The Memorial to the Victims of the Holocaust is located in the axis of the southern part of the Square of 28 October, which is actually a public park with a grassy area in the middle. The memorial is equipped with an engine room with electric wiring and water supply, located below ground level.
The memorial is in the shape of a monumental black cube with water running down its smooth walls from pipes on the top. The cube is mounted on a low pedestal set in a shallow pool of water. The pool's relatively wide border is rectangular in shape and is formed by 50 cm wide stone slabs. On the south side, which is the main viewpoint facing the access road, the border is wider (200 cm). The front side has a dedication inscription engraved in gold on the bottom of the pool.

NEZAPOMEŇME
לא נשכח
MA BISTERAS

Z ÚCTY K ŽIDŮM A ROMŮM ZAVRAŽDĚNÝM A ODVLEČENÝM Z BRNA DO KONCENTRAČNÍCH TÁBORŮ V LETECH 1939 –1945
VŠEM OBĚTEM NACISTICKÉ RASOVÉ PERZEKUCE

The memorial to the victims of the Jewish and Roma Holocaust was built in a park on the Square of 28 October, near the historic centre of the town. It is in the district of Černé Pole, where wealthier Jewish families began to move in the 19th century. This location was chosen as the most suitable for the memorial by majority of the members of the working team preparing the competition for the design of the Holocaust memorial in Brno. This team, consisting of representatives of the Brno City Council, the Jewish Community of Brno and the Roma community, chose from a total of four sites where the memorial could be built. All the sites were selected by the Brno Jewish Community and they were closely linked to the Jewish community. The members of the team also jointly proposed the wording of the text to be carved on the memorial.
The construction of the memorial was initiated by the city of Brno as a symbol of remembrance and honouring of Brno's Jewish citizens. Before World War II, there were around 11,000 Jews in Brno, but after the war their number dropped to 1,000. At the same time, the city intended to pay its debt to all victims of Nazi racial persecution, including Roma victims, on the occasion of the 65th anniversary of the end of World War II. Daniel Rychnovský, the then 1st Deputy Mayor, was the main person who initiated the construction of the memorial.
On 25 May 2010, the Statutory City of Brno announced an Art competition for the design of the Holocaust Memorial in Brno conceived as a "contemporary work of art." At the beginning of 2010, the first working meeting of the Municipality and the Jewish Community of Brno took place in order to specify the goals and conditions of the competition. The municipality proposed that the memorial should commemorate both Jewish and Roma victims of World War II. The competition was announced as a one-round, anonymous competition, and the prize for the author of the winning design was to be CZK 150,000, for the second place it was CZK 100,000, and for the third place it was CZK 70,000. The estimated cost of the competition, i.e. including the work for the implementation of the work, was set at CZK 4,420,000 (excluding VAT). The competition was launched on 5 June 2010 and the authors could submit their proposals until 3 September 2010. The size of the memorial and its material composition were not specified in the competition. However, the choice of material had to take into account the requirement of durability, resistance to weathering and possible vandalism.
To select the winning design, an eleven-member jury consisting of five representatives of the municipality and six experts met on 14 September 2010 in the Cross Corridor of the New Town Hall in Brno. Professor Jan Sedlák was unanimously elected chairman of the jury.
On the same day, the jury selected the winning design with the serial number 33 from a total of 34 submitted designs (of which six designs were excluded from the competition due to non-compliance with the competition conditions). All of the submitted designs came from authors from the Czech or Slovak Republic (four designs were from Slovakia). The winning design was created by three authors, Dušan Homoliak from Hořice v Podkrkonoší and Vratislav Černý and Tomáš Jenček from Brno. In addition to the first prize, the jury also awarded the second and third prizes. However, the City of Brno, as the commissioner of the competition, reserved the right to deviate from the results of the competition or not to commission the monument at all. Less than a month later, at its meeting on 12 October 2010, the Brno City Council announced the results of the competition and, in accordance with the jury's evaluation, selected the most suitable proposal No. 33. However, the implementation of the winning design was not approved. The reason for this was that the Council was not sufficiently impressed by any of the proposals to approve its implementation.
The second competition for a memorial to the victims of the Holocaust, which resulted in realization of the existing monument, took place two years later, in 2012. The City of Brno launched the competition on 9 February 2012 and authors were able to submit proposals until 31 August 2012. The terms and conditions were the same as for the previous competition – it was again a one-round anonymous competition. However, the amount of the financial prize for the first three winning designs differed; the prize for each place was reduced by several tens of thousands of crowns.
On 17 September 2012, a nine-member jury consisting of four city representatives and five experts met in the Mayor's Lounge of the Old Town Hall in Brno. The chairman of the jury was unanimously elected architect Petr Všetečka.
The jury rejected four of the 51 submitted proposals for not meeting the competition conditions. A significant number of 47 eligible proposals were then considered. All of them, as in the previous competition, came from authors from the Czech or Slovak Republic. The jury chose the winner as the design No. 14 by the academic painter Daniel Václavík. In the conceptual explanation of his proposal, the artist stated that he had focused on "the expression of human tragedy, which has no parallel in modern history, on the repetition of suffering throughout history, but also on the moment of forgiveness". He then expressed the magnitude and gravity of the tragedy of the Holocaust through the robust mass of the black cube, which, in his words, "by its size and compactness, makes a serious and urgent impression". The cube's edge length of 314 cm is a reference to Ludolf's number (called Pi) and is meant to symbolize the recurrence of human suffering. The symbol of forgiveness and reconciliation is supposed to be "the water, which softens and animates the whole monument, otherwise tightly geometrically compressed". The jury was aware of the "maximum generalisation" with which the author had approached the theme, but did not find "a comparably distinctive work" among the proposals received, and so recommended it for realisation. In addition, the jury appreciated the water element, which it expected to "contribute to the object becoming not a deserted memento but a living heart of the park".
The construction of the memorial began in June 2014 and was carried out by the well-known Brno construction company Tocháček spol. s r.o. The building was completed in August 2014. The unveiling ceremony took place on 17 September 2014. The commemorative event was attended by a number of distinguished domestic and foreign guests, both from the municipal and regional government, cultural institutions, universities, as well as the Jewish and Roma community and other organizations and associations. The invitation was also accepted by the Ambassador of the State of Israel to the Czech Republic, Gary Koren.
On May 13, 2015, the memorial was damaged by four boys aged 10–12 who threw and slung gravel at the two walls of the cube. The walls of the cube were dotted with dozens of punctures. The incident was recorded on the CCTV cameras of the city police, who immediately reached the spot, pursued the boys and handed over the case to the state police who were called. As the damage exceeded CZK 5,000, the police registered the act as "otherwise punishable" and not as a minor offence. The parents of the boys had to pay for the damage caused. All indications are that this was an act of vandalism, not antisemitism, as there is a playground in close proximity to the memorial.