Glasses donated for Holocaust remembrance
MANCHESTER, England (AP) - January 3, 2008 The British actor joins Yoko Ono, talk show host Jerry Springer,
former British Prime Minister Tony Blair and other celebrities and
members of the public whose spectacles will be linked together in
the shape of a railway track - recalling the trains that carried
many of the Nazis' victims to concentration camps throughout
Europe. An estimated 6 million Jews died.
The exhibition in Liverpool will open Jan. 21. The port city in
northwest England will host Britain's Holocaust Day commemorative
service on Jan. 27, the anniversary of the liberation of Auschwitz.
Muslim leaders are to attend the multicultural service, which is
the culmination of a series of lectures, exhibitions, stage shows
and musical events recalling the Nazi atrocities and more recent
genocides. Jason Isaacs, who stars as the sinister Lucius Malfoy in
the "Harry Potter" films, will also take part in the service.
The 18-year-old Radcliffe, whose mother is Jewish, sent the
oval, gray metal-framed pair of glasses he wore as a 6-year-old.
In a statement, Ono called the project "such a symbolic piece
of artwork, which will help people to learn how important it is to
never forget the horrors of the Holocaust and to challenge hatred
and prejudice wherever it arises."
Organizers are seeking a total of 110,000 pairs of eyeglasses.
When installed inside Liverpool Town Hall's main ballroom, mirrors
will multiply the number of spectacles and give the appearance of
330,000 pairs - the estimated number of Jews in Britain at the time
of the Holocaust.
"We wanted to remind people of the horrors of the Holocaust,
but we wanted an artistic response and not just ... a mound of
spectacles," Jean Evans, the project's director, told The
Associated Press.
The exhibition will also offer a legacy of its own. After it is
dismantled, the glasses of the famous will be auctioned for charity
while the others will be donated to people in developing nations
through the charitable group Vision Aid Overseas.
To coincide with the Holocaust Day events, an Anne Frank
Festival is to open Saturday. A replica of the Amsterdam bedroom
where the Jewish teenager wrote her diary will be constructed
inside Liverpool's Anglican cathedral.
The 15-year-old died of typhus in Germany's Bergen-Belsen
concentration camp in March 1945 after being seized from the
Amsterdam attic where she, her sister and parents had hidden from
the Nazis.
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On the Net: http://www.liverpool.gov.uk/holocaust08