SCULPTURES MEMORIALIZING THE HOLOCAUST
by Hal Goldberg
The purpose of my sculptures is to make people think long and hard about the Holocaust. On these web pages you will find sculptures carved in marble that commemorate the heroism of that time and place. Here you will not find any ambiguous abstract artwork or any sense of defeatism. These sculptures are dedicated to one of the most important lessons of the Holocaust - Am Yisroel Chai - the Jewish people will always survive.
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Abba Kovner says Ha Motzi at Langwasser Prison, 1946
(Carrara marble, 30” x 33” x 23” - 2022)
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The sculpture commemorates the most famous act of revenge by Jews against the Nazis. It depicts Abba Kovner holding a challah which has been laced with arsenic to poison the SS prisoners held at Langwasser prison in Nuremberg by the U.S. Army in 1946.
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They will never be forgotten: Serge and Beate Klarsfeld, Marceline Kogan (Convoy 45)
(French Limestone, 65" x 39" x 39" - 2012)
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This sculpture was installed In September 2012 at the Camp Des Milles Holocaust Memorial Museum in France. Serge and Beate Klarsfeld are famous Nazi hunters based in Paris, and Marceline Kogan was a two year old child rounded up in the infamous Paris "Rafle" in 1942 and killed in Auschwitz. The sculpture depicts her emerging from Serge Klarsfeld's book, "Jewish children deported from France." Beate Klarsfeld's autobiography,"Wherever they may be" is also shown in the sculpture. Camp des Milles was a French internment camp in a former tile factory near Aix-en-Provence. Between 1941 and 1942 it was used as a transit camp for Jews arrested by the Nazis. About 2,000 of the inmates were shipped off to the Drancy internment camp on the way to Auschwitz. Since 1993, the site served as a World War II memorial, and in September 2012 the memorial was turned into a Holocaust memorial museum.
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"Juden haben waffen!" – Ghetto Fighters Kill S.S. Unterscharfuhrer Josef Blosche, Warsaw Ghetto, 1943 (White Carrara Marble - 36" x 48" x 24" - 2013)
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| When the Jewish Ghetto Fighters began firing on them, the first words the Nazis uttered were, "Juden haben waffen !" ("The Jews have weapons.") I chose Josef Blosche, the sadistic "Frankenstein" of the Ghetto to symbolize this event. (Blosche was the SS soldier pointing the rifle at the little boy in the famous Warsaw Ghetto photo). Blosche was actually tried and executed after the war, but in my sculpture the Jewish Ghetto Fighters kill him in the Ghetto. The sculpture will be installed on a base representing a sewer opening in a cobblestone street (in the shape of a "Z" to symbolize the Ghetto Fighters organization ZOB.) The Nazis went down into the sewers to find the Jews, and here is where I envision Blosche being shot dead. (see picture below)
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Click on the other pages to see these additional sculptures:
- Raoul Wallenberg at 77
- Vanished World - Homage to Roman Vishniac
- Anne Frank At The Wall In Jerusalem
- Golem DNA
- Kinder Fun Maidanek
- Original Sign
- No Wagner, No Holocaust
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