Scoop has an Ethical Paywall
Work smarter with a Pro licence Learn More

Local Govt | National News Video | Parliament Headlines | Politics Headlines | Search

 

Children’s Holocaust Memorial exhibit unveiled

A moving memorial to children murdered in the Holocaust has special resonance for its creator, School of Design senior lecturer Matthijs Siljee.

His fellow native Dutch were placed under Nazi occupation throughout World War II, and his project consisting of nesting tables containing thousands of buttons, pays homage to the Netherlands and Europe’s most vulnerable citizens of the war – the children of the Holocaust.

Mr Siljee, who is assistant head of the School of Design at Massey’s College of Creative Arts, was invited by the Holocaust Centre of New Zealand to design a travelling memorial for the children who were killed between 1939 and 1945. It also acknowledges the second-generation families of victims and survivors as well as New Zealand’s Jewish community.

His design consists of 12 steel nesting tables, each larger than the previous one, escalating to an uneasy height of 2.4 metres.

“Even the tallest person is unable to view the top, conveying the idea of something unreachable or unattainable,” Mr Siljee says.

The combined total of 1.5 million buttons represents all the children killed in the Holocaust for reasons of disability, ethnicity, religion or as reprisal against dissent. The buttons were collected by pupils of former Moriah Jewish Day School School principal Justine Hitchcock. With the buttons as a teaching aid, she attempted to visualise the vast number of children that died.

Mr Siljee says there is nearly one metric tonne of buttons with a volume of 1.26 cubic metres laid within the tables which are mounted on plastic wheels wedged to welded steel legs. The industrial metal of the cabinets reflects the Nazi bureaucratic machine and the Holocaust’s industrialised death camps; the red wheels echo a child’s toy wagon.

Advertisement - scroll to continue reading

Are you getting our free newsletter?

Subscribe to Scoop’s 'The Catch Up' our free weekly newsletter sent to your inbox every Monday with stories from across our network.

Mr Siljee has been building the memorial at a workshop located beneath the Museum Building at Buckle St where he first worked after emigrating to New Zealand in the mid 1990s.

The memorial is to be officially unveiled at a function at the National Library tomorrow, opening to the public on Friday continuing till March 29, 2019. It will then travel to the new Central Library in Christchurch where it will be exhibited from May till August. Thereafter, it will go to Auckland for a six-month residency. In 2020, the memorial will start a tour of New Zealand’s main regional city centres. An education programme and forum series addressing such topics as the refugee experience in New Zealand, standing up to discrimination and prejudice and current perspectives on the treatment of people with disabilities is also expected to be part of exhibition events.

“The central ethos and lesson underpinning the Children’s Holocaust Memorial is a preparedness to stand up to discrimination and prejudice – to be an upstander. This enduring lesson is more relevant now than ever,” Mr Siljee says.

Growing up in the Netherlands, Mr Siljee was made acutely aware through family stories and lessons from school on the traumatic legacy the Nazi persecution left with remaining European communities.

“It’s a history that has complicated lives for many families,” he says.

“But the most important thing is what lessons do we take out of it for today,” noting that an emerging rise in nationalism was once again fuelling combative attitudes from more than 80 years ago.

“Looking at the current geopolitics of it, I see a lot of patterns that are coming back. I recognise the same group hysteria, almost identical to the 1930s, as told by my family and taught at primary and secondary school.

“Working on this memorial has been an opportunity to revisit these stories and bring certain things to closure about this period,” Mr Siljee says.

© Scoop Media

Advertisement - scroll to continue reading
 
 
 
Parliament Headlines | Politics Headlines | Regional Headlines


Gordon Campbell: On The US Opposition To Mortgage Interest Deductibility For Landlords


Should landlords be able to deduct the interest on the loans they take out to bankroll their property speculation? The US Senate Budget Committee and Bloomberg News don't think this is a good idea, for reasons set out below. Regardless, our coalition government has been burning through a ton of political capital by giving landlords a huge $2.9 billion tax break via interest deductibility, while still preaching the need for austerity to the disabled, and to everyone else...
More


 
 

Government: Concerns Conveyed To China Over Cyber Activity
Foreign Minister Winston Peters has confirmed New Zealand’s concerns about cyber activity have been conveyed directly to the Chinese Government. “The Prime Minister and Minister Collins have expressed concerns today about malicious cyber activity... More

ALSO:


Government: GDP Decline Reinforces Government’s Fiscal Plan

Declining GDP for the December quarter reinforces the importance of restoring fiscal discipline to public spending and driving more economic growth, Finance Minister Nicola Willis says... More

ALSO:


Government: Humanitarian Support For Gaza & West Bank

Winston Peters has announced NZ is providing a further $5M to respond to the extreme humanitarian need in Gaza and the West Bank. “The impact of the Israel-Hamas conflict on civilians is absolutely appalling," he said... More


Government: New High Court Judge Appointed

Judith Collins has announced the appointment of Wellington Barrister Jason Scott McHerron as a High Court Judge. Justice McHerron graduated from the University of Otago with a BA in English Literature in 1994 and an LLB in 1996... More

 
 
 
 
 
 

LATEST HEADLINES

  • PARLIAMENT
  • POLITICS
  • REGIONAL
 
 

InfoPages News Channels


 
 
 
 

Join Our Free Newsletter

Subscribe to Scoop’s 'The Catch Up' our free weekly newsletter sent to your inbox every Monday with stories from across our network.