A place of peace to mourn the victims of Pulse

Memorial for the victims of Pulse at Dr. Phillip's Center. 

The first thing that grabs your attention is a rainbow of color filling a massive set of windows in Orlando's Dr. Phillip's Center. It rests above an equally expansive lawn, a magnet of sorts for people in search of answers.

On this melancholy and humid evening, two weeks or so after 50 people were murdered at Pulse, a gay bar only a short distance away on the southern fringes of the downtown area, several dozen pilgrims wander about in quiet reflection. The public meeting spot, at least for the moment, has been transformed into sacred ground.

After all, this is the place a week earlier where 50,000 people gathered to mourn and memorialize the country's latest victims of terrorism and gun violence; the same spot where President Obama and Vice President Biden stood, heads bowed, to share a nation's grief.

"The Vice President and I told them," the President said of his meeting with family members of the slain, "that our hearts are broken, too, but we stand with you and that we are here for you, and that we are remembering those who you loved so deeply."

From a distance, the scent of jasmine offers a gentle welcome. The lawn, the site now of several impromptu memorials, is sprinkled with a jarring mix of stuff -- displays recalling the lives of the victims, messages offering prayers of hope and salvation; red, white and blue bunting and flags, burning incense (a sharp note of jasmine mixed with the coolness of lavender), and a vast array of flowers and flickering candles.

There are also hundreds of hand-written notes from friends, playful trinkets and spiritual gifts -- a small crucifix and rosary, a time-worn Bible and a tiny box holding soil, an attached note explaining, "from the Holy Land".

Flags, photos, cards and trinkets part of massive memorial.

On closer inspection, after days beneath an unforgiving sun and the torrid heat of central Florida, I note the flowers have begun to wilt, letters of love and remembrance to wrinkle at the edges and the colorful, patriotic banners to fade. In another few days, perhaps a week or two, the lawn will be swept clean and Pulse will become yet another painful memory of a place where evil once visited.

The names of the dead and injured in attacks stretching back decades are mostly forgotten in a world moving at the speed of light. Sadly, the locations are what we recall: Columbine, Blacksburg, Newtown, Aurora, Fort Hood and Charleston; San Bernardino, Chattanooga, San Ysidro, Washington, D.C. and Tucson.

The full list spans the country. No region is immune to the momentary madness of mostly boys and men directed by hate, fear and a grotesque anger fueled by job and personal issues, teen angst, mental illness and, most recently, cultural and ideological chauvinism.

As the sun sinks slowly below the horizon and the first stars of the night appear above the city's skyline, an agitated volunteer busies herself lighting a row of candles. A photographer kneels in front of a makeshift shrine and snaps a few photos and a family -- dad, mom and two youngsters --  take a final look around before disappearing into the shadows.

It turns out, for pilgrims and others, there is an answer to be found in this space. That becomes clear when I hear the thrum of music off in the distance. Downtown Orlando, after all, is filled with distractions for locals and tourists.

The noise feels jarring and invasive but it offers a painful, yet undeniable truth. Despite tragedy and death, heartbreak and misery, time never stops and life always goes on.

Holocaust Memorial both melancholy and uplifting

Hank, Bob and Allan work on memorial at Etz Chaim

When God was handing out the handyman genes, I was still in the line for hair. Glance at my profile mug and you can see how well that worked out for me. I mention this now because I decided to take my bald noggin and defective handyman genes down to my neighborhood shul earlier this week to help pull together a new Holocaust Memorial Garden.

Fortunately, Hank N., master carpenter and handyman extraordinaire, is handling the heavy lifting for Etz Chaim’s Men’s Club, the group that has taken on the project of updating and retooling the memorial. It’s all part of an expansive renovation to expand and beautify the front entrance, foyer and office area of the synagogue.

The original memorial garden included some interesting and memorable items – cobblestones from the Warsaw Ghetto and railroad tracks that had once spilled into one of the death camps in Eastern Europe. These iconic bits will remain a featured part of the new garden, while most everything else has been demolished and whisked away.

