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A Discovery in Washington Park
A few years back, Marie and I were wandering around Portland’s huge Washington Park when we noticed a nice area with a bench, so we walked over a sat down. I looked down and found this little statue on the bench beside me.
What in the world? It seemed to be a bronze statue of a doll, as if someone had left it behind on the bench. Then I looked down and saw other items scattered along a path in front of us, including this broken violin below, as if someone had dropped it and then someone came along a stomped it with his boot.
I looked up the small path saw some kind of large granite memorial. So Marie and I got up and walked toward the memorial. Along the way were objects that people seemed to have left behind.
About halfway down the path, I began to think that this might be a Holocaust Memorial, and these little bronze objects in the path that lead to the monument symbolized objects that Jews might have dropped or forced to leave behind as they were marched away from their homes.
Baby shoe and spectacles.
I found the children’s objects, like this teddy bear and the baby shoe above, particularly pathetic.
This seems to be a Menorah.
And here is the path that leads to the monument itself. That object on the right is a suitcase. The monument contains the names of murdered Jews with Oregon and Southern Washington relatives. The path, of course, represents the path that 6 million Jews walked on, shedding their personal belongings along the way.
The monument also contains these words:
I hope the next time you’re in the Portland area, you’ll drop by the Holocaust Memorial in Washington Park.
Endnote: Marie and I were recently in Hamburg, Germany, where we came across little plaques, like the following one, embedded in the sidewalk in the front of homes where Jews lived before they taken away by the Nazis.
Only about 2 by 2 inches, these little brass plaques can be found all over the city. (Hamburg had no Jewish ghetto, though Jews could not live in the inner city.) The above plaque reads: “Here lived Alfred Boddicker, born 1886, taken into custody in 1936, died in Sachsenhausen in 1942.
And above are the plaques for three members of the same family. All ended up dying in the Jewish ghetto in Łódź, Poland.
The Łódź ghetto served as a sweatshop for the Nazi war effort and a prison for Jews and Roma. The Nazis finally emptied the ghetto and transported the remaining Jews to the Auschwitz and Chelmsford death camps, where most were murdered upon arrival.
Published in General
So the individuals are being remembered by name and place. Very good. It’s important to remember the mass killings, too, but we shouldn’t remember them only that way.
When we visited family history places in Schleswig-Holstein and Lower Saxony this summer, we found memorials in church cemeteries commemorating the individual soldiers who had been killed in WWI and WWII. There was usually a plaque for each soldier, giving birth date, death date, and place of death. Most of those places for WWII soldiers were in eastern Europe; not many of them came home to die. There were some familiar family surnames among them, so we are probably related to some of those soldiers.
We don’t know that any of these people were in units that took part in the holocaust killings, but whether or not, willing or not, they were part of the larger machine that did it. That makes it all the more horrifying.
I’ve always had a distaste for loose talk about wiping out whole classes of people, even (or especially) when it is just joking.
Below is a photo of a Catholic nun at a home in Jordan for special needs kids. Behind her is the tabernacle inside their little chapel. It is made from the door of an oven from a concentration camp in Europe somewhere. She was particularly proud of it, because she serves children that would have been put to death by the Nazis. A satisfying irony, I guess…
I’ve heard about the little plaques in Germany; it’s a very touching demonstration. The memorial in Portland is amazing. I’ve never heard of it. It must be stunning to begin the walk innocently (as some Jews may have) and realize where you’ve ended up. Thanks for sharing it, Kent.
There are similar side walk markers in Amsterdam. It is very moving to come across one on a sunny July day and realize from it how awful humanity can be. Here’s the marker for Jacob Musaph in front of his home. Note how it is made prominent on the sidewalk. This is on 27 Concertgebouwplein, near the Concertgebouw concert hall.
None in Paris that I can remember. Fancy that.
And there are none in Copenhagen, capital of the only occupied nation in which the puppet government actually protected its Jewish citizens, because only a few Danes were sent off.
Memorials by definition should turn the mind to those remembered. This is a heartbreaking way to do that. Thanks for sharing.
Here are a couple from Warsaw:
Beyond that you get into an area where a lot of new construction is going up, and it’s a little harder to pick your way around it. But eventually you can get to this piece of the old ghetto wall that is still standing. You have to go through an old apartment courtyard to get to it:
This place is away from the crowds, but there were other people who came to visit it. Some of them looked stereotypically Jewish. A guy was sitting in a chair on the apartment lawn on the other side of the iron fence, scowling at us.After going back through the apartment courtyard and back out onto the street, I took this photo of a different type of memorial.
