San Franciso Holocaust Memorial Desecrated Soon After Dedication; Cleanup Work Started Immediately

Less than four days after its dedication, San Francisco’s monument to the Holocaust, one of the few memorials to the Holocaust on public property in the United States, was desecrated. Cleanup work began on Sunday, according to Peggy Isaak Gluck of the Jewish Bulletin of Northern California.

The target of the vandals was the II white plaster bronze figures created by sculptor George Segal, ten of the representations prone and one, a man, staring out of a barbed-wire enclosure. Segal titled the work, “The Holocaust.”

The memorial is located in Lincoln Park, overlooking San Francisco Bay. The desecration took place aparently sometime between Saturday night and Sunday morning. The faces of the ten corpses were found covered with black and yellow spray paint. The memorial was dedicated last Wednesday in a solemn ceremony attended by some 500 survivors and relatives and friends.

The desecration discovery was made by a security employe of the American Protective Services during a shift of guards in the around-the-clock surveillance. The guard on the midnight to 8 a.m. graveyard shift, the apparent period of the vandalism, was dismissed.

At about 9 a.m. the day shift guard alerted his company, police and representatives of the Jewish Community Relations Council (JCRC) of San Francisco. Rita Semel, JCRC associate director, said the security company was taking “full responsibility” for the damage.

Also found in black spray paint on the back wall on two sides of the massive monument were the words “Is this necessary?” The standing figure was not hit by the vandals.

Because the city public works department does not work on Sunday and was closed Memorial Day, a private steam-cleaning company was hired to remove the daubings. Semel said every effort will be made to restore the Segal sculptures to their original state. She also noted that private security will continue around the clock and the city police department also will continue to patrol the area. Restoraton cost was estimated at $1,000.

OTHER VANDALISMS CITED

The JCRC issued a statement declaring that Holocaust memorials all over the United States “have been assaulted by vandals and grafitti, as have other public structures, whether by mindless youths or anti-Semites. This is a form of terrorism and we will not be swayed by it.” But Mayor Dianne Feinstein’s Committee for a Memorial to the Holocaust, which includes Jews and non-Jews, reiterated concerns expressed when the site was selected, an open area where visitors could walk around it “to become involved, could remain as is.

Rhoda Goldman, chairwoman of the Mayor’s Committee, said she was surprised that the vandalism “happened as quickly. It hurts all of us — and what hurts even more is that people do this, whatever negative feelings they have.”

Segal, reached at his New Brunswick, N.J. home, told the Jewish Bulletin that the desecration was “ugly and brutal” and that he personally felt “violated” by the vandalism.

Three years of fund-raising produced $500,000 for the memorial and an additional $250,000 educational endowment. The campaign was under the patronage of Mayor Feinstein, who attended the dedication.

SURVIVOR WANTS TO KEEP MEMORY ALIVE

Ernest Michel, who survived Auschwitz and is now executive vice president of the United Jewish Appeal in New York, said in his dedication address that what he had most feared in the camps was dying with the world not even knowing of the unending gassings and burnings of the victims. Noting that books have been written calling the Holocaust a “hoax,” Michel said memorials like the one in San Francisco helped to keep the truth alive.

Segal told the assemblage that he had learned about the Holocaust from survivors, adding that many kept quiet about their terrible experiences, not even wishing to share those horrors with their children. He started work on “The Holocaust” two years ago.

A reception was held, after the unveiling, with wine and bread and other foods, a final act for participants to mark the joy of remembrances, and part of an educational campaign which the memorial committee indicated it hoped would help “assure that the world will never countenance such a tragedy again.”