BERGAMO, Italy (AP) — The Italian city that suffered the brunt of COVID-19’s first deadly wave is dedicating a vivid memorial to the pandemic dead: A grove of trees, creating oxygen in a park opposite the hospital where so many died, unable to breathe.
Bergamo, in northern Italy, is among the many communities around the globe dedicating memorials to commemorate lives lost in a pandemic that is nearing the terrible threshold of 5 million confirmed dead.
Some have been drawn from artist’s ideas or civic group proposals, but others are spontaneous displays of grief and frustration. Everywhere, the task of creating collective memorials is fraught, with the pandemic far from vanquished and new dead still being mourned.
Memorial flags, hearts, ribbons: These simple objects have stood in for virus victims, representing lost lives in eye-catching memorials from London to Washington D.C., and Brazil to South Africa.
The collective impact of white flags covering 20 acres on the National Mall in the U.S. capital was literally breathtaking, representing the more than 740,000 Americans killed by COVID-19, the highest official national death toll in the world.
One honored 80-year-old Carey Alexander Washington of South Carolina, who was vaccinated and contracted the virus while still working as a clinical psychologist in March. His 6-year-old granddaughter Izzy collapsed in grief when she found her ‘’papa’s” flag — a moment captured by a photographer and shared on Twitter.
“Families like mine, we’re still grieving,” said Washington’s daughter, Tanya, who traveled from Atlanta to see the memorial. “It was important to witness that honor that was being given to them. It gave a voice to all our loved ones that have been lost.”
A memorial wall in London similarly conveys the scale of loss, with pink and red hearts painted by bereaved loved ones on a wall along the River Thames. Walking the memorial’s length without pausing to read names and inscriptions takes a full nine minutes. The hearts represent the over 140,000 coronavirus deaths in Britain, Europe’s second-highest toll after Russia; like elsewhere in the world, the actual number is estimated to be much higher:160,000.
“It shocks people,’’ said Fran Hall, a spokeswoman for the COVID-19 Bereaved Families for Justice. She lost her husband, Steve Mead, in September 2020, the day before his 66th birthday. “Every time we are here, people stop and talk to us, and quite often they are moved to tears as they are walking by, and thank us.”
In Brazil’s capital, relatives of COVID-19 victims planted thousands of white flags in front of Brazil’s Congress in a one-day, emotion-laden action meant to raise awareness of Brazil’s toll of more than 600,000, the second-highest in the world.
And in South Africa, blue and white ribbons are tied to a fence at the St. James Presbyterian Church in Bedford Gardens, east of Johannesburg, to remember the country’s 89,000 dead: each blue ribbon counting for 10 lives, white for one.
How victims of war, atrocities and even health crises are remembered has evolved through the ages. Victorious statues of generals gave way to tombs of the unknown soldier after World War I, in a bid to remember the sacrifices of ordinary soldiers. Paris’ Arche de Triomphe was one of the first.
“World War I was a benchmark, which is particularly relevant because it was followed by the 1918 flu pandemic,” said Jennifer Allen, an assistant professor of history at Yale University who has studied memorial culture.
That pandemic seems to have been little memorialized, partly because of the keen focus on the war dead. “It was a period of mass death,” Allen said. “That is why we talk about the lost generation.”
Holocaust memorials were the next major testaments to mass killing, Allen said. They span big, traditional monuments like Berlin’s Holocaust Memorial, and more personalized tributes where victims are named, like the so-called Stumbling Stones outside buildings were Jews lived before the Holocaust.
Not since the AIDS quilt made its way across the United States, with loved ones adding squares for people who had succumbed, has a health crisis been the object of memorials of a scale like those now honoring the COVID-19 dead. The quilt has grown to nearly 50,000 squares, representing more than 105,000 individuals.
Memorials like the AIDS quilt and the Stumbling Stones have helped solidify a trend toward grass-roots remembrances and the desire to honor victims as individuals, Allen said. Both are emerging in the COVID-19 memorials.
“We want to get to the individuals, who make up all of the millions of deaths,’’ Allen said. “As people so often point out: These were mothers, fathers, brothers, sisters, children, neighbors. ”
Collectively memorializing the coronavirus dead has been complicated by the weight of private grief, which was too often borne alone in the first wave, when funerals could not take place and loved ones too often died without the presence or caress of a loved one.
An Italian Facebook group, Noi Denunceremo, was started as a place to publicly, if virtually, remember the dead during the country’s first draconian lockdown, and developed quickly into a collection of data on alleged failures that have been turned over to prosecutors.
In India, one of the world’s most affected countries, an online memorial was launched in February, www.nationalcovidmemorial.in, inviting submissions verified with death certificates. So far, it has only 250 tributes, a minute fraction of the over 457,000 confirmed dead, which is itself a vast undercount.
“It’s not memorializing only, it’s how we can pay respect and dignity” to the dead, said Abhijit Chowdhury of the COVID Care Network that started the memorial from the eastern city of Kolkata.
In Russia’s second-largest city, St. Petersburg, a bronze statue called “Sad Angel” was placed in March outside a medical school to honor the dozens of doctors and medical workers who died of COVID-19. The sculpture of an angel with his shoulders slumped and head hanging disconsolately is especially poignant because its creator, Roman Shustrov, himself died of the virus in May 2020.
Italy has not dedicated a national monument to its some 132,000 confirmed dead, but it has designated a coronavirus remembrance day. Premier Mario Draghi stood among the first newly planted trees in Bergamo’s Trucca Park on March 18, the first anniversary of the indelible image of army trucks bringing dead to other cities for cremation after the city’s morgue was overwhelmed.