We visited the Pinkas Synagogue while in Prague. The walls contain the names of more than 100,000 Czech Jews killed by the Nazis.
You’re doing something right when the Nazis want to kill you.
How macabre.
That’s exactly the point.
Yeah, it’s been 70 years or so. Everyone knows, it’s in the schools and documentaries, we’re not about to forget. Sometimes I like to have happy walks too.
That is, if this were at Dachau, or Ann Frank’s home, then it’s very appropriate. But Portland, Oregon has as much to do with the nazi death camps as my dog. So what’s the point of making every stroll through the park so depressing? I like to stroll through a park to be happy, myself.
“The monument contains the names of murdered Jews with Oregon and Southern Washington relatives.” It appears to be in honor of the area’s Jewish ancestors. If you think about it, the Jews have had no homeland for 2000 years, only since 1948 has their homeland been restored. So their homeland has been all over the world. It’s no different than a Holocaust memorial or museum anywhere, but that fact that it’s so subtle, just blending in, is almost like the Jewish people’s story. Thanks @kentforrester for an amazing post – the pictures especially.
Some of us think that attacks on the Jews is an international threat. So reminders are put up in places you wouldn’t expect. Especially since some schools are trying to ignore the topic. And now that you know about that park, you don’t have to visit it.
These shoes in Budapest are very similar to the items in this post. They represent the spot where Nazis pushed Jews into the river in the winter time to drown.
Sidewalk markers in Regensburg, Germany
So now you know to avoid that park.
It’s encouraging to know Portland isn’t completely nuts.
I’d say the park is consistent with their victimhood pathology.
Skyler, I see your point, but I also think that the various Holocust monuments around the world, including this one in Portland, are helpful reminders about that terrible era in human history. To me, the monuments say, “Never again.”
I’m not sure that “victim pathology” is the best way to describe our attitude toward memorials to the Holocaust. After all, the Jews were victims. Have you ever seen photographs of mothers with their children being loaded onto boxcars? Those are images that should never be forgotten, and the memorials are more than graphic reminders. They usually elicicit an emotional response.
Also, the Memorial in Washington Park is set off from the walking path. That is, you have to go into the Memorial area. If you don’t wish to, you just keep walking on the path.
Like you, I think there is such a thing as “victim pathology,” and I don’t care for it either, but I don’t think the Holocaust memorials — and the people who visit them — fit into that category.
80% of Holland’s Jews were murdered by the Nazis
Jacob Musaph might have played second bassoon under Mahler, or Walter, or Strauss, or Furtwangler.
I’m a Christian. Jews are my spiritual ancestors. The Holocaust killed millions of my spiritual ancestors.
Anti Semitism is resurgent in Europe.
If one is walking in Amsterdam, or especially if one is in Paris, one is walking on desecrated ground.
Never Forget.
I lack the memorializing gene, and generally think there should be far fewer monuments. And I understand the desire to enjoy a park without having to think about heavy issues, remote in time and place. (There’s a small park here in downtown Birmingham that features a series of statues with snarling police dogs, water cannon, and menacing policemen. Yes, it happened, not so remotely in time and place, but I persist in thinking that bronzing such memories may be a mistake. The statues make me cringe and I avoid that park.)
But the Portland memorial seems beautiful and poignant. And a memorial for people who are nameless and otherwise forgotten is an uplifting bit of pushback against those who wanted them gone and forgotten.
Thank you, Suspira. Your response, in my eyes, is spot on.
It’s interesting how worldwide, we have endangered animals lists, and we have international lists of groups in danger, such as indigenous peoples whose habitats are disappearing due to rising sea water, but Jews and Christians are not on the list, unless its a Christian or Jewish reporting outlet – in fact persecution is not even reported on the nightly news. Persecution as in loss of life and ethnic and religious cleansing. You have to hunt for these stories – they are buried. Only those in the trenches are sounding the alarms, to deaf ears.
Hours before the terror attack in France, dozens of Jewish tombstones were spray painted with swastikas – nothing was reported, just the antics of the anarchists and their demands.
https://thehill.com/blogs/blog-briefing-room/news/421463-37-tombstones-spray-painted-with-swastikas-at-jewish
I’m inclined to agree with Skyler on this one. I support monuments in appropriate places, but this doesn’t seem to be such a place.
It might also be nice to combine a Holocaust memorial with a fitting war memorial to the Americans who fought and died to destroy the Nazis and rescue the few survivors. I don’t recall ever seeing this done, but I admit that I have not personally visited any Holocaust memorial sites.