Pittsburgh’s Tree of Life joins other U.S. communities struggling to memorialize mass shooting attacks.
For several days, a team of archivists gathered at the Tree of Life synagogue to conduct a sensitive excavation.
If all goes as planned, synagogue leaders said, many of the artifacts will be returned to Tree of Life for public exhibition after the building undergoes a multiyear transformation into a museum and educational center dedicated to combating antisemitism and a memorial to the victims, as well as a synagogue space.
“We have even greater resolve that what we’re doing is critical for the entire nation and the world,” Carole Zawatsky, the Tree of Life synagogue’s chief executive, said in an interview after the Hamas attack. “It’s that much more important.”A few weeks before the archivists began removing the items, Zawatsky guided a Washington Post reporter on a tour of the building, providing a sense of the magnitude of the preservation effort.
“For me, a synagogue is a home,” Zawatsky said. “And to think that a kitchen island was a place where you can imagine generations of people joyfully preparing meals for bar mitzvah celebrations and after Sabbath services — and people were shot there.” During the gunman’s trial, Rabbi Jeffrey Myers showed jurors a blue prayer book that had been ripped open by a bullet. The book stands “as a witness to the horror of the day,” Myers, who survived by hiding in a bathroom, told the jury. “One day when I’m not there, this book tells a story that needs to be told.”
The archivists point to the pioneering efforts of Tamara Kennelly, who oversaw the collection of items left by mourners at makeshift memorials after a Virginia Tech student fatally shot 32 people on campus in April 2007. Newtown has not displayed the artifacts, Craughwell-Varda said, but the public can access an online database of what is in storage. It is a fraction of the amount of items sent by well-wishers: The town incinerated truckloads of stuffed animals, and the ashes were used as “sacred soil” at a memorial park dedicated to the Sandy Hook victims last year.
But the museum project, which foundation officials said would cost $49 million, has been beset by rising costs and engulfed in controversy. Some local activists called the effort insensitive to survivors of the shooting and family members of the victims who remain in need of financial assistance. On the line was Pamela Schwartz, executive director of the county history center in Orlando. Separate from Poma’s foundation, Schwartz had staged an exhibit at the history center featuring artifacts collected from memorials for the Pulse victims and an oral history of 200 people.
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