Kaddish Monument

Shelomo Selinger’s Kaddish Monument , The National Monument in Memory of the Victims of the Shoah in Luxembourg (1940-1945) was erected on the initiative of the Jewish community of Luxembourg, the government of the Grand Duchy of Luxembourg, and the City of Luxembourg. The monument was inaugurated on 17 June 2018. It is named after the Kaddish, one of the most famous Jewish prayers recited as part of mourning rituals in Judaism., Given below are an interpretation of the monument and a biography as suggested by the artist., [1] Facing the monument, the onlooker discovers two upturned heads at the bottom, whose hair turns into devouring flames, flames of memory which, as they rise, surround a large hollow narrowing before transforming into a channel of light. The upturned heads symbolize death., The flames on the right rise towards the man who is covering his eyes with his hand in order to recite the Shema, the prayer said by Jews in the face of death, a gesture symbolical for the world turning away its gaze so as not to witness the enormous crime being perpetrated., To the left, a flame rises towards the shape of a head with a large eye, the eye of the world that sees everything. The hand. below symbolizes the indifference and inaction of the world., From the flames moving to the left [2] emerges a hand holding a child and the Hebrew letter "lamed" which winds from the bottom to the top., [3] At the back of the sculpture, at the bottom, the onlooker discovers the head of a martyred man. His beard transforms into flames that rise towards a woman's upturned head, turning into a vortex of fire., To the left of the channel of light, which rises in the center, appears the Hebrew letter "vav". [4] Under the "vav" looms the head of a woman with a swaying body and another tilted head, as well as a hand holding a baby, trying to save it as flames erupt from all sides., In Hebrew, the two letters "lamed" and "vav" which emerge from the flames have the numerical value 30 for the "lamed" and 6 for the "vav", thus equaling a total of 36. According to cabalistic tradition, the constant existence on Earth of 36 hidden righteous people is a guarantee for the survival of our world., Artist's Biography , Shelomo Selinger, the artist who sculpted the Kaddish Monument, is born on 31 May 1928 in Szczakowa, a small Polish town near Jaworzno, not far from Auschwitz., After the invasion of the country by the Nazis on 1 September 1939, a regime of terror is established in Poland., In 1942, Shelomo, aged 14, is deported to Germany with his father who is murdered three months later. After having experienced nine successive camps and two death marches, he is in Theresienstadt. In 1945, when the camp is liberated, a Soviet officer, and Jewish military doctor, notices a body still moving on a pile of corpses. It's Shelomo, whom this officer saves by having him admitted to a military hospital., However, the trauma is so great that Shelomo completely loses his memory., In 1946, he reaches Palestine with 700 other survivors and joins the kibbutz of Beit ha Arava, near the Dead Sea. This kibbutz is destroyed during Israel's War of Independence and Shelomo helps establish the kibbutz Kabri in Galilee., After seven years of amnesia, his memory returns to him at the same time as his artistic creation manifests itself following his meeting with Ruth Shapirovsky, a music student, whom he marries in 1954. At the end of 1955, he leaves Israel with his wife and moves to Paris. Thanks to a scholarship that he received as the winner of a contest, he enrolls at the École des Beaux-Arts and becomes the pupil of sculptor Marcel Gimond. An extraordinary career as a sculptor follows. His works of art win multiple international awards. Notably, Shelomo Selinger created the memorial monument of the Drancy camp in France.,