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A Holocaust cattle car in Times Square makes a moving, if jarring, statement
(New York Jewish Week) — Times Square may be best known for its flashy billboards, roving bands of knock-off Elmos and hordes of gawking tourists. But on Tuesday, Holocaust Remembrance Day, visitors to the “crossroads of the world” could also see a replica of the kind of cattle car that transported millions of Jews to their deaths in Nazi-run concentration camps.
The cattle car was parked at the intersection of 46th and Broadway, across from a Forever 21 and the TKTS Ticket window, where curious visitors could step inside and see a film, projected on its four walls, detailing the horrors of the Holocaust.
The “Cattle Car: Stepping In and Out of Darkness” exhibit was developed in 2020 by ShadowLight, a Toronto-based Holocaust education nonprofit, and Southern NCSY, the Florida branch of the Orthodox Union youth group. NCSY’s “Hate Ends Now” tour is traveling the country with a mission to promote Holocaust education and combat antisemitism.
“This exhibit is one of the country’s most innovative Holocaust education tools, and today we’ve brought it to the crossroads of the world,” said Todd Cohn, executive director of Southern NCSY. “If you want to make the world aware of a cause, this is the place to do it.”
On Tuesday morning, while lots of people walked by without looking up, as many in New York are wont to do, several stopped in their tracks to take a look around, snap some pictures and scan the QR code to learn more about the cattle car and the Holocaust. Others took selfies and one asked if the exhibit was a celebration of Passover, which Cohn took as an opportunity to teach about Judaism and the memory of the Holocaust.
“This is amazing to see,” said Yael Shimoni-Degani, an Israeli tourist who was walking through Times Square while visiting her daughter who lives in New York City. The pair was waiting to go inside. “It’s very important to remind people what happened,” Shimoni-Degani said.
The cattle car will be parked in Times Square until 9:00 p.m. on Tuesday, or Yom Hashoah, which is marked as Holocaust Remembrance Day by Israel and Jews worldwide. Rotating groups from area Jewish high schools were invited to visit throughout the day. An event scheduled for 7:00 p.m., open to the public, was to feature Holocaust survivors, U.S. Army veterans who were involved in liberating the camps, Israeli emissaries and local politicians. The crowd will be invited to sing prayers and light yahrzeit candles in memory of victims of the Holocaust.
A group of students from The Ramaz School exits the “Cattle Car: Stepping In and Out of Darkness” exhibit in Times Square, April 18, 2023. (Julia Gergely)
Attendees are closed inside the cattle car — an effort to make tangible the experience of victims and survivors. The 20-minute video provides a timeline of the Holocaust and and includes testimonies from survivors Hedy Bohm and Nate Leipciger. The video concludes by urging viewers to take responsibility for their actions, asking questions like, “How did the world let this happen?” and “How can you raise your voice?” Statistics on rising antisemitism, racism and violence against LGBTQ communities are displayed.
“While inspiring the Jewish future is our core mission, the general public is just as much our intended audience today,” Cohn said, noting the “universal message” of the exhibit. One of the goals of “Hate Ends Now,” which has toured the Florida state capitol and will move onto college campuses in Boston next week, is to “make sure hate doesn’t go unchecked,” Cohn said, especially in a time of rising antisemitism.
There was a large security and police presence nearby, and an officer inside the exhibit.
Dini Hass, an educator at the Ramaz School who had brought a group of students to tour the exhibit, told the New York Jewish Week that visiting the cattle car was an incredible experience and an opportunity to share her family’s story as the granddaughter of four Holocaust survivors. “To have this in the middle of Times Square is one of the craziest things I’ve ever seen,” she said, admiringly.
Writer Dara Horn, however, was skeptical that exhibits like this — especially those mounted in such a public space like Times Square — actually have the power to turn the tide of antisemitism, despite their well-meaning intentions.
“I came to the disturbing conclusion that Holocaust education is incapable of addressing contemporary antisemitism,” said Horn, who recently toured the country taking stock of different Holocaust education initiatives. “There’s a bunch of reasons for that. One is that it’s been used as this case study outside of history and it’s used for public moral education. I can’t think of any other event in history where we isolate it from any kind of context and it’s become an atrocity that we are required to universalize.”
Horn noted that her comments were not specific to the “Hate Ends Now” exhibit, rather to the broader effort of Holocaust education and combating antisemitism among the general, non-Jewish public. She also conceded that, for Jewish communities, Yom Hashoah and Holocaust education exhibits are important in that they offer a moment to mourn and honor the dead.
And yet, she said, “This becomes the one thing people know about Jews — that they were murdered in the Holocaust — and now it is there to teach us something about humanity,” she added. “There’s a huge problem where the general public is taught about the Holocaust, and knows absolutely nothing about Jews who are alive today, or about the lives and contents of Jewish civilization in Europe that was lost.”
