New York City’s Museum of Jewish Heritage and the Battery Park City Authority held a dedication ceremony on Thursday for the descendant of a tree that was initially planted by Jewish children inside the Theresienstadt (Terezín) concentration camp during the Holocaust.
Called “The Children’s Tree,” the silver maple 15-foot tree was planted near the front entrance of the Jewish museum. Several Holocaust survivors attended the ceremony, including Theresienstadt survivor Fred Terna, as well as Mara Sonnenschein, the great-granddaughter of Dorette Roos, who died at the concentration camp. Terna and Sonnenschein helped water the Tree planted outside the museum. “My feeling of the tree is one word: memory,” Terna said. “This an occasion of remembering. This planting is a form of remembering, and that’s what this Tree is: continuity.”