Boston’s unfinished Holocaust museum hoists boxcar into exhibit space overlooking Boston Common

A 173-foot tower crain hoists a 20th century 12-ton railcar into the upcoming Holocaust Museum Boston. Photo by Kenneth Berman Photography

(JTA) — Traffic on Tremont Street in downtown Boston came to a standstill Tuesday morning as a crane lifted a historic 12-ton railcar onto the fourth floor of the city’s upcoming Holocaust museum.

The museum, the first of its kind in New England, was launched by the The Holocaust Legacy Foundation in 2022, which was founded by couple Jody Kipnis and Todd Ruderman following a 2018 March of the Living trip to Auschwitz.

While construction on the site, which rests on the city’s Freedom Trail near the Boston Common, remains ongoing, the installation of the 20th-century railcar, believed to be the same type used by the Nazis to transport Jews to extermination camps, marked a major milestone for the museum’s creation.

The railcar, which measures 30 feet long, 12 feet high, and nearly 9 feet wide, was lifted into the new museum structure by a 173-foot tower crane before construction continues around it.

A group of supporters, Massachusetts officials, civic leaders, Jewish community representatives and Boston-area partners looked on as the railcar was installed, according to the museum.

“The hardest truth this railcar forces us to confront is this: the Holocaust was not carried out by the Nazis alone. It was carried out by people, ordinary people, who kept the trains running, who stamped the papers, who followed schedules, who chose silence over courage,” said Kipnis, the co-founder and CEO of Holocaust Museum Boston, in a statement. “This railcar will stand at the heart of the Holocaust Museum Boston to confront that truth.”

After the museum opens in late 2026, the railcar will rest in a protruding bay window on the museum’s fourth floor so that pedestrians will be able to see visitors enter the railcar but not exit, a choice the museum said it intended to symbolize “the millions who never returned and the freedoms that were stripped away.”

The railcar was donated to the museum by Sonia Breslow, a Phoenix resident whose father was deported to the Treblinka concentration camp on a railcar of the same kind. Breslow’s father, who later moved to Massachusetts, was among fewer than 100 survivors of Treblinka, where 900,000 Jews were murdered.

The railcar was first discovered in a Macedonian junkyard in 2012, according to the museum, and later transported to Massachusetts, where conservator Josh Craine of Daedalus Art Conservation spent the past sex months restoring it for exhibition.

“Seeing this railcar lifted into its new home took my breath away,” said Breslow. “My father survived a transport to Treblinka in a car just like this. Most who were taken there did not survive. For this railcar to be in Massachusetts, a place where he rebuilt his life, is deeply personal. It ensures that his story, and the stories of millions, will never be forgotten.”