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September 5, 2008

Nazi boxcar dedicated in Naples

TOM MIDDLEMISS | FLORIDA CATHOLIC CORRESPONDENT

Published: 02.08.08

Boxcars, like the one on display at the Naples Depot, were used by Nazis to transport innocent victims death camps from 1933 to 1945.

Boxcars, like the one on display at the Naples Depot, were used by Nazis to transport innocent victims to death camps from 1933 to 1945. One of seven on display around the country, the boxcars are used to educate people of the horrors of the Holocaust.
TOM MIDDLEMISS | FC

NAPLES | Bishop Frank J. Dewane was among dozens of spiritual leaders who attended the dedication of a Nazi boxcar in Naples Jan. 27, International Holocaust Remembrance Day.

Speaking to a crowd of more than 3,000 at the Naples Depot, Bishop Dewane expressed “heartfelt sorrow for the atrocities committed against our Jewish brothers and sisters during the Holocaust.” He went on to say, “It is up to us to see that this never happens again.”

“I was in a boxcar just like that for six weeks,” said Rose Nortman, 80, who attended the dedication. “They (the Nazis) threw us in those cars like sacks of potatoes.”

TOM MIDDLEMISS | FC
“I was in a boxcar just like that for six weeks,” said Rose Nortman, 80, who attended the dedication. “They (the Nazis) threw us in those cars like sacks of potatoes.”

The 10-ton boxcars were used to transport millions of innocent victims to various Nazi death camps from 1933 to 1945. The boxcar in Naples is one of seven on display around the country and will be used as a tool to educate people about the Holocaust. The United Nations declared Jan. 27 as International Holocaust Remembrance Day because it was on that day in 1945 that Soviet troops liberated Auschwitz-Birkenau in Poland, the largest of Hitler’s death camps.

Recalling his visit to Auschwitz last year, Bishop Dewane said he and other spiritual leaders walked along the tracks that led to a concentration camp and “were devastated by what we saw at that factory of death.”

Rose Nortman said that through the efforts of her son Jack and his family, the boxcar was located and brought to Naples to the Holocaust Museum of Southwest Florida. The boxcar came to the museum in May 2007 and is on temporary display at the Naples Depot.

 

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