BEER OR HOLOCAUST MEMORIAL

I recently took a trip to Boston with my fiance. On Wednesday night, we met up for dinner and drinks with some old friends on the North End and as we stumbled past a strip of bars, I was surprised by a Holocaust memorial and its close proximity to the strip of bars. Standing inside the memorial, if I had a bowling ball- I could under-hand throw it at Hennessy's. It was difficult to focus on the memorial when I could see and hear drunken people all around me. I was furious with the city of Boston for allowing a memorial to be so inappropriately placed and deemed so meaningless.

I swallowed my anger and walked through this memorial, reading the many affecting quotes. There was one poignant quote about a Jewish woman who was a barber for a concentration camp and she was ordered to cut the Jews' hair and make them think they were only getting a haircut. In actuality, the Nazi's just wanted the Jews' hair before they put them inside the gas chambers thereafter. The memorial itself actually arose a smoke from the ground, making the quotes difficult to read but I'm unsure if they were as consequential as the painful images or the modern distractions.

As I exited through the memorial I realized the appropriateness of the memorial's obstruction. A holocaust memorial hidden and overlooked by a nightlife could not be more apropos and symbolic of the unseen Holocaust. If a person wants to understand the true pains of how Jews were taken away to camps, brutally murdered and all were concealed and overlooked- then yes the memorial's placement is brilliant. I doubt this was the intentions of the memorial, but kudos to whomever.