Last June, the Jewish community marked two milestones: 80 years since the liberation of Nazi concentration camps and the 40th Annual Holocaust Memorial Gathering at Holocaust Memorial Park, located along the water between Emmons Avenue and Shore Boulevard in Sheepshead Bay.
New York City is home to the largest Jewish community outside Israel, with the majority living in Brooklyn. With the support of then-Mayor Ed Koch, the site was designated in 1995 as the city’s first outdoor museum of its kind. At the dedication, Holocaust survivor and Nazi hunter Simon Wiesenthal, who helped bring more than 1,100 Nazi war criminals to justice, delivered the keynote address.
Then-Brooklyn Borough President Howard Golden allocated funds for the permanent memorial, which was completed and officially dedicated by then-Mayor Rudolph Giuliani in 1997.
The centerpiece, under the care of the city Department of Parks and Recreation, is a 14 1/2-foot tower sculpture of granite and exposed steel, topped with a bronze “Eternal Flame” and the inscription “Remember.” It stands on three circular granite pedestals etched with the names of countries where people were persecuted during the Holocaust. A 21-foot granite slab extending from the sculpture is inscribed with a Holocaust history written by Alfred Gallup.
Surrounding the tower are 246 granite tablets resembling tombstones, inscribed with names, places and historical events tied to the Holocaust. The most recent stone honors the Kindertransport, a British-led rescue operation that saved more than 10,000 mostly Jewish children from Nazi persecution between 1938 and 1940.
Vivian Singer and Barry Lituchy, co-presidents of the nonprofit Holocaust Memorial Committee, described the park as a “unique” institution that is more than a place of remembrance. While it honors the more than 6 million Jewish lives lost during the Shoah, they said, it also warns of the dangers of inhumanity.
“It’s an outdoor museum that teaches, not just the community but the whole world, about what was done to the Jewish people during the Holocaust, with markers that explain specific events, or people, or incidents during the Holocaust,” Lituchy told Brooklyn Paper. “And I don’t think there’s anything like it anywhere in the world.”
Singer called the site a sanctuary for families of Holocaust victims.
“This is the place where people who’ve lost their relatives in the Holocaust come,” Singer said. “They lay stones on the markers because they have no other place to go. So this is the place for them to go to and to pour their heart out.”
According to Singer and Lituchy, the memorial draws visitors from around the world and serves as a resource for younger generations to learn about World War II and the persecution of the Jewish people.
Despite outreach, Singer said, it has been “a little hard” to get schools to visit.
“I don’t know exactly what it is,” she said. “We outreach to the schools, and it’s not that easy. I don’t know what the answer is, and I worry right now, with the climate going on, it may be harder.”
Lituchy voiced similar concerns.
“It’s not necessarily being taken advantage of by the educational system or by the city fully,” he said. “Some politicians and some teachers just don’t get it, that this is a terrific way of educating young people, that this is an excellent resource for young people to learn, to discuss, and then to reflect on this horrendous crime of genocide.”
Over the years, the memorial has been defaced with anti-Semitic graffiti. In 2023, an inert grenade was found nearby, prompting calls for 24-hour video surveillance.
“It’s a whole process. So it’s not that simple,” Singer said.
Lituchy said he hopes visitors leave with a sense of peace and justice.
“It’s impossible not to learn from what the park has to teach us,” he said. “We should try to avoid wars. We should think of other people’s humanity, and we should remember how much we suffered as a result of man’s inhumanity.”
