Monument to Six Million Jewish Martyrs

Monument to Six Million Jewish Martyrs. Nathan Rapoport. , Nathan Rapoport (1911-1987) began his career in Poland, where he won a scholarship to study art in France and Italy. When the Nazis invaded Poland in 1939, Rapoport, who was Jewish, fled to Russian controlled territory, where he worked briefly in a labor camp and later as an artist. He immigrated to the United States in 1950. The Holocaust was a frequent subject of Rapoport's works, which stand today in Poland, Israel, New York City, and elsewhere., Rapoport's Monument to Six Million Jewish Martyrs (bronze, 1964) was the first public Holocaust memorial in the United States. It was commissioned by a group of civic leaders and Holocaust survivors, including Dalck Ferth, Harold Greenspan, Abram Schnaper, Joseph Smukler, and the Association of Jewish Holocaust Survivors of Philadelphia. Together with the Association of Jewish New Americans and the Federation of Jewish Agencies of Greater Philadelphia, they presented Rapoport's monument to the City of Philadelphia on April 26, 1964. In 2018, this complex symbol of suffering, resilience, death, and hope was enhanced by the present memorial plaza which was built by the Philadelphia Holocaust Remembrance Foundation.