{"id":203849,"date":"2026-04-20T21:33:14","date_gmt":"2026-04-20T21:33:14","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/203849\/"},"modified":"2026-04-20T21:33:14","modified_gmt":"2026-04-20T21:33:14","slug":"monument-to-the-warsaw-ghetto-uprising-moves-to-holocaust-memorial-and-tolerance-center-of-nassau-county","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/203849\/","title":{"rendered":"‘Monument to the Warsaw Ghetto Uprising’ moves to Holocaust Memorial and Tolerance Center of Nassau County"},"content":{"rendered":"

A \u201clost\u201d Holocaust memorial sculpture by a world-renowned artist, which spent years gathering dust in a Farmingdale warehouse, has been resurrected and is now on display at the Holocaust Memorial and Tolerance Center of Nassau County.<\/p>\n

The roughly 8-foot bronze tableau, titled \u201cMonument to the Warsaw Ghetto Uprising,\u201d was unveiled in a rainy ceremony Sunday afternoon in the center\u2019s garden, inside the county-owned Welwyn Preserve in Glen Cove.<\/p>\n

\u00a0Created by the Polish Holocaust survivor Natan Rapoport, \u00a0who died in New York City in 1987, it depicts four figures protecting a child and fighting back with a menorah, a pistol and Molotov cocktails in their hands. Rapoport sculpted similar monuments that can be found on the street in Warsaw where the uprising began and in Israel\u2019s National Holocaust Museum in Jerusalem.<\/p>\n

The center’s executive director, Bali Lerner, told a crowd of about 100 people the monument “stands as a true testament to strength and to resistance \u2014 the kind that truly transforms ordinary people into heroes when they rise to defend dignity and humanity.”<\/p>\n

\""Monument<\/p>\n

“Monument to the Warsaw Ghetto Uprising” in the Children’s Garden at the Holocaust Memorial and Tolerance Center in Glen Cove. Credit: Jeff Bachner<\/p>\n

Among the guests at the unveiling was Alan Kriegstein, of Huntington, who said Rapoport was a close friend of his father\u2019s and a regular guest in his Long Island home growing up in the 1970s.<\/p>\n

He described the sculptor as a \u201cwarm, humble and kind soul\u201d with surprisingly soft hands: \u201cI would later realize that those hands perfectly reflected him \u2014 gentle in touch, yet capable of immense creative force.\u201d<\/p>\n

Rapoport escaped from Poland to the Soviet Union during World War II, so he was not in Warsaw as the Nazi occupiers herded nearly half a million Jews<\/a> into an 840-acre ghetto, where most died of disease, starvation or were transferred to death camps. On April 19, 1943, Jews launched a rebellion, fighting back for about a month before ultimately being crushed.<\/p>\n

It was \u201cthe greatest act of resistance by Jews during the Holocaust as the Nazis prepared to completely liquidate the Warsaw Ghetto,\u201d said Zachary Graulich, an educator at the museum.<\/p>\n

After the war, Rapoport immigrated to Israel and then to New York City in the late 1950s.<\/p>\n

In 1976, the Workers Circle, a Jewish social justice organization, commissioned \u201cMonument to the Warsaw Ghetto Uprising,” which adorned its\u00a0New York City headquarters until 2011, when the sculpture\u00a0was confined to storage during a move.<\/p>\n

Recently, Kriegstein \u2014 who volunteers in center’s garden \u2014 learned the sculpture was in storage\u00a0about a mile from where he works in Farmingdale, and arranged for its\u00a0transfer to the museum on a 50-year\u00a0loan.<\/p>\n

While Lerner and others spoke of the memorial as a reminder to stand against rising antisemitism,\u00a0Workers Circle CEO Ann Toback said it is a reminder to stand up for democracy and anyone who is vulnerable, including immigrants illegally detained by U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement.<\/p>\n

“Remembrance has never been something you observe,” she said. “It’s always been a mandate for action.”<\/p>\n

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