Inside a replica cattle car like those used by the Nazi regime, shoe prints marked where crowds of men, women and children on their way to concentration camps during World War II would have stood.
Miami-Dade County Commissioner Sen. René García invited a non-profit group called Hate Ends Now to bring the cattle car, artifacts –- a yellow Star of David patch; a sign for Zyklon-B pesticide used to kill prisoners in death chambers; an American-made alarm clock with Hitler’s face on it; a sort of shoe, tied with cloth, among the items -- and the history of the Holocaust to Miami Lakes Town Hall.
“We’re glad that you’re here in the town,” Mayor Josh Dieguez told members of the organization on March 6. “I think especially with the events of this week and everything happening around the world, it’s a very timely exhibit. And I’m glad the commissioner thought of us when looking for a place to exhibit.”
The education project’s messages are timely. That week, the Miami Herald reported the Miami-Dade Republican Party’s secretary was accused of creating a group chat in which users posted violent and hateful speech and slurs about women, Black, Jewish and Gay people.
Local state and federal GOP office holders who represent Florida denounced the chat and its contents. Florida International University campus Repulican leaders were among the users, according to the Herald.
FIU President Jeanette M. Nunez said on March 5, the school “does not and will not tolerate violence, hate, discrimination, harassment, racism or antisemitism” and said it was investigating, along with local, state and federal law enforcement.
“Unfortunately in our country right now, antisemitism early on, when I say early on, in the last couple of years, you saw it rising on the extreme left and unfortunately you are also seeing it on the extreme right now, on the right and it’s almost a horseshoe effect, that they’re saying the same language and they’re on both different parties,” García said in Town Hall that day.
“That becomes extremely dangerous,” he said. “It’s incumbent upon us… to make sure that we stand up to it wherever it arises.
“People say, ‘René, why do you care so much? You’re Catholic.’ If we allow antisemitism to foster itself and when they go after our Jewish brothers and sisters, I promise you, the Catholics are next.
“And that is something that is going to go out of control,” García said. “… It’s not just antisemitism. It’s against hate of any form. That’s what we’re asked to do. It takes strength and courage sometimes to do it.
“Just the fact that you guys have been able to open the whole town for this says a lot about you, and I’m very proud to be your friend and represent Miami Lakes,” he said.
García said it’s not easy to talk about atrocities, “but if we forget, history repeats itself.”
At Town Hall, Dieguez was joined by Vice Mayor Bryan Morera and council members Juan Carlos Fernandez, Ray Garcia, Steven Herzberg and Alex Sanchez.
They saw videos projected inside the cattle car and heard voices of survivors describe what they endured more than 80 years ago.
It is estimated that more than 11 million people, six million of them Jews, did not escape death, according to the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum and other sources.
Herzberg’s grandfather David Herzberg was one of those survivors.
“My grandfather was in Auschwitz,” Herzberg told those gathered for the event. “He survived. While the Russian troops were moving in, [the Germans] were moving them out. He hid in a pile of snow with a friend … until they heard someone speaking Russian. And that’s how he got out.”
When the war ended the elder Herzberg emigrated to the United States, worked as a machinist and later owned real estate. He died in 1996, his grandson said.
“We’re not that far [from this history],” Herzberg said. “My grandfather, who I knew, was wearing that [concentration camp] uniform, was wearing those shoes. We’re not that far, that distant from these atrocities. And that’s a really important part of what we’re talking about.”
The goal of the traveling exhibit is to teach students that the Holocaust didn’t start with cattle cars, said Todd Cohn, chief executive officer of Hate Ends Now.
“It started with everyday people that didn’t have the moral clarity, the moral strength, to stand up to hate,” Cohn said. “…We use the Holocaust as a lens to teach that lesson. They’re going to see hate online, on social media, in their cafeteria, in their friend group. And we want them to have that moral clarity and strength to stand up to hate in all its forms.”
Residents and students visited the cattle car set up in the parking lot behind Town Hall and the exhibits displayed inside. García’s office had invited student leaders from Hialeah Senior High School and they were among those who toured the exhibit.
Asked about their impressions, Brandon Alvarez, 16, said he learned that in addition to Jews, many other groups were persecuted by the Nazis.
They included gay men, disabled people; Poles and Catholics; Jehovah’s Witnesses; Romani people; Soviet prisoners of war and political dissidents.
Haylee Fernandez, 17, said she learned about “all of the experiments that they did [upon prisoners].”
Said Elizabet Del-Llano, 18, “I never realized how bad it was.”
For more information go to HateEndsNow.com.