Auschwitz exhibition in New York

Entitled Auschwitz. Not long ago. Not far away, the display earlier had a successful run at Madrid’s Arte Canal Exhibition Centre, where it was extended twice and attracted more than 600,000 visitors.

The travelling exhibition is a joint project by the Auschwitz-Birkenau Memorial and Museum in Poland, experts from other countries and Spanish company Musealia.

The exhibition is made up of more than 700 objects, most of which come from the Auschwitz-Birkenau Memorial and Museum in the southern Polish city of Oświęcim. The exhibits include personal items that belonged to survivors and victims of the camp, such as suitcases, eyeglasses, grooming utensils and shoes.

On display are also concrete posts that were part of the fence of the Auschwitz camp; fragments of an original barrack for prisoners, a desk and other possessions of Auschwitz commandant Rudolf Höss, and an original German-made freight wagon used for the deportation of Jews to extermination camps in occupied Poland.

The artifacts that were incorporated into the exhibition by the Museum of Jewish Heritage include an SS helmet and a copy of Adolf Hitler's Mein Kampf that belonged to Heinrich Himmler, one of the main architects of the Holocaust.

The exhibition traces the development of Nazi ideology and the transformation of Auschwitz into the world’s deadliest Holocaust site, where 1 million Jews, and tens of thousands of Polish political prisoners, Sinti and Roma, and Soviet POWs perished during World War II.

The exhibition’s opening on May 8 marks the anniversary of VE Day, or Victory in Europe Day, when the Allies celebrated Nazi Germany’s surrender of its armed forces and the end of World War II in 1945.

The Auschwitz. Not long ago. Not far away exhibition is due to run at New York’s Museum of Jewish Heritage until January 3.

It will later tour other cities around the world.

(mk_gs/pk)

Source: mjhnyc.org