An ethereal wall of over 100,000 glass bottles, representing those who survived the Nazi death camps—each with apersonal message, rises out of the sand as a glimmering beacon of hope and testament to human resilience in the face of atrocity.A call is put out for letters and photographs of the survivors, their words and images to be etched into solid bottles cast from recycled glass.Local students participate in the preliminary assembly of the bottle walls, which are then bound together in an innovative post tensioned design.Built by the community and the world, the memorial attests to the fragile but enduring bonds of humanity.The messages in the bottles are at once personal and universal—the intimate words and faces of the memorial’s “castaways” invoke the Diaspora, while bearing witness to all those that suffered in the Shoah—healing the fragments of history and faith into a collective image of courage and redemption.To witness these messages is to participate in an act of salvation.Selected as one of six finalists out of over 850 submissions,The memorial design is one of hope, courage, and humanity, rather than victim-hood; telling the only story that really matters-the inexorable bond between us all.Inventing an entirely unique post tension system, using solid cast glass bottles as structural "bricks", the optical qualities of the 2 1/2" diameter cast glass bottles enable the memorial to be BOTH figuratively legible (at moments portraits of victims visible in the bottles) and abstract (at moments the instable images disappearing-distorted by the thick lense of glass-into thin air) ineffable clear glass walls. This unique simultaneity of interpretation lends the design a surreal presence, summoning the images of those lost generations ago.A feature unique to the design, is the use of the precise path of the sun; with the sunrise and sunset celebrating important dates of remembrance, as well as integral to the design's perception.Integral to the memorial design, is the involvement of the local community and schoolchildren in its actual assembly, and also enabling visitors to contribute their own notes of thoughts and prayers into empty glass bottles at the memorial's entrance for that purpose, in a modern day version of the Wailing Wall.