LAS VEGAS (AP) —Visitors to the newly constructed Holocaust Memorial Plaza at King David Memorial Cemetery in Las Vegas might be caught off guard by the crumbled brick wall with rebar sticking out at the plaza’s entryway.
But the symbolism is powerful.
``That depicts the deterioration of the Jewish community due to the Nazi regime,’’ Jay Poster, the cemetery’s general manager and founder, told the Las Vegas Sun.
The monument of perseverance was unveiled last weekend as part of the commemoration of Yom HaShoah, the Holocaust Remembrance Day celebrated April 27.
The plaza includes a Jewish star rising from the ground to symbolize survival, the names and locations of the Nazi’s World War II extermination camps, and a complete timeline of the Holocaust.
The plaza will be sacred space where survivors and their descendants can pay their respects to the six million Jews and five million others killed in the Holocaust. More important, it will provide a resource for educators and rabbis in their teaching, officials stress.
``That’s the entire Nazi regime, from when Hitler came to power to Victory Day,’’ said Poster, pointing to the timeline etched into granite lining the back of the plaza.
On the ground, six bronze plaques represent the concentration camps where a majority of the Jews were gassed and murdered. Each plaque is engraved with the camp name, location and number of deaths, such as the Auschwitz-Birkenau extermination camp in Poland where 1.1 million Jews were killed.
And, thanks to Rabbi Sanford Akselrad of Congregation Ner Tamid in Henderson, soil from near each of the six camps will be buried under the plaques. Akselrad was able to get the soil donated while on a mission trip in Poland this month helping refugees who are fleeing Ukraine.