Boston's Holocaust Memorial
Boston's cultural and social contributions are wide ranging and numerous, and although not a usual tourist destination, the Boston's Holocaust memorial is well worth the visit to anyone interested in history or art. It is heart-wrenching, one of the more emotionally charged memorials I've seen (and I've been to D. C. several times, walked the National Mall). So this is not the ideal "date" place to visit, but it is memorable and conveniently located near Fanheil Hall. It is directly also directly across from Union Oyster House, which is Boston's oldest restaurant and well worth the visit in and of itself.
As to the memorial itself: it consists of six enormous square, glass towers spanning a walkway, and on these glass towers are etched the numbers assigned to the victims of the Nazi death camps. Each tower, representing one of the six largest death camps, towers above you as you stand beneath and inside it, and the numbers go on and on, up and up. It is sobering. Beneath each tower, embedded in the sidewalk, is a pit, covered by the grate upon which you stand, and glowing embers are down there, smoke wafts up . . . the affect is . . . words fail me.
The intensity of feeling evoked by looking at all those numbers, knowing exactly what they represent, while simultaneously having a "gas" released beneath your feet cannot be described adequately. At least I can't do it. I walked from one tower to the next, standing and paying my respects to all those millions of men, women, and children who died in each represented death camp, and as I did so, I eventually noticed that I had tears streaming down my face, and that others around me did too. They were those spontaneous tears that don't seem to affect your breathing, that don't seem to be real until you put your hand to your cheek and feel them; you know the ones.
One of the hardest things to understand about the Holocaust is how it could have happened, how no one stopped it before it was finally stopped. Along the walkway at the memorial are large pieces of granite with a variety of quotes engraved on each: quotes from Nazi soldiers, allied soldiers, survivors of the concentration camps. And I think that one of the more moving and damning answers to that question is engraved on one of these granite blocks:
They came first for the Communists,
and I didn't speak up because I wasn't a Communist.
Then they came for the Jews,
and I didn't speak up because I wasn't a Jew.
Then they came for the trade unionists,
and I didn't speak up because I wasn't a trade unionist.
Then they came for the Catholics,
and I didn't speak up because I was a Protestant.
Then they came for me,
and by that time no one was left to speak up. --Martin Niemoeller
