A Greensboro-based artist has designed North Carolina's first women's holocaust monument. City Council has approved the project which will be placed in Greensboro's LeBauer Park.
The sculpture is called “She Wouldn't Take Off Her Boots,” and was modeled after a photo of five women in Latvia just before they were executed. Artist Victoria Milstein was inspired to create the monument by a trip to Poland where she visited the Auschwitz concentration camp. Specifically, she wanted to document the journey of the women and children of the Holocaust.
“Seeing the strength and the resilience and the reality of what was happening to these women and the fact that it was photographed by a Nazi photographer as exhibition tourism, it all came together and I said 'this is an incredible way to teach about the Holocaust by using public art,'” Milstein says.
The monument also honors Shelly Weiner, a Greensboro-based Holocaust survivor, and her aunt and mother who protected her. Milstein is using Weiner as a model for the hands of the monument's central figure.
The bronze statue will be placed in Carolyn's Garden in LeBauer Park. Milstein says it will likely be a year or so before it's completed.