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Local students honor holocaust victims with Squirrel Hill memorial

SQUIRREL HILL, Pa. — A new sculpture in Squirrel Hill honors the 6 million Jewish lives lost during the holocaust.

The “Keeping Tabs” project started in 1995 when now-retired teacher Bill Watler challenged his Community Day School students to collect 6 million tabs from soda cans.

The tabs are now stored in 960 glass blocks that make up the sculpture.

“When you pull one out and you look at one and then you look at the rest of the, and you get the sense of how large that was. It was just incredible,” Walter said.

“It’s for every religion. Every religion, every person. Because every tab is a human life,” sculpture visitors Gary Tuckfelt said.

Hundreds of people from the community helped raise $1 million to build and maintain the structure. An endowment fund for holocaust education was also established with the money.