MIAMI BEACH HOLOCAUST MEMORIAL

Holocaust Memorial in Miami Beach

By  Mike Miller May 18, 2025

I am old enough to remember VE Day;  the surrender of Germany and its allies marking the end of World War Two in Europe on May 8, 1945. 

One of the most vivid and sad memories for me is a newsreel of American Generals Eisenhower, Bradley and Patton in a Nazi prison camp standing and looking with sadness and horror at the mass graves of emaciated Jewish prisoners not yet covered up.

General Eisenhower at Liberated Nazi Camp

There were other photos of dead prisoners stacked like cordwood, some of them partially burned by the Germans who were trying at the last minute to hide evidence of their crimes.

I struggled then and now to understand how some humans can be so cruel and merciless to other human beings.

I may never know the answer, but the various memorials around the world to the Holocaust are necessary to make us remember what can happen.

General Eisenhower ordered that photographs of the camps and bodies be taken and preserved so nobody in the future could suggest it never happened.

Sculpture of Love and Anguish
Holocaust Memorial Miami Beach

If you are like me, a visit to this memorial to the holocaust victims will be a haunting, uncomfortable, experience.  This is especially true, if like me, you remember it happening.

My aunt Tina was not Jewish, she was a Polish Catholic.  She and her husband and two children were imprisoned in separate camps.  She never saw them again.

While Jews were the primary targets of the Holocaust, facing systematic genocide, non-Jewish Poles and others suffered immense persecution, with millions killed or displaced.

Holocaust Memorial

The giant hand with desperate clinging people in the Miami Beach Holocaust Memorial, known as the Sculpture of Love and Anguish, is a central and powerful element of the memorial, designed by Kenneth Treister and dedicated in 1990.

This 42-foot bronze sculpture depicts an outstretched arm and hand, tattooed with an Auschwitz number, rising from the ground, with nearly 100 life-sized figures of emaciated Holocaust victims—men, women, and children—clinging to it in various states of anguish, desperation, and mutual support.

Mother and Child

The significance of this imagery can be understood through several key aspects:

The hand and figures represent the immense suffering of the six million Jews and other victims of the Holocaust. 

Treister described the sculpture as a “scene from hell, frozen in bronze,” capturing the final moments of those facing death in the Nazi camps. 

The figures’ tormented expressions and emaciated bodies convey the horror and agony of the Holocaust, evoking a visceral emotional response from visitors.

The outstretched arm reaching skyward symbolizes a desperate plea for help or salvation, as if appealing to God or humanity for rescue from the atrocities.

The figures climbing the arm, clutching each other, depict families and individuals striving to escape their fate, highlighting the human instinct to survive and protect loved ones even in the face of inevitable doom.

This imagery draws on Auschwitz survivor Primo Levi’s concept of the “drowned and the saved,” reflecting the arbitrary line between those who perished and those who survived.

Saying Goodbye After A Life Spent Together

Despite the overwhelming tragedy, the hand also embodies the resilience of the human spirit.

Some interpretations see it as a symbol of hope and the enduring strength of survivors, particularly given the memorial’s location in Miami Beach, home after World War Two to a large population of Holocaust survivors.

The upward reach can suggest a triumph of survival and the will to rebuild after unimaginable loss, though this is juxtaposed with the grim reality of the figures’ suffering.

Holocaust Memorial Wall of Names

The sculpture’s graphic nature serves to confront visitors with the Holocaust’s horrors, ensuring that the memory of the atrocities remains vivid for future generations.

Treister intended the memorial to be an immersive experience, leading visitors through a procession of emotional and historical spaces to prevent forgetting.

The hand, as the focal point, underscores the memorial’s mission to educate and inspire reflection on tolerance and the prevention of such atrocities.

The sculpture’s stark and grotesque imagery sparked debate, with critics calling it a “brutal intrusion” or arguing it prioritized horror over solemn reflection.

However, Holocaust survivors and committee members, like David Schaecter who spearheaded the creation of the memorial, defended its raw depiction, asserting that the Holocaust’s brutality demanded such an unflinching representation.

The hand’s design was partly inspired by a survivor’s story of losing her hand to Nazi cruelty, symbolizing personal loss and the demand for remembrance.  

The woman had been a violinist and her husband a pianist in Poland.  The Nazis cut off an arm from each one so they could never perform again.

She spoke at one of the community meetings held to decide if the memorial should be built.  Her powerful story helped win the project's approval.