New England Holocaust Memorial
September 18, 2005 | 6:30 p.m.

I have to admit, I was a bit underwhelmed with the rededication and 10th anniversary of the New England Holocaust Memorial in Boston that took place just before I snapped this photo. The event was a bit top-heavy with necessary thank-you's for donors, and a little light on actual Holocaust remembrances.

The sombre memorial near Government Center is little known, but deserves a good look. It features six towers of glass, each representing one of the Nazi death camps, and plate glass walls etched with the identification numbers of the six-million Jews, gays and lesbians, trade unionists, gypsies, and others who died during the Holocaust. From beneath the floors of the six towers rises warm air which the memorial's designer described as "like human breath as it passes through the glass chimneys to heaven."

Barbara Grossman, the well-known Democratic fundraiser in Boston who spearheaded the commemoration said that night, "Sadly, as the death toll widens in Sudan, we know that the evil of racial hatred did not end with the Holocaust. When will this unending chronicle of human suffering come to an end?"