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CALL TODAY FOR AN APPOINTMENT 800.257.8617 TrailsAtCahabaRiver.com 12 Southern Jewish Life • January 2018
community morial to an Elvis project was explained through Elvis’ Jewish connection and his devotion to children’s causes. He had a longtime relationship with the family of Memphis Rabbi Alfred Fruchter, and ancestors on his mother’s side were Jewish. When his mother died in 1958, he made sure to include a Star of David on her tombstone, and he sometimes wore a Chai necklace in concert. When “The Diary of Anne Frank” was performed in October 2016 at Desoto Family Theatre, there were presentations and videos about the project. The planned memorial pathway is in a spiral shape leading to the central building, which will house the sculpture. Metal strips symbolizing rail lines run from the perimeter to the memorial in quadrants, each relating major events in the Holocaust: The Nuremberg Laws, Kristallnacht, mass killings and the Auschwitz sorting upon arrival. The rail line for the Auschwitz segment does not reach the memorial, symbolizing the end of the line. An exit tunnel will showcase liberation and hope for the future. A memorial wall has pictures of children who died in the Holocaust, with a sole penny placed on the frame. The photos are etched on glass, almost transparent, backed by wooden pallets symbolic of the rough wood in the train cars that transported them to the camps. Surrounding the sculpture is a curved wall covered with pennies from the project. The exhibit contains about 36,000 pennies, less than 2 percent of what was collected. The walls in the museum are curved because of space, but in the actual memorial, the building will be in the shape of a Star of David with walls up to 20 feet high, covered in pennies. The second phase of the project calls for a cultural center with classrooms and space for traveling exhibits. The multi-million dollar project recently embarked on a “place-a-penny” campaign, where pennies in the memorial park walls can be dedicated in someone’s honor or memory, for $18 each. While the Desoto County exhibit will close in March, McNeil said it is portable and can be brought to other venues in the region. Peter Felsenthal and Marty Kelman were recently added to the Foundation’s board. Felsenthal is CEO of Whitmor, Inc., wholesale distributors of storage, organization and laundry accessory products, based in Southaven, Miss. Kelman, a second generation of Holocaust survivors, is chairman of Kelman-Lazarov, a financial planning and investment advisory firm in Memphis. His mother, Paula Kelman, was the first Holocaust survivor to speak to the students at Horn Lake Middle School when they began the Pennies Project.