New book — “Holocaust Memorials: The Emergence of a Genre” by Harold Marcuse

Harold Marcuse, a History professor at the University of California in Santa Barbara, has written a new book about Holocaust Memorials at the former camps and other places.  I am currently reading the book, and so far, it seems to be all inclusive as far as Holocaust Memorials are concerned. The book includes photos of all the memorials, including one of my photos on page 79.

Sculpture at Sachsenhausen Memorial Site

(Click on the photo to enlarge.)

Here is the caption for the photo:

Figure 23: Waldemar Grzimek, sculpture in the ruins of Sachsenhausen crematorium, 1961, height ca. 2.2 meters.  These more abstract figures contrast with the heroic group on the main Sachsenhausen memorial.  Photo courtesy of Scrapbookpages.com

Here is the text in the book, which describes the photo:

“A second memorial sculpture by Waldemar Grzimek, the sculptor of the  bell in the Buchenwald tower, stands among the ruins of the crematorium and execution site at the near by edge of the prisoners’ compound.  Only moderately larger than life-size in the more restrained figurative style of the Ravensbrück and Dachau statues, it depicts two inmates, one standing and one bent over, holding a cloth that supports the corpse of a comrade.”

This photo was taken in 2001 with a digital camera that was state-of-the-art at that time and very expensive ($1200).  Today’s digital cameras are cheaper and far surpass this old camera, which I donated to Good Will a long time ago.

I am not positive, but I think the sculpture, that is shown in my photo above, has been moved and is now in a different spot at the Sachsenhausen Memorial Site.