“We all said do not forget us…”
Shifre Zamkov on the New Haven Holocaust Memorial
The New Haven Holocaust Memorial, built in 1977, was the first Holocaust memorial built on public land in North America. Shifre Zamkov, a Holocaust survivor and New Haven resident, describes how the imperative of building a monument started with her experience in the concentration camps.
Memory & Legacy, an exhibit about the Memorial based on interviews conducted by NHOHP students, will be on view April 15-June 30 at the Jewish Community Center of Greater New Haven, 360 Amity Road in Woodbridge.
Transcript
Interview: So in the past you didn’t go anywhere.
Zamkov: We didn’t have anything to go to. So…everyone observed privately. And now we do it collectively, together, and we say a prayer for them so they are not forgotten. Because I know that we all said do not forget us. That’s what they said. We know we have no way out. We were trapped there. We didn’t know who is going to survive and who is not. But one thing we wanted [was] that they should say kaddish — kaddish means a prayer for the dead. So remember, not to forget.
interview by Mike Brown, Nov. 22, 2005. Photograph by David Ottenstein.