''Holocaust Memorial'' is a public artwork by American artist Claire Lieberman located on the Jewish Museum Milwaukee lawn, which is near downtown

Milwaukee Milwaukee ( ), officially the City of Milwaukee, is both the most populous and most densely populated city in the U.S. state of Wisconsin and the county seat of Milwaukee County. With a population of 577,222 at the 2020 census, Milwaukee ...

Wisconsin Wisconsin () is a state in the upper Midwestern United States. Wisconsin is the 25th-largest state by total area and the 20th-most populous. It is bordered by Minnesota to the west, Iowa to the southwest, Illinois to the south, Lake M ...

, United States. It is located at 1360 North Prospect Ave. This piece is 10 ft x 24 ft x 20 ft. The materials used are

Corten steel Weathering steel, often referred to by the genericised trademark COR-TEN steel and sometimes written without the hyphen as corten steel, is a group of steel alloys which were developed to eliminate the need for painting, and form a stable rus ...

black granite In the construction industry, black rocks that share the hardness and strength of granitic rocks are known as black granite. In geological terms, black granite might be gabbro, diabase, basalt, diorite, norite, or anorthosite Anorthosite () i ...

, and brick. The ''Holocaust Memorial'' was created in 1983.

Description

''Holocaust Memorial'' is a sculpture that conveys a circular space, which is 10 ft x 24 ft x 20 ft.
SIRIS. The ground is laid brick that is almost enclosed by granite seating which forms the circle. At the entrance there are 22 trapezoid panels of steel, eleven on each side. Each trapezoid has a name of a concentration camp in steel that can be seen from inside the circle. On the opposite side of the entrance there is a Granite Pillar with a yellow band. The sculpture also has an inscription which reads "IN MEMORY OF THE SIX MILLION JEWISH MARTYRS WHO PERISHED IN THE HOLOCAUST AND IN RECOGNITION OF THE COURAGE AND SPIRIT OF THE SURVIVORS"

Historic Information

"Visitors enter the enclosed Memorial through steel sheets that evoke the pages of a book. Each one is marked with the name of a concentration camp. Over the years, the metal has aged, making the sheets look tear-stained. As one goes into the memorial, railroad ties recall the trains which transported Jews to concentration camps. A granite obelisk is at the center of the sculpture, to symbolize the chimneys used in crematoria. It is inscribed with the word Zakhor, 'remember."
Jewish Museum Milwaukee. The Memorial is both open, yet protected, creating a space of its own. Community members, including immigrants who lost loved ones in the Holocaust, use the ''Holocaust Memorial'' as a place to remember.

Location History

'Holocaust Memorial' is located at the Jewish Museum Milwaukee funded by the Milwaukee Jewish Federation.

Artist

Claire Lieberman grew up in Milwaukee, Wisconsin. She attended Whitefish Bay High School as well as the Milwaukee Independent School. She studied art at the Boston Museum School, graduating in 1976. Lieberman then moved to

Carrara Carrara ( , ; , ) is a city and ''comune'' in Tuscany, in central Italy, of the province of Massa and Carrara, and notable for the white or blue-grey marble quarried there. It is on the Carrione River, some west-northwest of Florence. Its mot ...

, Italy to study how to be a stonecutter. She worked in New York City from 1985 until 1993, and then joined the faculty of the

University of Chicago The University of Chicago (UChicago, Chicago, U of C, or UChi) is a private university, private research university in Chicago, Illinois. Its main campus is located in Chicago's Hyde Park, Chicago, Hyde Park neighborhood. The University of Chic ...

. "Ms. Lieberman's work is abstract, yet figurative in intent. Her sculpture has interesting contrasts in forms and texture. She regularly exhibits in major galleries and her work is reviewed in major art periodicals."Buck, Diane M. and Virginia A. Palmer (1995). ''Outdoor Sculpture in Milwaukee: A Cultural and Historical Guidebook'', p. 6. The State Historical Society of Wisconsin, Madison

References

{{MilwaukeePublicArt 1983 sculptures Holocaust memorials Jews and Judaism in Wisconsin Outdoor sculptures in Milwaukee Steel sculptures in Wisconsin The Holocaust and the United States