Anne Brown
Anne Brown fell in love with the Northwest when she moved here from New York 35 years ago. She was born in Schluechtern, Germany in 1926 and lived a happy childhood there until the age of 9. At that time, in the year 1935, the teachers and some of the children in the school she attended increased their mistreatment of the Jewish students. Luckily, Anne's parents were able to send her to a Jewish school in Frankfort, Germany. Anne spent one year there, then at age 10, was sent to boarding school in England where she remained for two years. Her brother followed to Frankfort in 1936 and to England in 1937. Anne's father, Fred Wolf, owned and operated a soap factory in Schluechtern that had been started by his great grandfather in 1825. In the summer of 1938, while he and Anne's mother were awaiting a visa for America, the factory and their newly built house were taken away from them and given to a Nazi chemist by the party. Anne's parents were still in Germany on Kristallnacht but luckily were in Frankfort visiting a friend who was a widow. The apartment was not searched, and her father was able to hide there until her mother obtained a visa for England. With that in hand, they were able to leave Germany, and join their children. In the spring of 1939, they received a visa for the United States and arrived in New York by boat on April 16, 1939, a day they will always celebrate. Anne's father lost a sister, two brother-in-laws and two nephews in a Nazi concentration camp. The family also knows of over 100 relatives in her father's extended family and more than 200 in her mother's. With this piece of glass remembers them all, as well as the more than 100 Jewish community members from Schluechtern who died at the hands of the Nazis.

Jonathan Berry
For almost two years, from 1941-1943, citizens of Julebaek, Denmark had been part of an underground movement that received mostly Scandinavian Jews, as well as Jews from other parts of Europe, into their home. When possible, the Danes secretly moved their Jewish brothers and sisters to seaports where fishing boats would smuggle them to Sweden or even sometimes to England. In the late spring of 1943, the German Gestapo rounded up eleven members of the Felix Torvaldsen family - Felix and his wife Sonja, their three children, two uncles, one aunt, and three cousins. They admitted to illegally hiding and smuggling Jews out of Europe. Without trial, they and a number of other citizens of Julebaek were escorted to the Town Square where they were shot. Felix and Sonja Torvaldsen were Jonathan's paternal great-great grandparents. His great grandfather, Karl Torvaldsen, was in America when this all occurred. When hearing of the murder of his entire family he enlisted in the U.S. Army Air Corps. He was killed in action in a bombing raid over Northern Italy. With this piece of glass Jonathan Berry remembers his family who perished in the war.

Toby Sonneman
Sixty years ago today, Toby's father, Eric Sonneman, hid with his family in an attic in Mannheim, Germany as the Nazis stormed through the city, ransacking, burning and destroying Jewish homes, synagogues and businesses. The day after Kristallnacht, Toby's father had to keep his long awaited appointment with the American consulate in Stuttgart to apply for his visa. Shaking with fear he walked through the streets littered with shards of broken glass and burnt rubble, past the burnt out synagogues and desecrated Torahs, stopping only to retrieve one Torah that was unharmed. Eventually Toby's father did escape the madness of Germany, arriving in America on St. Patrick's Day, 1939. In honor of her father's luck, Toby feels bound to remember those who were not so lucky, including many relatives on both her mother and father's side. Toby is named for two of her many relatives who died in the Holocaust in Russia and Germany. Toby also feels strongly about remembering that Gypsies - Roma and Sinti - were victims of the Holocaust along with the Jews. Like the Jews, the Roma and Sinti people suffered persecution, forced sterilization, brutal experiments, and mass murder at Auschwitz and other concentration camps. With this piece of glass Toby wishes us to remember the following passage from the Yom Kippur prayer book: "I have taken an oath: to remember it all. To remember - to forget nothing at all. Forgetting nothing of this, till the tenth generation, till the grief disappears…"

Wayne Berry and David Schuman
Wayne Berry is an elder in the South Bellingham Congregation of Jehovah's Witnesses and David D. Schuman, is Jewish and the Presiding Overseer of the East Bellingham Congregation of Jehovah's Witnesses. Jehovah's Witnesses in Nazi Germany represented a tiny, non-threatening group of so-called other victims of the Holocaust. Their story is unique for several reasons: (1) The Witnesses were offered a choice: Unlike other prisoners, each Witness could be set free from prison or camp simply by signing a statement renouncing his faith. Very few Witnesses ever signed this document. (2) The Witnesses took a consistent, organized stand against the Nazi regime. In the Nazi camps, they were designated by their own symbol - a purple triangle. (3) The Witnesses spoke out boldly by word and printed page against the evils of Nazism, even while under ban. The Gestapo and SS expended enormous energy to eradicate this small group - but without success. The persecution of Jehovah's Witnesses and their response occurred at a time when nonconformity to Nazi ideology often proved fatal. Every young person today could face similar dilemmas in his life: When do I go along with others, and when do I stand up for what I believe in? Is it possible to maintain conviction in the face of threat of serious harm? Is it worth it? Does the law of conscience and human decency ever overrule national law? If so, when? The story of Jehovah's Witnesses raises important moral and ethical issues about intolerance, peer pressure, personal responsibility, respect for human life, and the law of conscience. With this piece of glass Mr. Berry and Mr. Schuman wish to remember the Witnesses' courageous response to tyranny and its implied message that the human spirit can triumph in the face of prejudice, propaganda, and persecution.