Through the creative work of Allan S., Etz Chaim’s own personal landscape architect, I’m thinking the new garden is going to manage to be both melancholy and uplifting – recalling the past while honoring the Jews and others who suffered and died at the hands of the Nazis.

The entire area has been scrubbed clean and warmed up with new landscaping. Concrete flooring has been replaced with pavers and the entire garden is set against a startling new fence, eerily echoing the harsh reality that defined the Holocaust. Nearby, an eternal light will keep watch, offering up a warm glow and reminder that the Six Million will never be forgotten.

With the help of Men’s Club officers and members – Barry, Johnny, Jeff and Joe – and the creative and speedy work of Allan and Hank, the new and updated Holocaust Memorial Garden will be finished by the High Holidays. It will be officially dedicated in November on the Anniversary of Kristallnacht.

Shoes poignant reminder of Holocaust victims

It's Friday, time again for another posting of Interesting Jewish Stories & Facts (IJS&F). This week, let's remain in Budapest and visit a poignant memorial next to the Danube.

There's a bit of whimsy at play with this powerful memorial, a row of shoes along the Danube on the Pest side of the city.

The shoes can be found in the shadow of Hungary's impressive Parliament Building and, at first glance, seem a trifle, a bit of public art to amuse tourists and others on a stroll along the river's promenade. But the memorial's artist, award-winning sculptor Gyula Pauler, captures a dark moment in Hungary's history and makes a powerful statement with his simple design.

The story he builds around is heartbreaking. Through much of World War II, Jews in Hungary managed to hunker down and escape the wrath of the Nazi war machine. Eastern Europe was turned into a massive concentration camp and Jews from across the continent were being deported to death camps in Poland, Austria, Germany and other countries that had nurtured anti-Semitism for decades.

Inexplicably, the Jews of Hungary seemed safe. Life was tough, but not an automatic death sentence for them. In the fall of 1944, Russian troops had managed to battle their way into Hungary and peace seemed to be an idea that rested uneasily on the horizon. Sadly, in those closing days of the war, tens of thousands of Jews in the region were shipped off to the East -- Auschwitz, Dachau, Treblinka.

In Budapest, members of the Arrow Cross Party, the Nazis of Hungary, rounded up many of the remaining Jews and marched them to the Danube. They stripped them of their clothes and had them step out of their shoes on the embankment, where the men, women and children were shot and tossed into the river.

Sixty pairs of shoes, carefully sculpted by Pauler and arranged only feet from the Danube, dot the site where the Jews were murdered, and the melancholy memorial now serves as a silent prayer for the dead.

Weeping Willow honors those lost in Hungary

It's Friday and time again for another posting of Interesting Jewish Stories & Facts. Today we visit the lovely city of Budapest and a unique memorial in the Jewish quarter of the city.

Behind the imposing Dohany Street Synagogue in Budapest, in a park named for Raoul Wallenberg, the Swedish diplomat who saved thousands of Jews during World War II, is an imaginative, poignant memorial to the 600,000 Hungarian Jews who didn't escape the Holocaust.

The "Silver Weeping Willow," designed by the Hungarian artist Imre Varga, is an eye-catching maze of metal, slivers of silver that reach for the sky, then bend and fall to earth.

Thousands of metal leaves, many engraved with the names of the murdered, cling to the branches of the sculpture, swaying gently with the wind, glittering in the afternoon sun. Above it all, an inscription in Hebrew raises the mournful question, "Whose agony is greater than mine?"

On the day I visited the memorial, part of a congregational trip through Eastern Europe with friends from the Land of Cotton, only a few tourists and locals were scattered about. I couldn't help but wonder how fleeting and capricious life can be at times, that in fact my life might be dramatically different if one man many decades earlier had not, along with his family, left his home in Hungary to find a better life in America.

Joseph Klein, known as Joe or Joey to most of his friends and family, was born and spent his early years in a small village outside of Budapest, but came of age in New York. Of course he would never have met and married his wife Roz if he had remained in Hungary, and their two daughters -- the lovely Miss Wendy and my sister-in-law Ann -- would not exist.

