Holocaust memorial exhibit raises awareness of forgotten monument

By Cindy Mindell

NEW HAVEN – World War II may have ended in Europe in 1945, but memorials to Holocaust victims would not appear in U.S. communities until three decades later.
Among the first to be established on public land was the memorial in New Haven. The ribbon-cutting in 1977 drew some 1,000 attendees and statewide media coverage. But over time, the site fell into disrepair and seemed forgotten by all but the Holocaust survivors who had helped to bring an idea to fruition. Thirty-five years later, through the efforts of three community members, the site has once again caught the attention of the community, engaging a new generation of stewards and supporters.
Doris Zelinsky was involved in the project from the beginning. It was mid-1976, she was pregnant with her daughter, and was on staff in then-New Haven Mayor Frank Logue’s office. A group of area Holocaust survivors and their neighbors brought the idea to the mayor, and Logue aide Rosa DeLauro invited Zelinsky to join the meeting to discuss the project. Logue and the survivors agreed, on the strength of a handshake, to build a Holocaust memorial on park land, Zelinsky recalls. The survivors raised private funds and motivated local artists and contractors to volunteer their time and talent, including architect Gus Franzoni, and Marvin Cohen, owner of Cheshire Nursery.
“This was not a fancy-schmancy design process,” says Fay Sheppard, who became involved in the Jewish community just as the memorial was being built. “Gus Franzoni drew his idea on the back of a napkin.”

New Haven’s Holocaust Memorial is the subject of a travelling exhibit

Eight months later, on Feb. 5, 1977, the mayor’s office cleared the initial hurdle to bring the memorial to life, completing the necessary documentation and identifying a site on Whalley Avenue. Zelinsky gave birth the next day. “None of us knew then that we were constructing the first Holocaust memorial built on public land in the United States,” she says.
Over the next three decades, Zelinsky and Sheppard would often chair the local Holocaust commemoration committee. Sheppard, a child of Holocaust survivors, chaired the annual state commemoration program last year.
In 2007, Zelinsky was part of a post-screening presentation at the premiere of the film, “Paper Clips” in New Haven. She realized that the 400 people in the audience were unaware of the memorial or its history, and filled them in. After the program, she paid a visit to the memorial.
“Thirty years had taken its toll,” she recalls. “The grounds and the monument were in sore need of attention, repair, and the loyalty of a new group of nurturers. The idea for ‘Greater New Haven Holocaust Memory’ was born.”
Zelinsky recruited Sheppard, as well as neighbor and architect Eric Epstein, who had attended the memorial’s inauguration in 1977 while a student at the Yale School of Architecture. Epstein still remembers Jerzy Kosiński’s presentation at the event: “He read back-to-back journals, one from an SS officer at Auschwitz describing a Christmas dinner with his family, and the silver and the sparkling candlelight, and a journal of a dinner that an inmate was having with a group of fellow workers,” he recalls. “That was all he said. A lot of people were pissed off but it completely blew me away.”
Since moving to the Edgewood Avenue neighborhood in 1986, Epstein would pass by the memorial regularly, while in a car or walking his dog. Zelinsky asked him to take a hard look at it. “I agreed that the place was in sorry shape,” he says. “It was a reawakening.” Zelinsky and Sheppard pledged to raise money for repairs if Epstein would oversee the restoration project. The three serve as the directors of Greater New Haven Holocaust Memory, Inc.
Together with a monument-restoration specialist, Epstein identified the main problem areas in the memorial: steel had rusted, welds had come apart, bronze plaques were tarnished, concrete and masonry were in disrepair. The site was strewn with garbage.
Epstein showed photos of the assessment to Zelinsky, who suggested that the entire local community be engaged. She reached out to Holocaust survivors, many of whom had been involved in the original memorial project, and learned that stories about the memorial’s origins and evolution had never been recorded.
Epstein recruited family friend and New Haven resident Andy Horowitz, a third-generation survivor and 2003 Yale graduate who was heading an oral-history project at the university. Zelinsky asked Horowitz to conduct interviews with those involved in the memorial’s founding. Yale senior Mike Brown helped track down archival photos.
Epstein designed a portable stand-alone exhibit, a six-pointed configuration mimicking that of the memorial. The history of the memorial is laid out chronologically on 12 panels, through archival photos and documents, as well as information on the recent restoration efforts. Interviews conducted by teens in the Adopt A Survivor program at the Jewish Federation of Greater New Haven are included in the exhibit. Snippets of the oral histories, loaded onto handheld audio devices, accompany the visual display.
“We want to rekindle awareness and tell the story of the memorial, and we also want to give hope to the new immigrants here,” Sheppard says. “This is a story of hope and survival, not of destruction.”
The last panel contains donation envelopes. “We’ve gotten such interesting responses,” Epstein says. “Along with a one-dollar or five-dollar contribution will be a note, ‘I had no idea the memorial was in my own neighborhood’ or ‘We came on a class trip’ or just ‘God Bless.’ There have been many small but moving contributions to the effort. The exhibit has evoked a strong emotional response and awakening to what the memorial is.” The appeal has attracted several larger donations as well, from children of survivors and local foundations. To date, more than $80,000 of restoration work has been completed.
The exhibit has traveled throughout greater New Haven, visiting New Haven City Hall, University of New Haven, Sacred Heart University, Quinnipiac University, Southern Connecticut State University, Slifka Center for Jewish Life at Yale, Mercy Center in Madison, NewAlliance Bank New Haven Headquarters, the Hagaman Memorial Library in East Haven, the Jewish Community Center of Greater New Haven, Trinity College as well as the Connecticut State Capitol.
Epstein believes that the traveling exhibit has inspired increased community involvement in the memorial. “At first it was the survivors who came; now a lot of people come,” he says. “Kids learning about the Holocaust in school; people who have seen the exhibit; school groups who do a cleanup day.  People are really moved by the place and once they learn about it, they develop a personal attachment.”
This month, the traveling exhibit will be displayed at Tower One/Tower East in New Haven. As part of the program, Adopt A Survivor teen Zachary Arons will share his experiences working with Holocaust survivor Wolf Zelinger z”l, who died in September.
The Towers’ COO and interim CEO Mark Garilli is enthusiastic about the program. “As a constituent agency of the Jewish Federation of Greater New Haven, a long-standing member of the Greater New Haven community, an annual host of Mayor John DeStefano Jr.’s signing of a city proclamation in honor of Yom Hashoah, and host of the Federation’s Adopt A Survivor Program, hosting this exhibit couldn’t be a better fit,” he says.
The Towers has been home to many Holocaust survivors over the years, some were part of the initial community efforts to build the New Haven memorial. “We realized the impact the exhibit could have on our residents and family members, but more importantly, on the surrounding community and those who serve our residents every day,” Garilli says.
“We hope that this exhibit will help to educate not only our local high-school students and community groups but also our service providers. Hundreds of caregivers enter our doors weekly, not to mention our own Towers employees, and dining-services and home-care providers, who may not understand culturally or historically who they are serving.
What better way to tell our stories than by participating in educational programs and hosting an exhibit like this one. I am proud to be an integral part of it all and I am looking forward to learning more so that one day, I too, can help to keep the survivors’ stories alive.”

“Memory & Legacy” opening reception:
Sunday, Jan. 13, 11 a.m.
Tower One/Tower East, 18 Tower Lane, New Haven
For information call (203) 772-1816, ext. 280 or email diane@towerone.org

Comments? cindym@jewishledger.com.