A powerful visual and physical display begins a four-day residency on Wednesday, Sept. 10 at the St. Louis Kaplan Feldman Holocaust Museum. The Holocaust Museum cattle car exhibit, “Hate Ends Now,” shares the stories of two survivors, Nate Leipeige and Hedy Bohm. Visitors step inside a replica railcar like those the Nazis used to deport Jews, learning about the harrowing journeys from ghettos to concentration camps. Helen Turner, director of education at the museum, said the exhibit is an essential tool to illustrate the horrors of the Holocaust.
“The purpose of the Hate Ends Now cattle car exhibit is to show people this piece of the story,” Turner said. “When people think about the Holocaust, they think about concentration camps, or Auschwitz. When I think about the cattle car, what it represents and what it physically did, which was removal—removal from families, from towns, from any sense of normalcy, which there was very little left in the ghettos. Many survivors have strong recollections of this, and we hope that the exhibition helps explain that moving piece and we’re very honored to have it here.”
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Warren Danziger, who has gone through the museum’s main exhibit space several times in the past, said he was looking forward to experiencing the new exhibition.
“I expect it to be somewhat emotional,” Danziger said. “When you get inside and they close the door, I expect the hair to stand up on the back of your neck.”
