Hyde Park Holocaust Memorial

The Hyde Park Holocaust Memorial represents Britain’s first testimonial to the Jewish victims of the Holocaust. The Board of British Jews paid for its construction in 1983. Richard Seifert, Mark Badger, and Derek Lovejoy and Partners designed the monument which consists of a garden of boulders in raked gravel shaded by white-stemmed birch trees. The memorial sits east of The Dell just past the dam. Observers will notice an inscription from the Book of Lamentations on the largest stone which reads: “For these, I weep. Streams of tears flow from my eyes because of the destruction of my people.”

Hyde Park houses Britain’s first memorial in honor of the 6 million Jews murdered in the Holocaust. Thirty eight years after the end of the Second World War in 1983, the Board of Deputies of British Jews organized the design and construction of Britain’s first Holocaust memorial. It serves as a sobering reminder to pass the memory of the 6 million lives lost on to the next generation. On Yom HaShoah (Holocaust Memorial Day) 2018 over 1,200 people gathered at the memorial to mourn the lives lost, to commemorate the 75th anniversary of the Warsaw Ghetto Uprising, and the 73rd anniversary of the British Army’s liberation of Bergen-Belsen. Some of the key attendees on this significant day included not only the survivors of the atrocity, but also Israeli Ambassador, Mark Regev, and the Mayor of London, Sadiq Khan.

Photo attribution: Mx. Granger, CC0, via Wikimedia Commons