A crane lowered a train car onto tracks on Sunday outside the Museum of Jewish Heritage in New York—a boxcar that carried Jews and others to their deaths at Auschwitz and other Nazi death camps.
It will be featured alongside several hundred Holocaust artifacts for one of the largest exhibits on Auschwitz, opening on May 8, some 74 years after liberation.
The memorabilia in the exhibit, titled “Auschwitz. Not long ago. Not far away,” includes a gas mask used by the SS; a helmet and a dagger belonging to Heinrich Himmler, who oversaw the concentration and death camps; and a desk belonging to Auschwitz commander Rudolf Höss, among other items.
“There were 80 people squeezed into one wooden car, with no facilities, just a pail to urinate,” Ray Kaner, a 92-year-old woman who works as a Manhattan dental-office manager, told the Associated Press. “You couldn’t lie down, so you had to sleep sitting, and it smelled.”
Michael Glickman, president and CEO of the Museum of Jewish Heritage, said: “Learning the history of the Holocaust as a history of individuals is an act of resistance. The museum will present this groundbreaking exhibition to ensure that we mobilize the painful lessons of the past to create a world worthy of our children’s futures.”
The exhibit will run through Jan. 3, 2020.