Over 5000 Visited Holocaust Exhibit in N.Y. During First Week

More than 5000 New Yorkers have visited the memorial exhibit commemorating the 30th anniversary of the Warsaw Ghetto uprising since it opened at the 92nd St. YM-YWHA a week ago; a spokesman for the Workmen’s Circle, sponsors of the exhibit, reported today. The exhibit, to run through Sunday, April 8, was prepared by survivors of the Nazi holocaust in cooperation with the Van Cortlandt Workmen’s Circle Community House.

The spokesman said that many of the visitors were New York public school children. Classes from P.S. 201 in Harlem visited the display yesterday. The exhibit covers with photographs, documents and momentos the entire era, beginning with Jewish life in Warsaw before World War II through the holocaust, the Nuremburg trials, the displaced persons camps and finally, the tombstones and monuments to the victims.

One item on display in a glass case draped with black crepe is a bar of soap the Nazis manufactured from human remains at the notorious Dachau concentration camp. The bar was obtained by the late Dr. Emanuel Pat and his father, the late Jacob Pat, shortly after the war. Dr. Pat was a member of the Allied military team that liberated Dachau in 1945.

Survivors of the Warsaw Ghetto uprising and partisans of the Vilna Ghetto who met at the exhibit today; said they would seek to establish an International Holocaust Day to commemorate the events that took place in the Warsaw Ghetto in April and May, 1943. The international observance would be held in April each year. The group said they were petitioning United Nations Secretary General Kurt Waldheim, President Nixon, U.S. Congressional leaders and the trade union movement here and abroad for support in establishing the annual commemoration.