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Holocaust relics preserve memories
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DALLAS (AP) – The items are haunting.

Tangles of empty frames of eyeglasses snatched from people’s faces. Gold-plated wedding rings stripped of their jewels. Black-and-white photos showing piles of bodies in boxcars at concentration camps.

These relics of the Holocaust fill boxes, shelves and filing cabinets in an office at the Dallas Holocaust Museum.

Nearly every week, unsolicited items arrive at the downtown museum. Some come from Holocaust survivors or the people who liberated them. They also come from families of survivors who discover items tucked way in their attics, garages and other areas. Some items are found at estate sales.

History lives on in these items, say survivors like Rosalie Schiff, 85, of Dallas.

“Some people say the Holocaust did not happen, and this is evidence that it did happen,”Schiff said. “We were eyewitnesses to it, as survivors.”

The museum donations are especially valuable because many survivors walked away with nothing. The Nazis “were taking everything away from us,” said William Schiff, 89. He donated his prison uniform to the Dallas museum.

The Nazis came to power in Germany in 1933 and believed that Jews were inferior. They eventually killed about 6 million Jews, most of them during World War II.

“Shouldn’t we tell the world what happened?” Schiff said. “I think it helps. We have a lot of problems with Saddam Hussein, bin Laden. People like this, they’re unpredictable. It can happen again.... We have a chance to protect ourselves.”

Items are also donated by relatives of Holocaust survivors who want to make sure their loved ones are remembered, said Pamalla Anderson, the museum’s archivist.

“It allows their legacy to go on,” she said.

Anderson says she’s never quite sure what’s going to land on her desk.

“I try to file it and not look at it,”she said of some of the items. “I don’t think you can ever be desensitized. You hear the stories, you see the items. It spurs you on.”

There isn’t enough space in the museum to display all of the items, but that will change when a new facility opens on land acquired near the Sixth Floor Museum.

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