Philadelphia Holocaust Remembrance Foundation issued an open call to artists to design a 2,000-foot mural to be a part of the city’s Holocaust memorial. The site is home to a 1964 statue that reportedly is the oldest such work commemorating the Holocaust in the United States.
The foundation would like the mural to address the themes of “hope, resilience, tolerance and unity,” said Eszter Kutas, its executive director. Given its prominent location in the city’s center on the Benjamin Franklin Parkway, the mural will not contain disturbing imagery, she added.
Holocaust survivors commissioned Jewish artist Nathan Rapoport (1911-1987) to create the sculpture, titled “Monument to Six Million Jewish Martyrs,” on the site, which also contains a 30-foot maple tree that comes from one that children tended at Theresienstadt.