Denise Fischer
Denise's mother, Freda, was literally born in the shadows of pogram. During a family trip to Poland, Denise's grandparents took shelter in a cellar. It was there that Denise's grandmother, Bertha, gave birth to Freda while property and lives were being destroyed in the neighborhood above. Bertha, her husband Morris and their eight children returned to Vienna. Freda was among the last Jews to emigrate from Vienna, but not before she saw her youngest brother dismembered, literally pulled to pieces, by an angry anti-Semitic crowd. With this piece of glass, Denise Fischer wishes to remember her grandparents and four aunts and uncles who perished in the death camps.

Jane Hinton
In 1933, Hitler began his condemnation of homosexuals by banning all gay and lesbian organizations. In 1935, paragraph 175 of the Criminal Code was expanded to include kissing, embracing and gay fantasies. People convicted under this code were sent to prison and the death camps. Although lesbians were not included in the paragraph 175 prohibition, they were arrested for having "anti-social" traits, and were forced to wear black triangles, along with prostitutes and women who refused to bear children. Within the next two years, an estimated 25,000 people were convicted under paragraph 175. Estimates of the number of gay men killed during the Nazi regime range from 50-100,000. When the war ended, oppression of homosexuals continued. Countless homosexuals were taken from the camps and sent to prison because paragraph 175 remained a low in West Germany until 1969. The persecution of gays, lesbians and transgender people continues today. In placing this piece of glass in the memorial, Ms. Hinton asks that we not only remember our brothers and sisters who were exterminated in the Holocaust, but the communities which still suffer from homophobia. She asks us to remember the hate crime that occurred on Western's campus this last spring, and the brutal death of Mathew Shepard, this fall.

Rachel Young
In September 1939, Hitler signed an order empowering his personal physician and the chief of the Fuhrer Chancellery to put to death those considered "unsuited to live." This order charged physicians with the responsibility of performing "mercy killing" for those "patients considered incurable according to the best available human judgment of their state of health." What followed was the so-called euthanasia program, in which men, women, and children who were physically disabled, mentally retarded or emotionally disturbed were systematically killed. The first killings were by starvation, later by injections of lethal doses of sedatives and later by gassing in chambers. The killing centers to which the handicapped were transported were the antecedents of the death camps. Euthanasia doctor Irmfried Eberl, later became the commandant of Treblinka, where killing of a magnitude as yet unimagined took place. With this piece of glass Rachel wishes to remember the many handicapped men, women and children who were murdered in the Holocaust.

We remember those who were consumed in the Holocaust. May their memory serve as a blessing - and a warning. And, we must remember that...

…the earth's crust is soaked with the tears of the innocent. The blood of every race cries out from the ground. Which is the people without its martyrs? Now, therefore, we honor those of every race and continent: the innocent, the victims, all our companions in death and our partners in grief. Them we honor, them we mourn: may they never be forgotten; may a better world grow out of their suffering.

Susan Kincaid
There have been five generations since President Andrew Jackson signed the Indian Removal Act of 1830 banishing the Cherokee and remnants of 60 other Eastern tribes beyond the Mississippi. According to archaeologists, the Cherokee had lived in the Appalachians, North Carolina, and Great Smoky Mountains for at least 2,000 years before their first contact with Hernando de Soto in 1540. One by one the tribes were moved west of the Mississippi as they were rounded up by Jackson's soldiers, incarcerated in detention camps, and marched 800 miles to Eastern Oklahoma. First the Choctaw, out of Mississippi during a winter blizzard-barefoot, short on blankets and rations. Next, the Creek were removed from Alabama, some in chains, and some on steamboats. One steamboat capsized en route, and more than 300 drowned. Then the Chicasaw from Arkansas and Mississippi, and the Seminole from Florida. Then the Cherokee even though they had argued and won their case before the US Supreme Court. Chief Justice John Marshall affirmed their sovereign status and their right to remain in Georgia. In all, more than 150,000 Natives were forcibly marched down the Trail of Tears. One in every four died of dysentery, hypothermia, measles, whooping cough, or abuse. The Trail of Tears was a Trail of Graves. With this piece of glass, Susan Kincaid wishes to remember her grandmother, born on the Trail of Tears. They named her after the next two towns they came to: Catossie Vanetti so her family would never forget the sadness. Her mother says they carried our sick, and old, and even their dead-and even the whites cried from the sadness of it all.

