Particle.news
Download on the App Store
6 ARTICLES
·
last wk.

Holocaust Museum Boston Installs Restored Railcar in Fourth-Floor Display

The street-facing exhibit lets visitors enter the car, creating a public reminder of lives taken that reinforces the museum’s educational mission.

The Holocaust Museum of Boston raises an early 20th century European rail car to its future home in the museum. (Staff Photo By Stuart Cahill/Boston Herald)
Image
A 173-foot tower crain hoists a 20th century 12-ton railcar into the upcoming Holocaust Museum Boston. (Kenneth Berman Photography)
Image

Overview

  • The early 20th-century railcar was lifted into place on Nov. 25 by a 173-foot crane at the museum site on Tremont Street along the Freedom Trail.
  • The artifact is believed to be the type used to deport Jews from Nazi-occupied Europe to extermination camps.
  • The car measures about 30 feet long and 12 feet high, weighs over 12 tons, and now sits in a protruding fourth-floor bay visible from the street.
  • Donor Sonia Breslow, whose father survived transport to Treblinka in a similar car, provided the railcar found in a Macedonia junkyard; conservator Josh Craine led six months of restoration.
  • Construction will continue around the exhibit, with an opening planned for late 2026, which organizers say will create New England’s only museum devoted solely to Holocaust education.