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"Auschwitz. Not Long Ago. Not Far Away" exhibition in Cincinnati
On 16 October, the traveling exhibition 'Auschwitz. Not Long Ago. Not Far Away' created by the Museum and the Spanish company Musealia was opened in Cincinnati Museum Center located in the historical building of Union Terminal.
The curators of this unique exhibition are international experts: Dr. Robert Jan van Pelt, Dr. Michael Berenbaum, and Dr. Paul Salmons, who worked closely with historians and curators from the Auschwitz Museum Research Center headed by Dr. Piotr Setkiewicz.
‘Today we are living in a very difficult world. It's no longer a post-war era. There are so many new cases of dehumanization, new racism, antisemitism, xenophobia. I think we really need the remembrance, perhaps even more than it was 20 or 30 years ago. Remembrance is perhaps the last key that we have, to understand and imagine our own role today in the world that we are living in,’ said director of the Auschwitz Museum, Dr. Piotr M. A. Cywiński, at the opening of the exhibition.
‘This exhibition has travelled for some years to different cities in the world. Now it arrived here, and you will be tempted to show it, especially to some new generations, thinking that they will find some answers here. No, they will not. This history, and the remembrance of the Shoah, does not give us good, soft, easy, or clear answers, only questions. This is the most important thing we could give you. Questions are extremely important, even if those questions are not easy, and they are really not easy. As Elie Wiesel said, “in every question we can find a power that you will never see in the answers”,’ he emphasized.
The exhibition depicts the successive stages of the development of Nazi ideology and describes the transformation of Oświęcim, an ordinary Polish town where Nazi Germany established the largest concentration camp and extermination center during the occupation, where approximately one million Jews and tens of thousands of people of other nationalities were murdered.
The victims of Auschwitz also included Poles, Roma and Sinti, Soviet prisoners of war and other groups persecuted by Nazi ideology, such as people with disabilities, asocials, Jehovah's Witnesses, and homosexuals. Furthermore, the exhibition includes objects portraying the world of the perpetrators - the SS men who created and managed this largest German Nazi concentration and extermination camp.
Elizabeth Pierce, President and CEO of Cincinnati Museum Center said that this exhibition offers us a moment of remembrance of the lives, the generations, and the communities lost in Auschwitz.
‘It challenges us to reflect and to understand how human beings could commit such atrocities, and likewise, how human beings could endure such hardship. It implores us to remember the exponential danger of unchecked hate, and it compels us to find courage within ourselves to act. After all, if one person's vision could lead to such horror, imagine how one act of courage, one act of kindness, one act of humanity, could make our world much brighter,’ said Elizabeth Pierce.
‘At the core of this exhibition lies this need to tell the story of the site of Auschwitz through the different groups of victims, through the different experiences, through the evolution of a site that is changing through the years, and of course, that core essence of what are we willing to do in some occasions to fulfill certain ideologies,’ said Luis Ferreiro, director of Musealia.
‘Auschwitz leaves us no excuse. We know where certain ideologies lead to, and therefore I think the exhibition also becomes a powerful message from the 20th century to us whole citizens of the 21st century. How we listen to that story, what we do with it, is then our responsibility. And I think that is also something important, that we all have this responsibility towards our own present and the future,’ he added.
The visitors at Union Terminal will see several hundred items, mainly from the Auschwitz Memorial Collection. These include personal items belonging to the victims, such as suitcases, glasses and shoes. The exhibition will also include concrete posts forming part of the Auschwitz camp fence; fragments of the original barrack for prisoners in Auschwitz III-Monowitz; a desk and other items belonging to Rudolf Höss, the first and longest-serving commandant of Auschwitz; a gas mask used by the SS; and a lithograph depicting a prisoner's face by Pablo Picasso.
Additionally, the exhibition features individual objects on loan from more than 20 institutions, museums, and private collections worldwide, including Yad Vashem, the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum, the Wiener Library, and the Buchenwald Mauthausen and Sachsenhausen and Westerbork memorial sites.
In addition to the original items that are a permanent part of the exhibition, Cincinnati also features several objects that tell the stories of survivors who came to the city after the war and rebuilt their lives here. They come from the collection of the Nancy & David Wolf Holocaust & Humanity Center based at Union Terminal, which is responsible for the educational program accompanying the exhibition.
‘This exhibition brings more than 500 original artifacts from the Auschwitz-Birkenau State Museum and other international collections to Cincinnati. Having them here in this space where Holocaust survivors once stepped off trains to begin again is both historic and deeply symbolic,’ said Jackie Congedo, CEO of Nancy & David Wolf Holocaust & Humanity Center.
‘Union Terminal is not just a landmark, it is a living part of this story. At the Holocaust and Humanity Center, our mission is to ensure that the lessons of the Holocaust inspire people to be upstanders, individuals who take action, speak out against injustice, and use their humanity to make a difference in our world. This exhibition is not just about what happened, it's about what we do with that history today, how we respond to hate, how we build understanding, and how we find courage in our own time,’ she added.
Steve Coppel whose father, Auschwitz survivor Werner Coppel, arrived at Union Station in 1949 and started a new life in Cincinnati, was present at the opening of the exhibition.
‘He lost everything, but he arrived here with his wife, his baby, my older brother, and a suitcase. And from that moment, he began again. That same suitcase, worn and simple, is now part of the exhibition on display, just steps from where he stood when he came to this city. Every time I see it, I am struck by what it represents,’ said Steve Coppel.
The exhibition “Auschwitz. Not Long Ago. Not Far Away” will be on display at Union Terminal in Cincinnati until 12 April 2026. More information about the exhibition and tickets can be found at: https://www.cincymuseum.org/auschwitz/
