About

HMTC’s Children’s Memorial Garden

Welcome to the Children’s Memorial Garden, a place for reflection and contemplation.

Please walk leisurely through the Garden. Stop to read the words of fourteen individuals whose quotations each touch on as aspect of the Holocaust.

There are the words of victims who tragically did not survive. And of those who did survive. There are the words of rescuers and of partisans in the resistance. And the insightful words of prolific thinkers.

The Garden is dedicated to the 1.5 million Jewish children murdered in the Holocaust and to all children throughout the world who died during World War II. It is the first public garden of its kind in New York State.

Inspired by Holocaust Survivor Irving Roth, the Garden was founded in 1988 with seed money from The Million Pennies Project, in which school children from Nassau, Suffolk, Brooklyn and Queens collected pennies to create a garden as a living memorial.

Every penny symbolized the stolen life of a child. These children must not be forgotten. They were innocent victims during an incredibly brutal period of human history.

The mission of the Holocaust Memorial and Tolerance Center of Nassau County (HMTC) is to teach the history and lessons of the Holocaust and the dangers of antisemitism, racism, bullying and all manifestations of intolerance.

Every human being is to be respected.