American Memorial to Six Million Jews of Europe

The stone you are approaching is known as der shteyn, a Yiddish term for the stone. It serves as a humble, granite placeholder for a grand monument that was never built. When it was dedicated on October 19, 1947, 15,000 people gathered in the rain to witness the event, which included 100 survivors from concentration camps like Buchenwald and Dachau. The site was intended to be the cornerstone for a massive, 50-foot-high sculpture designed by renowned artist Jo Davidson, but that ambitious project stalled and was eventually abandoned in the 1960s.