How much of the Holocaust Monument is his design? Not especially much! See below. Sivert Lindblom used together with Gabriel Herdewall just the same method only a few years later just 100 meters from the horses.
Back to the horses. The same horses can be seen at several places in the world and also in Sweden in Rotternos Park and in the City of Örebro. None of them are by Sivert Lindblom although they are just the same as Matchbox cars - identical. Also, the plinths are almost identical at the three locations in Sweden.
Wikipedia (pictures), see below, is showing the above horses at three locations in the world. They are identical and also the plinth at Rotternos is almost the same but not in bronze.
Horses of San Marco Basilica in Venice (ancient Greek or Roman, likely Imperial Rome), 4th century B.C.E. to 4th century C.E., copper alloy, 235 x 250 cm each has been plundered Constantinople in the 13th century during The Fourth Crusade directed a.o. to Constantinople. Constantinople, or Byzantium, had been founded by Constantine I in 330 and it became the capital of the Byzantium Empire, where the traditions of Greece and Rome were maintained and named after Caesar Flavius Valerius Aurelius Constantinus Augustus that was was the first Christian Roman Emperor. He renamed Byzantium into an imperial residence, renaming it Constantinople.
When Pope Innocent III had become Pope in 1198, and immediately started to preach for a Fourth Crusade. So the 4th Crusade and plundering was the cause that the Four Horses, were taken from Constantinople to Venice. Of course the four horses were not the only things taken from that city. Also ending up in Venice were the Tetrarchs, built into a corner of the Basilica of San Marco, adjacent to the Porta della Carta. The next plunder of the horses was Napoleone. The Four Horses were brought to Paris and initially housed in Les Invalides, then placed on gate piers guarding the entrance to the Tuileries, before finally being placed atop the Arc de Triomphe du Carrousel, also in the Tuileries. However, compared to their centuries of repose in Venice, their stay in Paris was over in the blink of an eye. A mere 17 years after their removal from Venice, and following Napoleon’s final exile to St Helena after the defeat at Waterloo in June 1815, Austrian and English engineers lowered them from the arch on 17 October 1815, under guard by Austrian soldiers . Two months later they were loaded onto barges and ferried across the lagoon and back to their old home. There they stood until air pollution forced their removal, in the early 1980s, to their present, much less lofty, position just inside the Basilica.
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| The same horses as in Venice can be seen at several places in the world and also in Sweden in Rotternos Park in Sune (above), the City of Örebro and the one in Stockholm signed by Sivert Lindblom. The collars were added in 1204 by the Venetians to conceal where the heads had been severed to facilitate their transportation by ship from Constantinople to Venice. What was added by Sivert Lindblom in the statue of the horse in Stockholm besides... his signature is not known. |
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| The same horses as in Venice (middle) can be seen at several places in the world and also in Sweden in Rotternos Park in Sune (left), the City of Örebro and the one in Stockholm (right), signed by Sivert Lindblom. |
The same horse sculpture as in Stockholm is in the city of Örebro. However, in the list of the sculptures in Örebro there is the following statement: Lista över offentlig konst i Örebro kommun -Bysantinsk häst, Okänd, 1997, Brons, Stallbacken / Kungsgatan 1.
Okänd means that the sculptor is unknown. In Stockholm there is the name of Sivert Lindblom on the same horse from the same source, Glyptotek in Copenhagen and to start with Constantinople/Venice horses.
So, what is the history of the Constantinople horses in Sweden? It was 1959 when Svante Påhlson made bronze castings on Herman Bergman's Art Foundry in Stockholm of two of the horses of copies that were on the Glyptotek in Copenhagen. It was for his big love, read Rottneros Park. Bergman's art foundry also made another copy, Two copy for Stallbacken in city of Örebro. None of these bronze castings has Sivert Lindbloms name on it. Just the casting in Stockholm. Why is Sivert Lindblom signing the work from Constantinople more than 2000 years ago by his name? Money?
