Local artist donates Holocaust candelabrum for display at SAR
Milton Ohring of Teaneck, an artist and the grandfather of an SAR graduate, donated a Holocaust candelabrum he created to the Riverdale, N.Y., school to use in its annual Yom HaShoah program. A few years ago, when Mr. Ohring was invited to the school to discuss his Holocaust-themed sculptures, a teacher asked if the school could borrow the candelabrum for its Yom HaShoah program. It now is on permanent display there. (SAR’s Yom HaShoah program, including the candelabrum, is on YouTube; find it with SAR HS Yom HaShoah 2019.)
The candelabrum is 17 inches high and made of stainless steel; candleholders on top are brass. Six posts, for the six million victims, are welded to the base, which is a Jewish star evoking the stars on the armbands the Jews of Warsaw were forced to wear. The first post is in the shape of the electrified posts that ringed concentration camps; the second represents a crematorium, with two furnace doors at the bottom. The third post is shaped like a gallow; the fourth, a lightning bolt, is one half of the two-bolt insignia SS members wore. A Christian cross is cut out of the fifth post, representing the long history of Jewish suffering in Christian Europe and commemorating the heroic righteous gentiles who risked their own lives to save Jews. The sixth post is an arm raised in defiance; it’s marked with all but one of the digits that the Nazis tattooed on Elie Wiesel.
Milton Ohring and his parents left Poland at the end of 1938. For more information about Mr.Ohring and his art, go to ohringart.com.
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