San Diego (special) --When the community's 1997 Yom HaShoah services are held at 2 p.m. Sunday outside the Lawrence Family JCC in La Jolla, there will be no Holocaust monument serving as a backdrop. 

Such a monument is in the planning stages, however, with JCC President Gary Jacobs estimating it could be situated in an honored place--to the right of the expanded JCC's front door--in time for Yom HaShoah 1999.

Members of the New Life Club of Holocaust Survivors are working with architect Hillel B. Shear to come up with a design proposal that will be acceptable to the JCC's Fine Arts Committee and to its Board of Directors.

In the aftermath of the decision by the United Jewish Federation to phase out the former East County Jewish Community Center on 54th Street, the board of the Lawrence Family JCC board agreed to provide a home for the 26-year-old Holocaust memorial that is located in a fenced garden in front of the 54th Street building. 

The 54th Street memorial by local sculptress Shirley Lichtman features a ner tamid (an eternal light) set into a large wall above a modernistic bush with six shofar-like branches, representing the Six Million. A stream of water trickles down the branches into a small pool below. Plaques subsequently mounted on the large wall bear the names of concentration camps and other sites where Jews were murdered by the nazis. 

After New Life President Gussie Zaks, her husband and former club president Mike Zaks, and Beno Hirschbein, chairman of the club's monument committee, started meeting eight months ago to plan for the relocation of the memorial to the Lawrence Family JCC, they soon decided to come up with a new design.

Although the large memorial appears to be a massive bronze structure, it is, in fact, a thin bronze facade--"no thicker than a matzoh"-- over a 12 foot by 14 1/2 foot stone wall, said Hirschbein. He added that the memorial was not likely to survive a move intact. 

Even if it could survive the move, added Gussie and Mike Zaks, why not take the opportunity to find other ways of symbolically expressing the Holocuast? 

It was Holocaust Survivors who paid for the memorial at 54th Street, the Zakses said. Once again, Survivors and their friends in the community could raise money for a memorial at the Lawrence Family JCC, they said.

Mike Zaks contacted for help in designing a new memorial the architect Hillel Shear, with whom he serves on the board of Tifereth Israel Synagogue. Shear promptly agreed to donate his services.

After getting a bachelor's degree in architecture from Penn State University, Shear had moved to Israel where he obtained a master's degree in architecture from the Technion in Haifa.

In Israel, Shear helped design numerous institutional buildings including the archives and chapel complex of Yad Vashem, the major Holocaust museum and research center. Other projects included the Yarkon Sports Center in Tel Aviv, the Yarid Hamizrah Convention Center in Tel Aviv, administrative and classroom buildings at Tel Aviv University; the Student Union Building at Bar Ilan University, and dormitory facilities at the Weizmann Institute.

Since coming to San Diego, Shear has participated in the renovation or expansions of the U.S. Grant Hotel, the Lafayette Hotel, the Lemon Grove Community Center, and has worked overseas on designs for aquariums in Taiwan and Thailand.

After discussions with the New Life Club, Shear sketched a plan envisioning an open plaza to the right of the entrance to the proposed Galleria of the expanded JCC -- a building project now the subject of an $11.5 million community fundraising project. (More than $8 million already has been raised, according to Jacobs). The memorial would not be built until after the JCC addition is completed. 

Shear suggested that the plaza, incorporating a large Star of David into its pavement, should spread out in front of a 10 foot high by 12 foot wide black granite memorial wall which would stand at the top of three semi circular steps.

On the wall would be mounted a bronze sculpture of a "tree of life" which continues to grow strong and healthy even though six of its branches have been severed. The six branches represent the Six Million Jews who perished in the Holocaust.

Shear said while the exact dimensions of the Holocaust memorial may vary, depending on whether the JCC's own expansion plans are modified, the plaza (now proposed to measure approximately 36 by 24 feet) would be a natural place for people to meet, and for parents to pick up their children. 

In Shear's vision, the monument and plaza would be a "living place" -- not a fenced off place -- which children would absorb as part of their daily routines. At some point, when the children become curious about the meaning of the monument, Shear said, they would ask their parents -- and another generation would be on the road to Never Forgetting.

Zaks said making sure that the Holocaust is remembered by future generations of San Diegans is his prime motivation. Hirschbein said beyond that, the monument will be a place where he and other Survivors, as well as the families of Holocaust victims, will be able to focus their attention and remember the Six Million. Places for memorial plaques near the monument are part of the design proposal.

What is proposed now, and what finally will emerge, are likely to be quite different. Even as Shear, the Zakses and Hirschbein were discussing their proposal with HERITAGE, new ideas surfaced. Shear thought perhaps some design might be juxtaposed with the bronze tree to represent how former concentration camp inmates rebuilt their lives, married, had families and now are looking with anticipation to the Fourth Generation. 

Perhaps, he suggested, ashes and a stone from the Auschwitz crematorium--which the Zakses obtained about 10 years ago--could be incorporated into the base of the monument.

To such ideas will be added those of members of the JCC Fine Arts Committee and the JCC Board of Directors before a design is finalized. But consensus is widespread that the process should not drag on forever. That is why Yom HaShoah 1999 is the target date.

Gussie Zaks reflected that when the memorial was built at 54th street in 1971, leaders of the Jewish community did not appreciate the necessity for remembering the Holocaust the way they do today. 

She said about 95 percent of the funds for the 54th Street memorial came from Survivors, and from the late George Scott, a Christian who owned the Walker Scott Department Stores. So unenthusiastic was the Jewish community, initially, that rent had to be paid to the JCC for the space on which the memorial was built, she said. 

In contrast, Gussie Zaks added, the leadership of the Lawrence Family JCC have extended "open arms" to the Survivor community and are working closely and positively to enable the placement of a memorial at the facility.

What will be done with the old monument?

If the 54th Street Building is sold (as San Diego Hebrew Homes and the United Jewish Federation, co-owners, hope it will be soon), the monument may be left up, if the new owners agree to maintain it with respect.

Otherwise, it probably will be moved to Home of Peace Cemetery, Hirschbein said. 

If enough of it can be salvaged--and if the cemetery's operators agree--it will be re-erected there, he said. Otherwise, the old monument may be broken up and given a ceremonial burial in the same way that tattered Bibles and other Holy Writings are buried.