Details

Published: November 23 2011

FORT LAUDERDALE, Fla., Nov. 23 (UPI) -- The owner of a carnival ride at a South Florida fair says he will change the ride's name now that he realizes it was the name of a gas used in Nazi death camps.

Frank Zaitshik of Wade Shows, based in Michigan, said the ride was named the Zyklon by its manufacturer, a now-closed Italian company, Pinfari, the South Florida Sun-Sentinel reported. Zyklon is German for cyclone and Zyklon B was the trade name for the gas used in extermination camp gas chambers.

The ride's name upset many people who were all too familiar with the word when they saw it or heard it at the Broward County Fair. The number of Holocaust survivors in South Florida is the second-largest in the country after New York.

Rita Hofrichter is a survivor who works at the Holocaust Documentation and Education Center in Hollywood.

"It's upsetting to me to come across that, as a survivor. I lost my whole family in the gas chambers, particularly in Auschwitz, she said."

Zaitshik said he decided on the name change after looking up Zyklon in a dictionary.