A la mémoire des enfants juifs déportés de France et assassinés à Auschwitz.
To the memory of the Jewish children
sent to the deportation camp of Auschwitz and assassinated.
THE SYMBOLS OF THE WORK
In this sculpture I wanted to show a group of children huddled together with, above their heads, a huge parallelepiped block representing the blind and inhuman strength which is about to
crash them and burn them into ashes.
Usually sculptures are built in a pyramidal mode with the tip up. The best-known prototype is Michael Ange’s pieta because if you draw lines joining the exterior points of this sculpture, you will find this pyramidal model that symbolizes ascension and spirituality.
On the contrary, in this model of monument the exterior lines are inscribed in a parallelepiped, a heavy volume without escape because when you touch children’s lives, you reach the utmost barbarity without any possible redemption.
In this sculpture, I did not want to show any particular Jewish symbols because this is first and foremost a Human tragedy because a child remains a child whatever is his religion or the colour of his skin.
The specified sizes of this monument are 320 cm in height, 200 cm width and 150 cm depth. The height of this sculpture is so specified that the space between the block above and the base should be of 140 cm to allow these different
children to be represented life-size.