‘She Wouldn’t Take Off Her Boots’: Triad artist’s Greensboro sculpture is NC’s 1st women’s Holocaust memorial monument

Victoria Milstein spent years using her hands to express what her eyes couldn’t unsee.

Milstein, a Jewish woman, says her mother taught her about the horrors of the Holocaust at a young age, but her knowledge went deeper about what happened to women when she participated in the March of the Living in 2018.

“We have a trip where the community would go to the camps in Poland and then march off to Israel afterwards, “she said.

“Of course, what you would think would happen with women in this kind of an environment, how their bodies were used and how they were used, so I just learned that story, and I’m walking down, and I literally am hearing their voices. I am hearing, ‘Don’t forget about us. Remember what happened to us,’” she said.

Emotionally, it was overwhelming.

“I got back, and I knew that I had to do something, and I’m thinking, and I ended up seeing a photograph … Four women and a child moments before they were massacred. Death by bullets in Latvia in 1941 with ongoers photographed by a Nazi photographer,” she said.

Milstein says she pondered how to tell the story of what happened to six million Jews and to the women and children at the specific site.

“You tell it through a story of one person or one family,” she said.

Looking at every detail, their facial expressions, their posture, their linked arms, Milstein sculpted “She Wouldn’t Take Off Her Boots.”

“Artists are the canaries in the coal mines. We’re the ones that tell these visual stories,” she said.

With the support of Greensboro city leaders, it was installed in LeBauer Park in 2023 as North Carolina’s first women’s Holocaust memorial monument. It has become a significant part of statewide education.

“If we don’t teach this history, if we don’t teach our children, these things will continue to happen,” Milstein said.

It was a five-year journey for Milstein to make the sculpture, fundraise for it and create a nonprofit and documentary.

As co-founder of the nonprofit Women of the Shoah, Milstein helped develop a curriculum and teacher fellowship that provides thorough Holocaust education training for middle school and high school teachers.

There are currently 116 fellows and close to 100 tours are set up for this year, with the ability to reach thousands of students.

Holocaust survivor Shelly Weiner, a major supporter of the effort, recently spoke to students visiting the memorial from Piedmont High School in Monroe, North Carolina.

“We have to learn from history. We have to learn that these horrible things should never happen again, and I feel if I reach one student, I’ve done my job,” she said.

Visitors are encouraged to be part of that job and responsibility.

Milstein sculpted a camera that is located across from the women. She wants visitors to look through the lens.

“To see the women through your eyes,” she said.

On the camera are words honoring a famous quote from Holocaust survivor Elie Wiesel, saying, “The opposite of love is not hate. It is indifference.” The sentence, “You are a witness,” follows.

“The sculpture isn’t finished until the community participates,” Milstein said.