We attended an event recently to receive a Holocaust era rail car from Macedonia that arrived by ship in Long Beach for the new Museum of Tolerance that is being developed in Chandler, Arizona. Holocaust Survivor Gerda Seifer was among the small group of Survivors’ descendants, museum founders and press who attended the early morning ceremony. (Here’s a link to the coverage in The Long Beach Press Telegram.) Gerda even got up from her wheelchair with two canes and took a fork lift up into the car with the rest of us for the service, which lasted over an hour. Gerda was mentioned in the book, Freedom Writers, that was later made into a movie with Hilary Swank. She still speaks regularly at the LA Museum of the Holocaust.
One of the museum founders looked at the Rabbi and later remarked, “just think about the last time a Rabbi was in this rail car.”
The rail car should be on display April 17 at the Chandler Center for the Arts. The event is Colonel Edward Shames: A War Hero Remembers, a speaking engagement unlike any other in honor of Yom Ha’Shoah. Tickets to this event can be purchased here. Please keep in mind that doors open at 5:30 p.m., the theater opens at 6:00 p.m. and the event starts at 6:30 p.m.
Even disabled Survivor Gerda Seifer had to use a precarious fork lift to enter the rail car.
This group included Executive Director Steven Tepper of the new Holocaust museum in Chandler, Arizona, other museum founders, Rabbi Mendy Deitsch, Holocaust Survivor Gerda Seifer and her husband, members of the press, and the crew from the shipping line that made it possible to have the ceremony.