As someone who is well-informed about the Holocaust, educator Dini Hass said that she is often shocked by how little both Jews and non-Jews know about the Holocaust. “If something like this makes even one person stop for a second to think about the Holocaust and want to learn about it, then it’s doing its job,” she said.
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UNC Student Newspaper Publishes Tropes About Jews and Money
In May 2024, Students for Justice in Palestine poured red paint which resembles spilled blood on the steps of the South Building, an office for administrative staff and the chancellor at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. Photo: UNCSJP/Screenshot
The Daily Tar Heel, the student-led newspaper of the University of North Carolina (UNC) at Chapel Hill, recently featured commentary that some view as antisemitic.
On Feb. 26, Kyle Bublic began a column by writing, “The 2022 congressional race for North Carolina’s 4th District was puppeteered by the wallet of Benjamin Netanyahu, as he whisked away the last of our previously honest lawmakers with American Israel Public Affairs Committee money.”
The American Jewish Committee explains why it is antisemitic to allege that Jews are political puppet masters:
Myths of control portray Jews as secret puppet masters, ruling over others and manipulating the world’s economies and governments. For centuries, Jews were blamed for controlling world events behind the scenes, leading “blind” leaders into wars and debt to enrich themselves and further their own hidden agenda …
The imagery of Jewish leaders pulling the strings of politicians was featured in Nazi propaganda … Antisemitic propaganda continues to spread the idea that rich or influential Jews are behind the scenes conspiring to further their plans of world domination.
It is a serious matter to state or imply that the Prime Minister of Israel is in any way financing or directing an American election. According to Congress, “Federal campaign finance law and regulation prohibits foreign money in U.S. elections.”
I reached out to five of the paper’s editors for comment. None responded.
Later in his column, the op-ed’s author repeated the antisemitic puppet master trope, writing:
While I would like to imagine Israel’s investment into Durham and Orange County was driven by their prime minister’s love for Cosmic Cantina [a local restaurant], it seems like his motivation was more nefarious. Nida Allam, Foushee’s most fearsome competitor in the 2022 election, represented everything that makes our puppet masters shudder — a principled and young candidate fighting under a truly progressive ticket.
The student column focused on the primary election in NC’s 4th Congressional district held last week between Democratic Congressional incumbent Valerie Foushee and her challenger, Durham County Commissioner Nida Allam. Israel became a major focus of this Democratic primary, with anti-Israel radicals embracing Allam.
I previously reported that in 2018, Allam tweeted, “This is the United States of Israel,” which is consistent with centuries-old antisemitic propaganda that Jews seek to dominate the world. Allam ended up issuing a public apology for her antisemitism.
The Daily Tar Heel endorsed Allam in the Nov. 3 primary. Foushee narrowly beat Allam in the election.
UNC Professor of Medicine and longtime Jewish communal leader, Dr. Adam Goldstein, told me:
It’s truly disappointing to see the UNC student newspaper endorsing a partisan description of a Congressional race in 2026 as “puppeteered by the wallet of Benjamin Netanyahu’” in 2022, with references to “Bibi’s pockets.”Such descriptions echo longstanding antisemitic tropes portraying Jews as secretly controlling political systems through money. This moves beyond criticism of a current candidate’s policies into shameful demonization of a longtime progressive Congresswoman, and those that support her, through language that is itself manipulative and corrupting.
The Daily Tar Heel’s policy page claims that it seeks “to be a leader in espousing the ethical standards of the industry [and] to serve as a beacon of journalistic integrity.” Yet, the paper fails UNC students, our community, and the people of North Carolina, by allowing these tropes about Jews and money in its pages.
Peter Reitzes writes about antisemitism in North Carolina and beyond.
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CNN Shames Itself By Shilling for Iran
Images of Iran’s new supreme leader Mojtaba Khamenei and late Iranian Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei are displayed at a gathering to support Mojtaba Khamenei, amid the US-Israeli conflict with Iran, in Tehran, Iran, March 9, 2026. Photo: Majid Asgaripour/WANA (West Asia News Agency) via REUTERS
There’s a reason why the Iranian regime, which murdered thousands of its own citizens just months ago, only allowed one American network access to the country. It picked CNN, because it thought it would get coverage either that was favorable in some way, or at least not critical.
We are no longer in the era of Mike Wallace. Not long after Ayatollah Khomeini took over in 1979, Wallace interviewed him in Iran. Wallace had the guts to mention that Egyptian leader Anwar Sadat called him a disgrace to Islam and a “lunatic.” The Ayatollah responded by saying that Sadat was not a Muslim and was united with their enemies. He called for the people of Egypt to overthrow Sadat. Sadat was assassinated two years later.
Wallace sat on the floor during the interview, as did the Ayatollah, and asked if he could go visit the American hostages and talk to them. He was refused.
Back to now. CNN’s Frederik Pleitgen interviewed shopkeepers who said they were scared for their lives because there were bombs.
