On her pilgrimages to the Holocaust Memorial, Deli Strummer remembers the American soldier who rescued her, the young man who took one look at her starved, scarred and humiliated body and instinctively gave her the shirt off his back.
For the Austrian-born survivor of five concentration camps, the stark concrete and stone monument in front of a grove of trees in downtown Baltimore represents the generous strength of her liberators. Yet, even as she reflects on the darkest days of her life and celebrates her love for America, she cannot help but mourn another tragedy.
The shrine dedicated to the 6 million Jews who perished in Nazi concentration camps is desecrated daily. Broken beer bottles, crumpled bags and discarded syringes litter the ground. The narrow walkways reek of urine. City custodians pick up trash and dirty bedding each day.
Perhaps as much as bearing witness to the horror that was the Holocaust, it is a monument to the neglect and decay of a major East Coast city at the end of the 20th century.
The blemished memorial has come to symbolize the failures of a city government and a nonprofit organization to cope with society's increasingly intractable problems. For many years, city officials, Jewish community leaders and homeless advocates have been aware of the desecration but have been unable to end it. All say their best cleanup efforts are ruined within hours.
"It isn't even anger to see this; it brings tears to my eyes. But at the same time, I used my intelligence and said this is a different world," said Mrs. Strummer, 72, who came to the United States in 1950, five years after being freed from the Mauthausen camp in Austria.
Now, the Baltimore Jewish Council, which spent 12 years planning the $200,000-plus memorial, wants to tear it down and create a new monument at the opposite end of the plaza. Four architectural proposals to shift the monument next to the statue of Holocaust victims being consumed by flames are under review. The redesign is expected to cost at least $250,000.
These days, the block-long memorial next to Baltimore City Community College often appears forgotten. Visitors are scarce during the week. Even the somber ceremony of Yom Hashoa, the Day of Remembrance, has been moved because of the stench and disrepair.
The memorial at Water, Gay and East Lombard streets is two blocks from Baltimore's glittering Inner Harbor but is tucked behind a small hill on a deserted side street.
North of the memorial is The Block, the downtown adult entertainment zone, and to the east is the shuttered Fishmarket nightclub complex, which has been a drain on the city's ambitious plans to pump life into the area.
City cleanup crews stepped up their daily efforts at the Holocaust Memorial after a public outcry in the summer of 1991. The Baltimore Jewish Council responded by debating and then rejecting two options -- fencing in the memorial or moving it to another part of town.
"It's a problem caused by what society has become, which has conspired with a poor design that allows these things to happen," said the council's executive director, Arthur C. Abramson. "It's tragic, and there's no simple answer."
Has it really come to this point that a simple monument cannot stand unblemished in a big city?
In New York City, Grant's Tomb has fallen into such disrepair that the descendants of President Ulysses S. Grant threatened this year to remove his remains.
In Philadelphia, Mayor Edward G. Rendell pledged in his 1991 campaign to restore some shine to City Hall, a century-old landmark that became known for its stench and scaffolding. Mayor Rendell kept his promise, getting down on his hands and knees to scrub the women's room, while 1,500 other volunteers swept and painted dusty corridors.
The plaza in front of Baltimore's City Hall also is littered with trash and smells of urine each morning. The six-member parks crew that takes care of all downtown plazas must wash the cobblestones before cleaning the Holocaust Memorial.
Nevertheless, the Jewish Council is optimistic about combating the ravages of the city simply by redesigning the memorial in a more visible location.
"Right now, there are all these places concealed from the public. If you moved it toward the front and made it more garden-like and serene, you wouldn't have these secretive places for people to do these acts," said Alvin Fisher, a retiree who pushed for the memorial but says he never liked the design.
Others fear that even a radical design change would not end the desecration. Fred Finnerty, supervisor of the custodians of the memorial, says only a fence will help. Fifth District Councilwoman Rochelle "Rikki" Spector agrees that without lighting and possibly a fence, the memorial could be doomed to "the same problems you have everywhere downtown."
Homeless advocates say the city must provide public bathrooms downtown and create more drug treatment and job programs.
