The Cincinnati Museum Center will commemorate the 80th anniversary of the liberation of the German Nazi concentration and extermination camp Auschwitz by hosting the most comprehensive exhibition dedicated to the site’s history ever presented in North America.
“Auschwitz. Not long ago. Not far away” is a collaboration between the Cincinnati Museum Center and the Nancy & David Wolf Holocaust & Humanity Center.
The exhibit offers a glimpse into the harsh realities of Auschwitz and its significant history. Located near a major railway hub in southwest Poland’s remote forests and marshes, the camp became the deadliest of the thousands built and operated by Nazi Germany and its collaborators.
The Nazis murdered roughly 1.1 million people at Auschwitz, including nearly 1 million Jews, according to CMC. The museum noted that tens of thousands of others lost their lives at the camp, which served as both a concentration camp and an extermination center. Victims included Poles, Sinti, Roma, Soviet POWs, Jehovah’s Witnesses, and people labeled “homosexuals,” “criminals” or “inferior.”
The exhibition, featuring hundreds of original objects from Auschwitz-Birkenau State Museum and more than 20 other international museums, traces the rise of Nazi ideology and the transformation of Auschwitz from an ordinary Polish town known as Oświęcim into a place where unimaginable atrocities and extraordinary human resilience intersected.
The opening date is Oct. 18.
“In Cincinnati, we have an important and specific opportunity to share the history of Auschwitz and its survivors,” said Elizabeth Pierce, president and CEO of Cincinnati Museum Center. “Union Terminal is part of this history, both for liberators and for survivors. With our partners at the Nancy & David Wolf Holocaust & Humanity Center, Union Terminal is part of the healing and resilience that continues today.”
A look inside the horrors of Auschwitz
Among the exhibition’s more than 500 items and 400 photographs are a range of personal items that belonged to survivors and victims of Auschwitz, including suitcases, eyeglasses and shoes. But there are also items from the site itself, including concrete posts that served as part of the fence of the Auschwitz camp, fragments of an original prisoner barracks from the Auschwitz III-Monowitz camp, Picasso’s “Lithograph of a Prisoner” painting, a desk and possessions of the perpetrators, including the first and longest serving Auschwitz commandant, Rudolf Höss.
In addition to the hundreds of items displayed from the Auschwitz-Birkenau Memorial and Museum, more than 20 other international museums and institutions have participated with special loans, such as Yad Vashem in Israel and the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum in Washington, D.C.
“The tragedy of Auschwitz forces every visitor to bear witness to this horrifying chapter of human history and build a future shaped by remembrance,” said Piotr Cywiński, director of the Auschwitz-Birkenau Memorial. “Especially today, when our democracies are so threatened by an increasingly strong wave of populism and demagoguery, we must understand our own responsibility to create a future free from antisemitism, racism, and all ideologies of hatred.”
Beyond the international artifacts, the exhib will also include curated stories of local Holocaust survivors who came to Cincinnati after the war to rebuild their lives. The Nancy & David Wolf Holocaust & Humanity Center, which moved to Union Terminal in 2019, is the presenting sponsor for these stories.
Union Terminal holds profound significance as the arrival point for many Holocaust survivors and refugees who came to Cincinnati by train after the war.
“Union Terminal stands as a beacon of hope, a space for civic conversations and a reminder of our collective responsibility to learn from the past and inspire a better future,” said Jackie Congedo, CEO of the Holocaust & Humanity Center.
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