What I can see

The Jewish Holocaust Memorial is made of beige marble to refer to the yellow colour of the Star of David. The star is fragmented, with its triangular ends symbolizing the thousands of Greek Jews from across the country, who were killed or tortured by the Nazis. On the inner sides of the triangles are the names of areas from which Greek Jews were taken to the concentration camps. The monument is placed in the space like a compass, pointing to the four points of the horizon, that is, where Jews lived in Greece. It is located next to the Jewish synagogue and the ancient cemetery of Kerameikos, giving an additional symbolism, as a monument to the dead. The plants around the monument are those we can find in different places across Greece, and thus symbolize that Jews used to live throughout the country prior to the war. A metal plaque has text, written especially for the monument, by Nobel Prize-winning author Elie Wiesel.

What I can't see

The monument, which is Dianna Magania’s work has occasionally been vandalized, often by young people tagging indiscriminately, but also by neo-Nazi groups. Many young people sit on the monument with their friends, treating it more as a piece of urban furniture than as a monument to the dead, who never had their own graves. Today, there are about 7,000 Greek Jews remaining in Greece, while Nazi atrocities killed about 75,000.

Info

• Address: Ermou St.

Bibliography