Holocaust Garden of Hope Launches Grand Opening in Kingwood

The Holocaust Remembrance Association (HRA18) celebrated a successful Grand Opening of Phase One of the Holocaust Garden of Hope, a unique children’s memorial garden at King’s Harbor in Kingwood, Texas on November 5, 2023. Over 600 people joined the launch of this touchstone for the community.

The Holocaust Remembrance Association, is a 501(c)(3) educational organization based in Kingwood, Texas, formed by Jewish descendants of Holocaust survivors and Christian allies in order to sensitize hearts to the issues of the Holocaust and facilitate education, healing, and reconciliation, celebrated the Grand Opening of the Holocaust Garden of Hope.

“The Garden is going to go beyond this location. We recently received a $46,000 Texas Historical Society grant recommended by Texas Holocaust Antisemitism and Genocide Advisory Council to make the Garden Virtual Access for worldwide viewership,” said Rozalie Jerome, Founder of the Holocaust Garden of Hope. “Also, the Holocaust Remembrance Association is collaborating with Texas A&M. Dr. Cheryl J. Craig, along with her team are creating an introduction to teaching the Holocaust course for  middle school and high school  teachers internationally….using Holocaust Garden of Hope as their template.”

Rozalie also tied the past to the present in a very personal way. “Landscape architect Lauren Griffith designed the Garden as well as Discovery Green and other well known locations. It happened to be that her mother-in-law was a Hungarian Holocaust survivor who survived Auschwitz by being a gardener for a Nazi officer. How apropos that Lauren got to play a major role in the creation of the Holocaust Garden of Hope in Kingwood, a super suburb of one of the largest cities in America.”

Rozalie Jerome is also President & Executive Director of the Holocaust Remembrance Association, as well as the National Director, March of Remembrance Texas, which has mobilized K-12 schools, universities and thousands of people throughout Texas since 2012. 

H.E. Pjer Šimunović, Ambassador Extraordinary & Plenipotentiary, Embassy of the Republic of Croatia to the U.S., served as honorary chair of the event as well as delivered the keynote address.

“My sincerest congratulation to y’all who have invested an amazing effort, and achieved a great success in launching such a noble initiative, the most noble of them all, aiming to remember, to commemorate the victims of the Holocaust, educate, provide guidance, and gather good people together,” said Ambassador Šimunović. “The opening of the Garden of Hope has been a profoundly moving, memorable event. Mazal Tov.”

“At the Holocaust Garden of Hope, we will use painting, sculpture, music, physical structures, and creative educational tools to illustrate the experiences of children during the Holocaust,” said Holocaust Remembrance Association Founder, Rozalie Jerome. “Children and adults will be inspired to stand up for what is right and honor the memories of innocent victims with a life dedicated to healing and reconciliation.” 

The Upstander Stone Project memorializes the names of approximately 1.5 million Jewish children who were murdered during the Holocaust, and gives people today a tangible way to remember them. This project seeks to paint a memorial stone for each of those children.

These stones are being painted by individuals, families and volunteers from corporations, schools, clubs, nursing homes, and other groups throughout Texas and beyond for the Holocaust Garden of Hope. Stones are a traditional way for Jews to honor and acknowledge the true eternity of a person’s existence. They are a common item left at Jewish memorials worldwide.

Anyone can contact the Holocaust Remembrance Association to request one or more kits of 20 stones, with paint, markers and names of 20 children who perished in the Holocaust who will be memorialized in this unique way. Visitors to the Holocaust Garden of Hope can view the stones and begin to understand the astoundingly great number of innocent lives lost.

For more information, visit https://holocaustremembranceassociation.org/.

Photos courtesy of Holocaust Remembrance Association