A small space charged with an enormous legacy, the Memorial Room within the Melbourne Holocaust Museum by KTA Architects, resonates physically and emotionally through materiality and symbolism to communicate the universal burden of experience, while celebrating the strength of collective memory and resilience.

As a third-generation survivor of the Holocaust, Stephen Jolson undertook a deeply personal project to tell the story of the refugee embedded in Melbourne’s rich diversity, celebrating survivors who settled in the city after the war.

Located behind the façade of an original heritage-listed building, Jolson’s design poetically tells the story about the Star-of-David as a symbol of religion and identity, victimisation and discrimination, brokenness and fragmentation, destruction and extermination, solidarity and community.

At the heart of the room are thousands of gold and bronze stars adorning every surface of the surrounding walls, creating an abstract representation of a community while reclaiming identities.  These can be dedicated as a tangible memorial to those who were lost and those who survived and settled in Melbourne.

The floor of the space is divided in two and lined in steel, representing the fate of those who were transported to the death camps during WWII. On the left hand side are inscribed names of places where survivors and victims lived before the war, and the right hand side bears names of the camps where survivors laboured and victims were murdered.

Bringing in natural daylight, a 13-metre-high atrium follows the lines of a dissected Star of David up to a void where the fractured star forms a restructured symbol of hope through reflections in glass brick. Beneath it, a cursive altar holding the memorial room visitors book that rests on top, rises towards this channelled light – its design reinforcing a simple message in Hebrew letters: ‘remember’.