(JTA) — A monument honoring some 40,000 Jews deported to the Treblinka death camp in 1942 was dedicated in the Polish city of Czestochowa.
The monument, designed by the Czestochowa-born Israeli artist Samuel Willenberg, was unveiled Tuesday as part of a three-day gathering of the World Society of Czestochowa Jews and their descendants.
Polish government officials, Holocaust survivors and Polish-born Rabbi Yisrael Meir Lau, the chairman of Yad Vashem and former Ashkenazi chief rabbi of Israel, took part in the dedication ceremony.
The monument is designed in the form of a cracked wall and includes a star of David made of railway track.
Other events during the three-day meeting included an exhibition by the American artist Fay Grajower and an academic conference.
A commemorative concert by violinist Joshua Bell was scheduled for Tuesday evening at the Czestochowa philharmonic hall. Bell was to perform on a 300-year-old Stradivarius that once belonged to the Czestochowa-born Jewish violinist Bronislaw Huberman, who died in Switzerland in 1947.
The philharmonic hall stands on the site of the city’s New Synagogue, destroyed by the Nazis in 1939.
Bell is scheduled to perform Wednesday on the Huberman violin at a gala concert in Warsaw held to raise funds for the Museum of the History of Polish Jews under construction.
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