6/30/22 - Meijer Gardens Dedicates New Memorial Site & Sculpture

A generous gift will allow for a Holocaust memorial site and sculpture to be added to the Meijer Gardens and Sculpture Park.

GRAND RAPIDS, Mich. - Frederik Meijer Gardens and Sculpture Park is dedicating a major gift from The Jewish Federation of Grand Rapids and will establish a monumental Holocaust memorial.

The memorial will be anchored by Ariel Schlesinger's "Ways To Say Goodbye."

The gift is made possible by a donation from the Pestka Family in memory of their father Henry, survivors who settled in Western Michigan and the millions of Jews who perished in the Holocaust.

"Ways to Say Goodbye", is a twenty-foot-tall aluminum cast of a fig tree that has shards of glass inserted among the branches.  It reflects profound loss and grief and will serve to memorialize the millions of people who perished in the Holocaust and the survivors.