Born in Johannesburg, South Africa, Stanley Saitowitz came to the United States in 1976. After receiving his Masters degree from the University of California at Berkeley, he established his own practice in San Fransisco. Among his credits are the California Museum of Photography, the San Francisco Embarcadero Promenade, Mill Race Park in Columbus, Indiana, and numerous, highly acclaimed, unique residences. His extraordinary design for the New England Holocaust Memorial was selected from a field of 520 entries in an international design competition.

When Mr. Saitowitz sumbitted his design to the Memorial competition, he used a poetic description to characterize the design's evocative and metaphorical qualities:

Some think of it as six candles,

others call it a menorah.

Some a colonnade walling the civic plaza

others six towers of spirit.

Some six columns for six million Jews,

others six exhausts of life.

Some call it a city of ice,

others remember a ruin of some civilization.

Some speak of six pillars of breath,

others six chambers of gas.

Some think of it as a fragment of Boston City Hall,

others call the buried chambers Hell.

Some think the pits of fire are six death camps,

others feel the shadows of six million numbers tattoo their flesh.