New York City Council president Paul Screvane proposed last night that a memorial to the 6,000,000 European Jewish victims of the Nazi holocaust be placed on a site in Manhattan, near Times Square. Mr. Screvane, who is one of four candidates seeking the Democratic nomination for Mayor in the September 14 primaries, said Mayor Wagner supported the idea. Mr. Screvane said he had agreed to assist in obtaining the site following a meeting with Rabbi Max Schenck, president of the New York Board of Rabbis.
The city designated a site in Manhattan for such a memorial in 1947, but its sponsors were unable to raise funds for the project. Last February, the New York City Art Commission rejected a proposal to place in a park near the Hudson River a huge concrete and brass monument as a memorial both to the European holocaust victims and to the heroes of the Warsaw Ghetto uprising in World War II. The commission said that the proposed memorial showed “so tragic” a representation that it might distress children playing in the park. That decision was sustained by Mayor Wagner and Mr. Screvane, but the Mayor said he would seek a suitable substitute site.
A paved mall between two streets in Manhattan, three blocks from Times Square, is the site Mr. Screvane proposed. Rabbi Schenck described the site as “ideally located.” Rabbi Harold H. Gordon, chairman of the Committee for the Memorial for the Six Million, said his committee was considering sketches of new memorials to submit to the Art Commission.
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