Meanwhile, some rabbis in Baltimore and the surrounding suburbs suggest that the memorial be reconfigured to offer more educational opportunities to compete with the popular U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum in Washington.
"Certainly, there isn't a need for another empty pile of stones," said Rabbi Martin Siegel of Columbia Jewish Congregation.
It was a bright November afternoon when the city, the Jewish Council, the Holocaust Memorial Fund and Baltimore Community College dedicated the monument 14 years ago. Thousands of people paused to look at the grim list of concentration camps chiseled in gray marble and to linger under the newly planted trees.
For Leo Bretholz, who escaped from a cattle car en route to Auschwitz but lost 50 relatives in the Holocaust, it was a moving moment, a chance for the crowd to reflect on man's inhumanity and rededicate itself to fighting prejudice and hatred. William Donald Schaefer, then mayor, said that "a society that calls itself civilized must answer to itself."
Baltimore architects Donald Kann and Arthur Valk contrasted the two huge slabs of concrete, "the intrusion of a cold, dark, brutal force" that represented the Nazi war machine, with a park that symbolized the unsuspecting victims. Mr. Kann said he also wanted to offer aplace for meditation, away from the Lombard Street's traffic.
The community college had donated the land for the memorial; the city leased it for $1 a year and promised to take care of it.
From its inception, some Jewish leaders and Holocaust survivors had private doubts. They worried about its abstract design and its location -- close to the newly opened Harborplace but also The Block.
"There are some monuments, immediately when you see them, you get shocked, you shiver, you start to cry," Mr. Bretholz, 73, said in a recent interview. "This you have to look closely; it doesn't immediately make itself clear."
Few said anything because the property had been donated and the neighborhood appeared poised for revitalization. Downtown Baltimore was enjoying a boom in the early to mid-1980s, with new office development and plans to transform Market Place into an upscale shopping, office and entertainment center.
And few people wanted to say much at the end of the decade, when some shiny buildings stood vacant and the memorial grew tarnished.
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In 1988, Jewish leaders dedicated the flaming sculpture in memory of Kristallnacht, the night of broken glass in 1938, when police made rubble of thousands of Jewish shops, synagogues and homes in Germany and Austria. By then, homeless people had found a nighttime refuge at the concrete monument, and visitors were uncomfortable by the smell of urine there.
The Baltimore Jewish Council debated moving the memorial to Northwest Baltimore, the center of the city's Jewish community, or another downtown location. In the end, the council decided to keep it near the Inner Harbor, which attracts millions of visitors each year. Holocaust survivors also rejected a fence or chain as too negative a symbol.
Today, Jewish leaders and city agencies say they can assign no blame for the state of the memorial. Cleanup efforts fail because the problems are so severe, according to dozens of people interviewed.
PTC Yet there appears to have been less than a concerted effort to find a solution.
Asked who is responsible, the Jewish Council said the city is expected to handle maintenance. The council has only $2,500 budgeted each year to cut the grass, and Mr. Abramson said volunteers would be hard to find because people fear the block is dirty and dangerous.
Public Works Director George G. Balog said he has received only two complaints about the memorial in recent years. Questioned about assigning a full-time sweeper to that area, he said it would not be a prudent budget decision.
City Council President Mary Pat Clarke acknowledged that the council failed to take action three years ago but said its focus was on neighborhood drug problems.
"I'm afraid this particular issue got lost," she said.
Mayor Kurt L. Schmoke said the city does its best to keep up the shrine short of hiring a 24-hour guard. "Certainly, no one has approached us about trying to assume new responsibilities there," he said.
Mr. Schmoke also is optimistic about a rebirth of the Market Place area with plans for a new Children's Museum and related shops.
Mr. Finnerty, the parks crew director, argued that the problem is so big that the only solution is a joint effort by all city agencies, the Jewish Council, the Downtown Partnership, the community college and the professionals in nearby offices. "People have to get involved," he said.
For now, Jewish community leaders are hopeful that the redesign will keep the landmark safe again.
"It will certainly be peace in my heart and soul to see it more or less rebuilt," said Deli Strummer. "I feel very strongly that this memorial should be a teaching tool, not just a memory. Always we have the same hope that through our terrible, terrible experience, we can make this a message for peace on Earth."