart

it is a reminder of the ironi convivolence felt by the european jury as nazism began to slowly grow and take hold of europe from here the path leads you to a bougain villia covered trellis where you are led through the history of the holocaust and it is here that the emotional journey begins inside the colonnade you find a procession of text and photographs compiled by holocaust historian dr han fegan that in part the horrible magnitude of the holocaust's toll this section is important because the photographs and text not only start to pull you into the past but for the younger generation and the generations yet to come they serve as an education and testimony to the horrors that took place

this to then adds another element to the spell that is being woven as you make your way down the processional music imperceptively begins to work its way into your awareness it is the sound of children singing sweetly hauntingly and without your realizing it has become an emotionally charged soundtrack and as you work your way down the procession through the history you descend deeper into the terror and steadily your intellect gives way to a state of rowing motion finally as you reach the end of this path you are at last aware that the children's voices have been emanating from somewhere beyond and you're led up a short path where

you find an alcove guarded by an eternal flame you enter a domed space with a stained glass star of David overhead projecting its image onto the Jerusalem stone it is a place to stop and reflect with here down a seemingly endless tunnel your attention is captured by the image of a small child reaching out terrified crying for help even here Trista has subtly heightened the effect by designing the tunnel with a narrowing force perspective that both exaggerates the feeling of distance from the child while drawing your eye directly to her you cannot help but to go to her and as you do you are pulled third into this emotional vortex and then at last you enter the

inner sanctu the giant bones are erupts from the ground with an art stretched hand bearing the tormented figures victims trying to escape through acts of love each struggles to help the other through the hell of the Holocaust stories that need no words to portray them emotions that no words can ever describe The greatness of Trista's creation is that the voices of those six million are not muted

by their number but instead resonate in an overwhelming chorus of emotion and tragedy yet all the while affirming their undeniable dignity when at last you feel you are able to leave these souls there is nothing to do but exit the way you came in leaving the pleading child behind an art through the silent punon along the way the names of the Nazi concentration camps have been carved into the stone walls

while thin slits allow fleeting glimpses from the outside world perhaps not unlike the slatted view from the cattle cars through which the doomed viewed their rapidly receding world another colonnade leads you out again walled in black marble but this time the wall carries the names of the victims people families and tyre villages all of them friends or relatives of Holocaust survivors who have visited the memorial and as one walks along if the sun is high in the sky the trellis work overhead cast shadows below eerily reminiscent of the railroad tracks that led so many Jews to death in the concentration camps

at the end of the colonnade of martyrs there is one last statue it is the mother her two children first presented to us at the beginning of this journey only now they lie dead and as in the beginning more of unfranchs words hotter above them but instead of hope and trust they now speak only bitter commentary ideals dreams and cherished hopes rise within us only to meet the horrible truth and be shotted it is an eloquent final note and one can only turn look back and reflect on what has just been seen what has just been felt in what took place during those years of horror