The monument is a sacred place commemorating the lives of the once thriving Jewish community and the horrors of the Holocaust. The monument was designed to educate visitors and inform them about the fate that befell the Bardejov Jewish community.
On 14 plates in the shape of tombstones, 3,381 names of Holocaust victims from Bardejov and surrounding villages are inscribed. The individual families are listed alphabetically in the following order: father, mother, children or other family members who perished. The lights on the tops of the 2 boards symbolize the eternal light in the synagogues (Ner Tamid) and the light of a candle lit on the anniversary of the death of a loved one (Ner Neshama). The 12 boards feature the names of the tribes of the nation of Israel. Two of the fourteen boards are half-empty – these are intended for approximately 900 people whose names will be added to the monument once their fate is confirmed by their descendants, relatives or new research. The verse “Every man has a name”, which comes from a poem by the Israeli poet Zelda, rises above the plaques with the names of the victims. The verse is written in three languages and reminds us that all names belonged to real people, not the numbers in someone’s statistics. The nearby work of art “Star of David” consists of 2 parts having the shape of a triangle. A steel plate with the words “Never again” is inserted into the lower pedestal made of locally sourced stone. The monument is located on the original railway rails which symbolize the deportation of Jews from the Bardejov railway station to places from which most of them did not return. Individual boards tell the story of the Jewish community, and one of the boards is dedicated to the Righteous of Bardejov – people who despite fearing for their own lives helped Jews during the Holocaust. The outer walls depict old houses where Jews used to live before the deportations and which were later demolished. To this day, only one original wall has been preserved.
