Toronto art fabricators Soheil Mosun are behind the creation of the Wheel of Conscience, a memorial for Jews fleeing Nazi persecution, but turned away by Canada. The artwork, designed by Daniel Libeskind, with workings devised by Cyrus Mosun and Jamie Gonzales at Soheil Mosun, was unveiled at Canada's Immigration Museum at Pier 21 in Halifax on Thursday. UrbanToronto was privileged to attend a private unveiling at Soheil Mosun's Rexdale workshop earlier in January. 

The Wheel commemorates those who traveled on the ship M.S. St. Louis, originally bound for Cuba, in May 1939. Nearly 1,000 aboard the ship had visas from Cuba, but when the ship arrived in Havana, authorities reversed their decision and denied the refugees the chance to land. Appeals to the United States, and then to Canada, were subsequently turned down and eventually the ship returned with all aboard to Antwerp, Belgium. A quarter of those who had hoped to escape Hitler on the St. Louis eventually died in the Holocaust. The memorial illuminates a tragedy caused by AntiSemitism on both sides of the Atlantic, and it educates the viewer of the terrible consequences of hatred and callous indifference. Libeskind's design etches the bow of the St. Louis into the face-plate of the large clock-like mechanism, with parts of the bow rotating on cogwheels. The spinning cogwheels fracture the ship's image. A band rotating on the outer ring of the mechanism tells the story. The ship's path from Europe to North America and back is etched into the sides of the work. The back plate records the names of all those aboard the ship. UrbanToronto will bring you more about the memorial, and more about the exceptional Toronto fabricators in the days ahead.