ORLANDO, Fla. – Thanks to Adam Mendelsohn, dozens of people in Orlando are getting a rare chance to walk through history this month inside a Hate Ends Now train car, a replica of the cars used to take millions of Jews to concentration camps during the Holocaust.
“When I first heard about the train car, it is a replica. It takes you through a story with two Holocaust survivors who survived Auschwitz,” Mendelsohn said.
For three months, the Edgewater High School senior called several organizations, companies, and people in the community to raise $30,000 to bring this exhibit to his school.
Mendelsohn explained, “I just wanted students to really understand what people were treated like and why hate, comments, and everything they say really matters.”
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The exhibit also features a monument of 6 million paper clips, representing the number of Jews killed during the Holocaust.
“People during the Holocaust used to wear these paper clips to show their solidarity,” Mendelsohn said.
Holocaust survivor Lou Ziemba says he was supposed to be cattle-carted to a concentration camp when he was a baby, but his mother arranged for a Polish family to pick him up from a trash can so he could survive.
Ziemba said, “It was spine-chilling. I finally saw something like that. Going through life at 82 to finally witness what I really went through.”
Ziemba says he’s thankful Adam is making sure their history isn’t forgotten.
“It is something that should be taught in every high school and even elementary school. That this occurred,” Ziemba said
Mendelsohn is planning on putting a permanent paperclip monument in the school. He also wants to bring the exhibit to every school in Florida and was even offered a position on the Hate Ends Now advisory board.
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