Rails From Poland Used During Holocaust To Transport Nazi Trains To Auschwitz To Be On Display
Follow CBSPHILLY Facebook | Twitter
PHILADELPHIA (CBS) -- A college in South Jersey is honoring victims of the Holocaust by donating pieces of history for display in Philadelphia. That way people in the city will be able to remember and keep track of the injustices of World War II.
The old steel rails might be rusty but they were once part of a death machine unlike the world has ever known.
"They're a symbol of the main mode of transportation that allowed the Nazi regime to murder 6 million Jews and 4 million others. The rail lines made it happen," said Gail Rosenthal, the director of the Sara and Sam Schoffer Holocaust Resource Center.
About 10 years ago, Stockton University obtained several rails from Poland used during the Holocaust to transport Nazi trains to the notorious Auschwitz-Birkenau concentration camp.
Several rails were used to create the entrance to the resource center on campus, but extra rails have sat in storage until the right opportunity to share.
In the early 1960s, Philadelphia commissioned a statue along the Ben Franklin Parkway that was our country's first public Holocaust monument. Somewhat ignored over the years, the Philadelphia Holocaust Remembrance Foundation is building a memorial plaza around the statue, and Stockton is sending the rails as an integral feature of the plaza.
"They are going to be embedded in the paving of the plaza here," said Eszter Kutas, the foundation's director.
The hope is that once these rails are embedded in the ground, people can walk over top of them and literally stop in their tracks and think about the Holocaust.
"We call it lavor vadore, from generation to generation, the story of the Holocaust, man's inhumanity to mankind," said Rosenthal.
Kutas added, "It's important to remember the victims of the Holocaust, but it's also very important to understand the lessons of the Holocaust to prevent it from happening again."
The plaza, with the rails and several other educational features, will open to the public by late October.
