TRAGIC STONES

Temple Beth Sholom's new Warsaw Ghetto memorial is a haunting reminder of man's dark history

By Scott Dickensheets

LAS VEGAA WEEKLY

January 25, 2004

Before the awe, the irony. Yes, a quiet memorial to human dignity, devoted to a 60-year-old event in Central Europe, seems ... ah ... somewhat out of place in Las Vegas-which is not quiet, not usually about human dignity, not inclined to dwell on tragedy and certainly not given to remembering history, its own or anyone else's.

And yet here it is. The new Warsaw Ghetto Remembrance Garden at Temple Beth Sholom is not, in fact, a garden in the leafy, green sense of the word. Made of stone and concrete, it's really an interaction of history, memory, metaphor, the senses, architecture and sky. It commemorates a moment in 1943 when a relative handful of Polish Jews fought back against the Nazis, holding soldiers and tanks at bay for days. The siege ended in May.

A circular, open-air enclosure rimmed along the top with metal beams, it's lined inside with cobblestones from Chlodna Street, part of the Warsaw Ghetto. (Robert Mirisch, the temple's executive director, says it's the largest display of such stones in the country.) The stately rows of mute stones are interrupted at intervals by waterfalls and torches, and water lines the foot of the wall. In the center rises a pedestal bearing a map of the ghetto. It was designed by architects Brad Friedmutter and Chuck Jones of the Friedmutter Group.

You'd think the awe would be simpler than the irony, but if you're a reasonably thoughtful person, entering the garden is a complex emotional transaction. It's impossible not to cart in the black weight of everything we know about the Holocaust. So history itself cues a distinct set of emotional responses, commands you to be humbled and awestruck before you set foot inside.

But you already knew that, thanks to the sheer volume of received Holocaust memory. Between books, movies and TV documentaries, we've learned so much that it flattens our expectations of this space: I know what I'm going to encounter. At the same time, a citizen of this marketing age, you're wary of being told what to feel. So your guard is up, a little.

You enter.

The 250 stones break you down right away. A few have been inset into the ground, but most have been mounted in rows, arrayed like honored guests. To look intently at a single one is to wonder about the power contained in one pixel of history: "Who might have died while walking on these stones?" Mirisch wonders. It's a warm Friday morning and workers are putting the finishing touches on the place. This is the first time Mirisch has been in here since the construction clutter was taken away. He's visibly moved, his eyes welling, his voice going soft. "Who might have bled on these stones-every kind of person who just wanted a little dignity in their lives. The stones were witnesses to all this."

Music plays softly. Water burbles. The claustrophobic interior is meant to tighten around you with the inevitableness of the Nazis closing in on the rebellious Jews. Sitting at a bench, Mirisch instinctively glances up, past the beamwork that calls to mind the skeletal frames of wrecked buildings. "The sky offers an exit from the enclosure of the walls," he says. "I get a sense of somberness, but then I look up at the blue sky of Las Vegas, the clouds ..." His voice trails off. Awe has done its work.

The project was spearheaded by the temple's men's club, which raised $300,000 to purchase the stones from the National Holocaust Museum in Washington, D.C., and underwrite construction costs. (The museum inexplicably sent hundreds of extras, as well.)

Temple Beth plans to establish public tours of the facility, complete with docents. "I hope it will become something on the Las Vegas cultural scene," Mirisch says. "It's an important addition to the spiritual condition of Las Vegas."

The Warsaw Ghetto Remembrance Garden will be publicly dedicated at 11 a.m. May 18 at Temple Beth Sholom, Town Center Parkway and Havenwood Drive. Call 804-1333 for information.