HUDSON, Mass. - A ceremony honoring Holocaust Remembrance Day at the American Heritage Museum this year also marked the unveiling of a powerful symbol.
What You Need To Know
- On Holocaust Remembrance Day, January 27, the American Heritage Museum commemorated the induction of a special film shown from inside a WWII railcar from the Deutsche Reichsbahn
- The dedication program included the reciting of the Kaddish, lighting memorial candles, and remembrance of the Holocaust and the people who perished
- The American Heritage Museum has had the German train car on display for about a year
“Today is a special day," American Heritage Museum's Director of Marketing, Communications & Education Hunter Chaney said. "We're commemorating the 80th anniversary of the liberation of Auschwitz-Birkenau concentration camp. And we're commemorating this rail car that you see behind me in our Holocaust exhibit.”
The early 1900s German rail car was once used on the German rail network, the Deutsche Reichsbahn, during WWII and the Holocaust.
“On this rail car, although we can't directly connect it to it moving humans from one place to another," Chaney said, "we can deduct that it most likely did, as did thousands of other cars similar.”
Now it’s been restored, and Chaney said an added video feature will help people better understand the mechanisms of the Holocaust.
“When people come to see this exhibit," Chaney said, "not only do you see something that is truly rare in North America, but also a chance to understand the human element to this history.”
“My family is very, very small not because there weren't a lot of us," Rabbi Josh Breindel said, "but because so few of us survived the Nazi scourge.”
Rabbi Josh Breindel spoke about the “power of memory”, saying the museum, and now its Holocaust exhibit, honors the memory of those who stood up against hatred.
“This place as a testament to that memory and to their honor<' Breindel said. "And we here are dedicated ourselves to the truth that the history behind these artifacts must not be repeated.”
And while 80 years isn’t too ago long in terms of history, Chaney said we have to take the clues history leaves us to make a better future.
“Those who forget history are condemned to repeat it. And this is why we have this Holocaust exhibit here and have debuted it on this special day, is to remind people of this history," Breindel said. "So, we can act on it to better ourselves in the future.”