That little wrinkle in reality would have continued to ripple across time and today there would be no Cheryl, Arlene or Lauren -- our daughters. Their husbands would have never known the joy of meeting and marrying their beshert and the following generation would be lost as well.

The fact that Joe and his family skedaddled when they did meant they would escape the Holocaust and his descendants would come into being. But what about the hundreds, the thousands, the millions who remained part of Eastern Europe? The tragedy of the Six Million murdered by the Nazis is not just their deaths but the future generations that were lost.

So I weep at the Weeping Willow memorial not only for those lost, but for those never allowed to experience this thing we call life -- the joy and sorrow, exhilaration and pain that comes with living. There loss is our loss, just one additional tragedy of the Holocaust and just one more reason to "never forget".

Honoring the dead: The Weeping Willow Memorial (photo above), is in a small park behind the Dohany Shul in Budapest, a unique remembrance of the thousands of Hungarian Jews lost in the Holocaust.

Jewish resistance fighters focus of Memorial

Editor's note: It's Friday, time yet again for another "Interesting Jewish Stories & Facts" (IJS&F) posting. Today we visit a memorial found in the heart of Warsaw, Poland.

Sculptor Nathan Rappaport captures both the horror of the Holocaust and the heroic efforts of resistance fighters in his larger-than-life monument to the heroes of the Warsaw Ghetto Uprising.

The ghetto, the largest created by the Nazis, sprawled across a dozen blocks in the heart of Warsaw and held an estimated 450,000 Jews in the early 1940s.

As conditions grew untenable and it became clear the Nazis were intent on slaughtering everyone in the area, a small band of resistance fighters grouped together to battle their tormentors. The uprising was doomed from the start.

The insurgents had few weapons and little training. They also had nothing to lose and managed to hold out against the fierce onslaught of battle-hardened troops for several weeks before the entire ghetto was destroyed.

A bronze relief dominates the memorial, between Karmelicka and Zamenhofa streets in what was once the heart of the city, focusing on a defiant image of Mordecai Anielewicz, the leader of the ghetto's Jewish Fighting Organization.

The back of the monument is filled with a melancholy image of a group of Jews being marched to their deaths by their Nazi captors.

HEROIC REMEMBRANCE: Mordecai Anielewicz and other members of the Jewish Fighting Organization (photo above) are the focus of this massive monument in the heart of modern-day Warsaw.

Poignant memorial honors Jewish hero

Editor's note: One great thing about having your own blog is you can do whatever you want with it. So I declare each Friday on "This&That" to be "Interesting Jewish Stories & Facts" day (IJS&F). Our premier entry begins with details about a Holocaust memorial in Warsaw that I visited during a trip to Eastern Europe. Return next Friday -- and every Friday -- for more "Interesting Jewish Stories & Facts" focusing on Jewish ritual, Israel and the Holocaust.

When visiting the Okopowa Street Jewish cemetery in Warsaw, one of the first sites that will capture your attention is a memorial to Janusz Korczak.

Off to one side of the main walkway, the poignant sculpture features Korczak holding a child while other children follow behind. Where they're headed is the focus of the piece and the stuff of legend.

Korczak was a Polish-Jewish children's author, pediatrician and child advocate. A Jewish orphanage he created and ran in the early years of the 20th Century was moved to the Warsaw Ghetto after the Germans occupied Poland in 1939.

In the summer of 1942, the Nazis ordered that the orphanage be closed and the 200 children living there be deported to Treblinka.

Korczak, beloved and respected for his children books and philanthropic efforts, received several offers to smuggle him out of the ghetto. He declined. Instead, Korczak remained with his children, telling them they were headed to the country on holiday.

He had them dress in their best clothes, then marched along with them to the Umschlagplatz, the staging area in Warsaw for Jews being transported to Treblinka. Legend suggests he was still marching with the youngsters when they entered the gas chambers at the camp and were murdered.

MEMORABLE MEMORIAL: This poignant statue (photo above), showing a Jewish orphan clinging to Janusz Korczak, is on the fringes of the Jewish cemetery in Warsaw.