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| I understood early that the brick wall as in the ghetto will not be enough for the names of thousands of victims. It could contain 1 000 names but not 6 000 ?. The area needed was almost of the size Vietnam Memorial in Washington. There was only one space and two walls. Le mur between the Great Synagougy in Stockholm and the Catholic church. |
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| "Commemorated by" was my system which I used from the very beginning so the Holocaust survivors that send the information to me about their Holocaust victims could easily find them on the wall with 6 000+ names. |
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"Commemorated by" was the system that I used from the very beginning so the Holocaust survivors that send the information to me about their Holocaust victims could easily find them on the wall with 6 000+ names. Here Commemorated by, in Swedish Hedras av familjen Wroblewski. The stone was one of four that I let be done to compare the stone type and the lettering. Here the stone from Bjärryd which I choose and was also finally used along the entire wall with the names.
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Three pages from the Romuald Roman Wroblewskis application to the City Hall in Stockholm (1994) included the description of entire Holocaust Monument in Stockholm, its location and the way the names of the Holocaust victims should be arranged.
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| Romuald Roman Wroblewskis book includes the history of entire Holocaust Monument in Stockholm, its location and the way the names of the Holocaust victims should be arranged.
The idea of present Holocaust Monument in Stockholm (Namnmonumentet) arose when my mother-in-law Maria Soltan, born Kalisz (from Łódź), the Holocaust Survivor, traveled to Poland in the autumn of 1993 in order to visit the graves of her family members who died or were murdered during World War II. The graves were no longer there! She walked very sad around the graveyard. A caretaker of the cemetery suggested that memorial plaques be engraved "instead" on the cemetery wall close to the entrance to the cemetery.
Within the family, we considered this particular idea. I asked my mother-in-law about the names, number of persons. Every time we discussed it, the number of relatives to remember was increasing. First, there were just adults! I asked her about the children, she answered: they were many, but they were just children... and now I do not remember all their names! They were away since...
I went to my mother and asked her exactly the same questions. I knew that numerous members of my mothers and fathers families were murdered during the Holocaust. Personally, I knew just a few names and I thought at that time that "total number" of them was around ten. Suddenly my mother started to talk about it and also started to remember. I asked her to write down "her and my father's lists" or just the number of murdered relatives.
Next steps. I knew I have to change the numbers to the names and number of names and also the Name-monument will increase in size. Not just the wall with 10 meters width with 1-2 thousand names!
I started to think about a co-worker. None from Second generation (Children of the Holocaust Survivors) was at that time interested or had time. Most Holocaust survivors I knew in Sweden knew just their own story but their total knowledge about the Holocaust was very limited. There was, however, one exception. Halina Neujahr. I was a bit afraid of her. I called her and she agreed to meet at my place.
After some minutes I knew, I found the mensh, partner to work with and a new friend for life. Halina was the member of the board of the local Holocaust Survivors organization in Stockholm.
Together with Halina we wrote our first appeal, we signed it only with our names and addresses as the board of survivors of the Holocaust (Föreningen Förintelsens Överlevande), especially the chairman, Jakub Ringart, disliked our idea. The members of the board were the same as the members of the organization and they just wanted to continue going to schools telling their stories and they wanted to continue to make the movie about their own Holocaust experiences. So first they said no but later they agreed, however on special terms.
The conspiracy of silence
Talking to my mother about our family was, of course, the great opportunity to break the year 1993 "the conspiracy of silence" - Until 1993, nobody talked openly about the Holocaust (and the family) and nobody asked about it! A silent agreement between post-war parents and their children, second generation. Frequently, as our parents, were the sole survivors of their previous families!
 completely. There is no one to remember their names. Many of the survivors died already, without having left information on the fate of their families. It is therefore important to collect all the names available from all survivors living in Sweden. Sweden has received during the Spring and Summer 1945, a large number of survivors of the concentration camps, liberated by the Western armies, a.o. from Bergen-Belsen. Most of these survivors were helped here to regain health and the will to live, to start e new life again.  The information about Einsidler Jetty from Rzeszów in Poland is the information I forwarded to Washington. They are mentioned as below: Title: [Name data of Holocaust victims gathered for the Stockholm Holocaust Monument] Description: Electronic data containing names of Holocaust victims gathered for the Stockholm Holocaust Monument; data includes names, dates of birth and death, places of birth and incarceration, and grouped by commemorating family. Normally, on the Holocaust Monument, there is the name of the family that is commemorating the victim in case of Einsidler Jetty and other Holocaust victims that died in Sweden the family is missing information. It is most likely that non of her family survived. |
