 Second Generation This is a most difficult sculpture to understand, for in some ways it tries to equate the Shema (a Holy prayer) and the swastika. The older figures in both the front and the back of the sculpture are Holocaust survivors; they are "first generation". The children in the center of this sculpture are second (or third) generation. The children will never quite be able to understand the pain of first generation, and yet they carry the swastika with them. They may smile, and bring along their teddy bears and baseball caps. They may not even yet understand the full implication of what they do. But one of the legacies of Holocaust is that Jews, for all generations, will react to the symbol of the Swastika as the forebearer of unrelenting evil. And as such the swastika, alongside the Shema, has now become a part of the legacy we must pass on to our children. In a most unlikely union both lessons must be learned to insure survival of the Jewish people. And so they all travel forward together, forever on a road paved with faces of the past. Description: Terra Cotta
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