Holocaust Memorial Charleston

This monument commemorates the victims of the Holocaust from 1933 until 1945.

On the plaquette it says the following:

From 1933 until 1945, the National Socialist (Nazi) regime in Germany implemented a racial theory declaring the "German Aryan Race" superior. The Nazis used this perverse Theory and their military and industrial might to dominate Europe and to separate, imprison and ultimately destroy millions of human beings. Those who the Nazis deemed undesirable and sought to eliminate included political dissidents, homosexuals, the mentally and physically disabled, Roma (Gypsies) and Jehovah’s witnesses. But their chief victims were six million Jews.

What began as racial laws to strip Jews of their livelihood, their property and their civil rights accelerated into a campaign to systematically slaughter millions of men, women and children. By 1942, the machinery of mass murder was in full operation. Jews and other victims from all over Europe were sent to some 9000 concentration and labor camps throughout Europe, and to the killing centers at Auschwitz-Birkenau, Sobibor, Majdanek, Treblinka, Belzec and Chelmno located in Poland.

The denial of Human Rights with advanced technology and a pitiless will to dominate, caused the death of innocent millions and the annihilation of most of the Jews of Europe.

The central design is a 'tallit', a prayer shawl used by men in the synagogue and also used to wrap a body for burial, lying discarded on the floor of a rectangular space said to represent a synagogue, a prison or even a gas chamber. The surrounding wall is inscribed with the names of Nazi death and prison camps as well as a plaque with the names of Holocaust survivors who moved to the Charleston area.
Ironically, the monument was built in the shadow of a large monument to John C Calhoun, 7th Vice President of US, a great defender of slavery and of white supremacy, This monument was removed in 2020 in the era after the George Floyd murder.

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Source

• Text: Gio Theunissen
• Photos: Anthony (Sharky) Ward