Holocaust Sculpture To Be Constructed In Squirrel Hill
PITTSBURGH (KDKA) -- On this Holocaust Rememberance Day, a moving ground breaking ceremony took place at Community Day School, a school for Jewish Children.
Dignitaries and local leaders marked the spot where a new Holocaust sculpture will soon sit.
A memorial that will stand 12 feet tall and 45 feet wide, it will be made up of 960 glass blocks filled with six million pop tabs. The tabs represent the six million Jews killed in the Holocaust.
The idea for the project was hatched 16 years ago by history teacher Bill Walter. He challenged his students to collect six million tabs.
Walter wanted to demonstrate the vast number of victims from the Holocaust.
It took four-and-a-half years and a lot of help to gather up all the tabs.
"It's been so long," Walter said. "It's just, to me, a pretty moving thing. This means a lot to me."
"People said they got them on trips to Europe and in Israel and on airplanes and in Disney World and really everywhere," said Community Day Alumnae Alison Levine.
The sculpture will have special meaning to many, especially to Holocaust survivors like 91-year old Moshe Baran.
"It's a great contribution to the history of this tragic event, which is a stain on human kind, and it needs to be reminded because we have a tendency to forget," Baran said.
The Community Day School still needs to raise roughly $300,000 in Squirrel Hill.
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