World War II ended 80 years ago.
But the attitudes and actions that created WWII’s Nazi concentration camps and led to the murder of 6 million Jews are not necessarily “long ago and far away.”
That’s why organizers named an exhibition that opens Oct. 18 at the Cincinnati Museum Center “Auschwitz. Not long ago. Not far away.”
The exhibition – with 500 objects and 400 photos – will raise the oft-asked question about the Holocaust: Did the world know what was happening and, if so, why didn’t the world do more to stop it?
It will also plant a new question, said Pawel Sawicki, a staff member at Poland’s Auschwitz-Birkenau State Museum, which is supplying most of the exhibit’s artifacts.
“People in the future will ask the same question about us,” he said. “ ‘Did they know about different places in the world where dehumanizing ideologies poisoned people’s minds?’ And, ‘Why didn’t they do more?’ ”
The Cincinnati Museum Center and Nancy & David Wolf Holocaust & Humanity Center open “Auschwitz. Not long ago. Not far away.” on Oct. 18. The exhibit includes more than 500 items and 400 photos. Among the items will be hundreds of artifacts of people who both died and survived the concentration camp.
Global history on display in Cincinnati
Museum Center President and CEO Elizabeth Pierce said the Queensgate-based institution prides itself on “bringing the world to Cincinnati” with its shows.
When she learned about the Auschwitz exhibition, “I was adamant that we should advocate for Cincinnati to be a venue for it.”
That’s because Cincinnati welcomed concentration camp survivors via Union Terminal, the museum’s home since 1990, and because Holocaust survivors are members of Cincinnati’s Jewish community. Cincinnati and Union Terminal are also home to the Nancy & David Wolf Holocaust & Humanity Center, created in 2000 to tell the Holocaust story and inspire action based on its lessons.
“This is an unprecedented opportunity for the work that we do – which really is around localizing, humanizing and personalizing a very global history here in Cincinnati – to be able to reach a significantly larger regional audience,” added Jackie Congedo, Holocaust Center CEO.
Cincinnati will be the eighth stop for the traveling exhibition. It was launched in December 2017 in Madrid, before moving to New York City; Kansas City, Missouri; Malmo, Sweden; Simi Valley, California; Boston; and Toronto.
The stories of local Holocaust victims will be represented in the new exhibition at the Cincinnati Museum Center, said Jackie Congedo, CEO of the Nancy & David Wolf Holocaust & Humanity Center.
Cincinnati survivors included ‘every step of the way’
The voice of Auschwitz survivor Werner Coppel, who died in 2016 in Cincinnati, will greet visitors to the exhibition.
Born in Moers, Germany, in 1925, Coppel escaped from the camp in January 1945. Arriving at Union Terminal in 1949 “with a wife, a suitcase, and a baby,” he would say in the years ahead, was the end of “the first part of my life.” The next chapter included starting a food business, raising two sons and, after reading an Enquirer letter to the editor that called the “The Diary of Anne Frank” a fake, sharing his Holocaust story.
Coppel’s suitcase will be among the artifacts in the museum show.
The exhibit will also incorporate the stories of other local and now-deceased survivors – Bella Ouizel, Doris Polaniecki, Joseph Polaniecki, Edith Carter, Henry Carter, Henry Meyer and Roma Kaltman among them.
“You will hear and see local people every step of the way,” Congedo said.
By acting as “upstanders” in the face of so many Holocaust bystanders, the stories of local survivors can inspire museum goers to speak up about wrongdoing today, she added.
The new exhibition at the Cincinnati Museum Center — “Auschwitz. Not long ago. Not far away.” — includes 500 items and 400 photos.
Clothing, shoes and a Picasso painting
The Polish government created the Auschwitz-Birkenau museum on land once home to the Nazi camp. With more than 2 million visitors a year, the museum tells the Auschwitz story even as staff continue to research its events.
Among the artifacts it will display in Cincinnati are personal belongings of survivors and victims of Auschwitz (clothing, shoes, eyeglasses and dolls among them), parts of an Auschwitz fence and prisoner barrack, and Spanish painter Pablo Picasso’s 1955 “Head of the Auschwitz Prisoner.”
The museum center show will run through April 12, with tickets at $37.50 or less. Ticket sales are strong, Pierce said, with slots for school groups filling up.
This article originally appeared on Cincinnati Enquirer: When does Auschwitz exhibit open in Cincinnati?