Jim Wilson
Jim Wilson is a respected and beloved father, grandfather, great-grandfather, member of the Tribal Council and Elder of Lummi Nation. He was born on Lummi Island in 1925 and when he was five, the Lummi Police came to his home to take him to the BIA Tulalip School. Attempting to avoid capture, little Jim Wilson climbed a "Matchin" (Crow berry tree). At the school he was met by a matron, issued a brown uniform of army ration, forced to march in army style to dining areas, to classrooms and to sleeping quarters. The morning porridge had maggots in it; some children vomited in their bowls and were forced by the matrons to eat the porridge and their vomit. Mr. Wilson wasn't allowed to speak Lummi language. Punishment included having his mouth washed with soap and/or severe beatings. One year later he was sent to Cushman Hospital for 7 years during which time he was not allowed to have contact with his immediate family. With this piece of glass Mr. Wilson wishes to remember the many years there was no children's laughter among the parents of the Lummi people.

Pauline Hillaire
Pauline Hillaire is a respected elder of the Lummi Tribe, a mother, grandmother and great grandmother, and a cultural resource person teaching at Lummi High School. Her mother, in her early teens, was sent to a boarding school. While she was there, she was caught speaking her language and was punished severely. When the tide was out, she was tied to a post in a shed which was on the beach and made to stay there overnight. When the tide came in it brought with it crabs and other creatures which she had to fight off all night long. All this was done to kill a culture. Pauline Hilllaire, a member of the Lummi Nation, is placing this piece of broken glass in memory of her mother.

Shirley Osterhouse
We remember the thousands of Catholics in Central America who were killed for living their Christian faith as it was meant to be lived - with passion and without compromise, with perseverance and commitment to the poor. Sister Osterhouse is placing this piece of broken glass in memory of Archbishop Romero, the four U.S. church women, the six Jesuit priests, their housekeeper and her daughter and the thousands of church leaders and members who were tortured, disappeared, brutalized and butchered for the faithfulness to the Gospel of "El Salvador", the name which means "The Savior."

Chris Matsumoto
Chris Matsumoto's grandfather, Takeo Yoshihara, was placed in an internment camp during World War II. Chris has tried to understand the pain his grandfather experienced when he was betrayed by his own country, the United States. Chris asked him if he resented the government for taking him away from his life. Chris now realizes that he was asking the wrong question. His grandfather was resentful, but the feeling that haunted him was fear, not of the interment camps, but of life outside the camps. Takeo Yoshihara feared for his life. He saw Americans killing and hurting other Americans right here in Washington state simple because they looked Asian. This fear lasted long after the camps ended. His grandfather told him that as bad as the interment camps were, they were the safest place for a Japanese American. In placing this piece of glass in memory of his grandfather, Chris wishes to remember that internment camps do not cause resentment, but people cause fear and persecution.

Brent Youngberg
Brent Youngberg remembers that members of Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints have experienced persecution since its organization in 1830. Acts of hatred, based in fear, jealousy and bigotry have been expressed in persecution which have included threats, revilement, property damage, property confiscation, murder, rape and mayhem. These crimes were experienced in Ohio, Missouri and Illinois and were abetted or accomplished by civil authorities and state militias/mobs. The prophet Joseph Smith's murder by such a mob resulted in a forced expulsion of Mormons from Illinois in 1846, an exodus to the Rocky Mountains with 6,000 deaths on the trail, and later, the invasion of Utah by U.S. Army troops. In placing this piece of glass in the memorial, Mr. Youngberg wishes to remind us that opposition still exists largely in the form of deliberately false literature, audio/visual materials and other expressions of bigotry.

Vernon Damani Johnson
In June of 1998, James Byrd, Jr., an African American man in his late forties, decided to hitchhike home from a party on a Saturday night. A man in his late forties, Mr. Byrd was often known to hitchhike around the area. On that evening he was on a dark, two-lane, country road. He was picked up by three white men in a pick-up truck, chained to the rear of it, and dragged until his head was detached from his body. One month later, in an incident near Las Vegas, Nevada, two anti-racists, Lin Newborn, a black and Daniel Shersty, a white, were lured to the desert and shot by Neo-Nazi skinheads. With this piece of glass Vernon Johnson wishes us to remember that 90% of the 4,782 lynchings human beings lynched in the United States between 1882 and 1968 were of African American decent.