Of course, none of the people Pleitgen would interview are capable of criticizing the regime, or they’d be beaten or killed. Pleitgen himself might be killed if he reports anything the regime doesn’t want. The reports do include the line: “CNN operated in Iran only with government permission.” But that’s meaningless.
There is value to being on the scene in a war zone, but CNN, which gets much of its ratings from bashing Trump, will no doubt find citizens who will curse Trump. And no one they talk to will support the war in any way. Is simply putting in a line that you are reporting only with the permission of the government good enough? Do the ends justify the means in this case?
Pleitgen reported that “oil-filled rain” is falling from the sky. Is he able to report on what the true process was for the appointment of Mojtaba Khamenei as the new leader? Doubtful. What about the real number of its citizens they killed? Of course, they won’t get that. What about why they apologized for striking Gulf countries, and then continued to do so? If we won’t get any real answers to real questions, why is CNN really there — other than to do the bidding of the Iranian regime?
What is surprising is that I thought they’d send the CNN reporter to the girls school that was said to have been hit by American forces. Why not let him speak with some of the parents whose children have been killed? One would think this is exactly what Iran would want. That they have not done so raises suspicions. Was it a school not marked as a school, as part of an Revolutionary Guard Corps facility? Are there some discrepancies Iran doesn’t want the world to know?
It goes without saying that there is propaganda from every country in a war. It’s not always easy to get to the truth, and all countries only want certain information to be public. I’d like to know more about the Iranian ship sunk by America. Was it really unarmed when it was coming back from exercises with India? That’s what Iran says, but the US says that’s a lie. How about an interview with one of the 32 who survived? That would be an interesting interview.
If you’re going to report from an enemy country in war, can you at least have some unique and engaging content? It will be interesting to see if CNN decides to leave Iran, realizing their reputation will be hurt and it’s not worth it to aid an enemy’s propaganda war.
The author is a writer based in New York.
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Self-Reliance Is Israel’s Strategic Imperative
A US Marines F-35C Lightning II is staged for flight operations on the flight deck of the US Navy Nimitz-class aircraft carrier USS Abraham Lincoln in support of the Operation Epic Fury attack on Iran from an undisclosed location March 3, 2026. Photo: US Navy/Handout via REUTERS
History has taught the Jewish people many painful lessons, but perhaps the most enduring one is this: survival can never depend entirely on the goodwill of others. Alliances matter. Partnerships strengthen nations. But the responsibility for defending the Jewish state ultimately rests with Israel itself.
For decades, the alliance between Israel and the United States has been a cornerstone of Israel’s national security. This partnership has saved lives and deterred wars. Yet responsible leadership requires looking forward, not backward.
The global order is shifting. The United States faces growing domestic polarization, rising debt, and strategic competition with China that increasingly dominates its foreign policy priorities. Within parts of American political discourse, support for foreign aid in general, and Israel in particular, is no longer a consensus issue. While bipartisan support for Israel remains somewhat in place at the institutional level, the tone and intensity of the debate have changed.
This does not mean America is abandoning Israel. But it does mean that Israel cannot afford complacency.
The Jewish State was founded in the shadow of embargoes and isolation. In 1948, when the newborn nation faced invasion, it did not enjoy the luxury of dependable suppliers. Those early experiences forged a national doctrine of self-reliance. Over the decades, Israel built one of the most advanced defense industries in the world — precisely because it understood that sovereignty without military independence is fragile.
Today, Israel produces cutting edge missile defense systems such as Iron Dome, David’s Sling, and Arrow. It leads globally in unmanned aerial systems, cyber capabilities, electronic warfare, and advanced battlefield technologies. Israeli defense exports reach Europe, Asia, and the Middle East, including countries that once viewed Israel as an adversary. Innovation is not merely an economic asset for Israel. It is a strategic necessity.
However, critical dependencies remain. Israel does not manufacture its own fifth generation fighter jets. Its air force relies heavily on American platforms such as the F-35 and F-15. Certain precision munitions and key components are sourced from abroad. Moreover, financial frameworks tied to foreign military assistance inevitably create political considerations beyond Israel’s direct control.
If the geopolitical winds shift, even slightly, those dependencies could become vulnerabilities.
Recognizing this reality does not diminish the importance of Israel’s alliances. It strengthens them.
Israel must accelerate investment in domestic production of critical munitions, expand its aerospace capabilities, and secure independent supply chains for raw materials and advanced components. It must ensure that during prolonged conflict, it can sustain itself without waiting for external political approvals. This is not an act of isolation. It is an act of national responsibility.
Israel cannot gamble its security on the internal debates of other nations, however friendly they may be. The Jewish people returned to their homeland to reclaim agency over their destiny. That agency must extend to every dimension of national defense.
In a region where weakness invites aggression, strength guarantees peace. The strongest message Israel can send to both allies and adversaries is clear: we value partnership, but our security will never be outsourced.
Sabine Sterk is the CEO of Time To Stand Up For Israel.