Boxcar On Exhibit At Holocaust Memorial Center
FARMINGTON HILLS (WWJ) - A new exhibit at the Holocaust Memorial Center in Farmington Hills might prove too emotional for some.
The Center's Executive Director, Stephen Goldman, said visitors will be able to stand next to and even touch a railroad boxcar that was used to transport prisoners, or victims, to concentration camps.
- An artist rendering of the exhibit.
"There were in that boxcar for two, three, four, five, even six days ... no food, no water, no sanitary facilities," Goldman told WWJ Newsradio 950's Mike Campbell.
"About 20 percent of them didn't make it. They'd die, sometimes so crammed in there that there was no room for them to fall," he said.
Goldman said visitors won't be able to get inside the boxcar, but there will be stones for visitors to place nearby -- a Jewish tradition at a "matsavah" -- a Hebrew word for a cemetery marker.
Goldman said the rail car will sit in a natural setting, but with a mural behind that shows the story of what it was used for, and the people who were on it for what for many was days of horror.
"Two transports came in a day, each of like 5,000 individuals, who were murdered within the last 12 hours, and that's how they got there," he said.
Goldman said the Holocaust Memorial Center bought the boxcar at an auction for about 5,000 Euros, or about $6,000-$7,000. Shipping from Europe cost ten times that, he said, and the Center will spend that again on the setting.
Get museum information at this link.
