Obj. ID: 53555
  Memorials  Lack Family Memorial Room at the Holocaust Memorial Museum in Houston, TX, USA, 1993

Memorial Name

Lack Family Memorial Room at Houston Holocaust Museum

Who/What is Commemorated?

Six million Jewish victims of the Holocaust

Description:

The Lack Family Memorial Room is a small room located in a corner of the ground level of the Holocaust Museum Houston. It is naturally lit space that features commemorative artwork, a memorial wall, and other commemorative features. One enters from the main corridor of the museum through a corner door. To the left of the entrance is the “Wall of Tears, an artwork comprised of 600 glazed tiles to symbolize the six million Jews that perished during the Holocaust. The tiles are fastened to a steel frame on an east window, allowing direct sunlight to pass between the tiles, providing a serenely filtered light. Indirect light also enters the space from a skylight above this wall.  Two backless benches, carved from a single piece of wood, are on the floor close to the “Wall of Tears”.

On adjacent walls are the smaller mixed media artworks “Remembrance” and “Hope”, set within narrow recesses in the walls. The titles of works are inscribed on the floor in front of each. “Remembrance” is a mixed-media work on wood and consists of several sections, some of which contain recognizable Jewish and Holocaust iconography (yellow Magen David, menorah, crematorium oven); one of which shows a single leaf.  The outlines of faces at the top of the painting – placed above the crematorium oven -  suggest the souls, or at least the individuality, of victims. ‘Hope' is a more abstract oil painting on wood. It shows a gradation of bright colors, suggesting a sunrise.

The wall on the right when entering is named the Cemetery Wall. This consists of ceramic glass plaques etched with the names of victims of the Holocaust, relatives, and loved ones of local families. Names of members and relatives of the Houston community who perished during the holocaust are listed above, and the names of survivors who have died since the Holocaust are listed below. Between the two groups of names is a one-line inscription of the Kaddish prayer in Hebrew and in English that extended the entire width of the wall.

Opposite the door is a small alcove with a memorial for the victims of Babi Yar.  A sign explains what happened at Bebi Yar. A pedestal supports a hollow stone covered with plexiglas. Inside the stone is soil, presumably from Babi Yar.

Inscriptions:

On Cemetery Wall, in the upper part, in English:

זכור

REMEMBER

THESE MEMBERS AND RELATIVES OF OUR

COMMUNITY WHO PERISHED DURING THE

HOLOCAUST ARE LISTED ABOVE

On Cemetery Wall, in the center, in English and Hebrew: 

To BE TRANSCRIBED [Kaddish prayer in Hebrew and English inscribed here]

On Cemetery Wall, in the lower part, in English:  

THESE HOLOCAUST SURVIVORS OF OUR

COMMUNITY WHO HAVE DIED SINCE THE

HOLOCAUST ARE LISTED BELOW

THE SOIL FROM THESE SIX CONCENTRATION AND EXTERMINATION CAMPS CONTAINS THE ASHES OF THOSE WHO PERISHED IN THE HOLOCAUST

Auschwitz Buchenwald Dachau Majdanek Mauthausen Treblinka

Babi Yar memorial:

BABI YAR

Here all things scream silently

Yevgeny Yevtushenko, 1961

Babi Yar, a ravine on the outskirts of

Kiev, in the Ukraine, is the site where

over 33,000 Jewish women men and

children were murdered by members

of Einsatzgruppe C, a Nazi mobile

killing unit, and their accomplices on

September 29 - 30, 1941, shortly

before Yom Kippur, the Day of

Atonement. Later, the Nazis tried to

destroy all evidence of the crime by

deploying prisoners, many of them

Jewish, to exhume the bodies, cremate

them and bury the ashes. Between

1941 and 1943 Babi Yar was used

as a site to kill over 100,000 people,

the majority of whom were Jews.

Commissioned by