Bergamo’s mayor said the city considered proposals for statues or plaques bearing the names of the dead. One was too monumental; the other ignored that so many dead were not officially counted due to lack of testing.
“The Woods of Memory is a living monument, and it immediately seemed to us to be the most convincing, the most emotive and the one that was closest to our sentiments,’’ Bergamo Mayor Giorgio Gori said.
Only 100 trees have been planted so far of the 700 that are planned, facing the hospital’s morgue. The rest should be planted by next year’s March 18 remembrance day.
There are no plans to add names, but in at least one case, loved ones have claimed a sapling: Roses are planted at the base, with personal mementoes hanging from it and a white rock bearing the handwritten name of a dearly departed: Sergio.
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AP journalists Pan Pylas in London, Phil Marcelo in Boston, Sheikh Saaliq in New Delhi, Mogomotsi Magome in Johannesburg, Irina Titova in St. Petersburg, Russia, and Débora Álvares in Brasilia, Brazil, contributed to this report.
COVID-19 memorial creators reflect as world nears 5M deaths
As the world nears the milestone of 5 million COVID-19 deaths, memorials large and small, ephemeral and epic, have cropped up around the United States.
In New Jersey, one woman’s modest seaside memorial for her late brother has grown to honor thousands of lost souls. In Los Angeles, a teen’s middle school project commemorating her city’s fallen through a patchwork quilt now includes the names of hundreds more from around the world.
Here’s a look at what inspired some U.S.-based artists to contribute to the growing collection of memorials honoring the nearly 5 million dead worldwide from COVID-19.
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WASHINGTON, D.C.
Back in June, Suzanne Brennan Firstenberg purchased more than 630,000 small white flags in preparation for staging a massive temporary memorial on the National Mall.
It would be more than enough, she thought, to represent all the Americans who would have succumbed to the virus as the pandemic seemed to be on the retreat.
She was wrong. By the time “ In America: Remember ” opened Sept. 17, more than 670,000 Americans had died as the virus’ delta variant fueled a deadly resurgence. At the end of the exhibit’s two-week run, the number was more than 700,000.
Firstenberg was struck by how strangers connected in their grief at the installation, which ended Oct. 3.
“I was blown away by the willingness of people to share their grief and by the willingness of others to lessen it, to honor it,” she said. “So when I looked out on those flags, I saw hope. I really believe humanity is going to win out.”
The installation was the second monumental exhibit to remember virus victims that the Maryland-based artist has staged. Firstenberg previously planted nearly 270,000 white flags outside Washington’s RFK Stadium last October to represent the national death toll at the time.
“For the first one, my motivation was outrage that the country could let something like this happen,” she said. “This time it was really to cause a moment of pause. The deaths have been relentless. People have become fully inured to these numbers.”
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WALL TOWNSHIP, NEW JERSEY
On Jan. 25, Rima Samman wrote her brother Rami’s name on a stone and placed it on a beach in her hometown of Belmar, New Jersey, surrounded by shells arranged in the shape of a heart. It would have been Rami’s 41st birthday, had he not died from COVID-19 the previous May.
A makeshift memorial quickly grew up after Samman, 42, invited others in an online support group to contribute markers memorializing their own loved ones. By July there were more than 3,000 stones in about a dozen hearts outlined by yellow-painted clam shells.
Samman and other volunteers decided to preserve the memorial because it was located on a public beach and exposed to the elements. They carefully disassembled the arrangements and set them in display cases.
“I knew if we just demolished it, it would crush people,” she recalled. “For a lot of people, it’s all they have to remember their loved ones.”
The displays are now the centerpiece of the Rami’s Heart COVID-19 Memorial, which opened in September at Allaire Community Farm in nearby Wall Township. It includes a garden, walking path and sculptures, and honors more than 4,000 virus victims and growing.
Maintaining the memorial has been both rewarding and tough, as she is still mourning the loss of her brother.
“It’s a double-edged sword because as much as working on the memorial helps, every day you’re exposed to this grief,” Samman said. “It’s a lot of pressure. You want to make sure it’s done right. It can be draining.”
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LOS ANGELES
Madeleine Fugate’s memorial quilt started out in May 2020 as a seventh grade class project.
Inspired by the AIDS Memorial Quilt, which her mother worked on in the 1980s, the then-13-year-old encouraged families in her native Los Angeles to send her fabric squares representing their lost loved ones that she’d stitch together.
The COVID Memorial Quilt has grown so big it covers nearly two dozen panels and includes some 600 memorial squares honoring individuals or groups, such as New Zealand’s more than two dozen virus victims.
The bulk of the quilt is currently at the Armory Art Center in West Palm Beach, Florida, with a smaller portion on permanent display at the California Science Center in Los Angeles and another featured at the International Quilt Museum in Lincoln, Nebraska.
Fugate, her mother and a small, dedicated band of volunteers meet Sundays to sew and embroider panels. Fabric and other materials are donated by victims’ families.
Now a high school freshman, she plans to keep the project going indefinitely.
“I really want to get everyone remembered so that families can heal and represent these people as real people who lived,” she said.
Fugate would like to see a more formal national memorial for COVID-19 victims one day, and perhaps even a national day of remembrance.
“It would be amazing to see that happen, but we’re still technically fighting the war against this virus,” she said. “We’re not there yet, so we just have to keep doing what we’re doing. We are the triage. We’re helping stop the bleeding.”