Never Forget

This week I got to cover a story that had some special personal significance. Thursday was Yom Hashoah, Holocaust remembrance day. To commemorate, the city of Chandler, Arizona unveiled a special artifact that they've spent years, and tens of thousands of dollars in donations to acquire: a holocaust-era rail car. While historians have verified that it is the kind of railroad car used to transport the Nazi's victims to the death camps, it is unknown whether this specific car was used for that purpose.

Still, thousands of people lined up on Tuesday for a chance to walk through the car and see it and touch it, and to imagine what it must have been like for the millions of Jews who were packed into cars just like that, with no food, water or facilities, and forced to travel like that for days. When they arrived at the concentration camps, many were sent right to the gas chambers.

See the video of the story here.

I am a third-generation Holocaust survivor. Both of my grandparents survived the horrors and atrocities of the concentration camps, and so reporting on stories like this are almost like an obligation, so that what happened to them and the millions of others is not forgotten.