This fall, Cincinnati Museum Center (CMC) and the Nancy & David Wolf Holocaust & Humanity Center will open a new exhibit aimed at bearing witness to one of the world’s darkest moments in history. Auschwitz. Not long ago. Not far away. will focus on the people interned at the German Nazi concentration and extermination camp Auschwitz, many of whom lost their lives there.
The exhibit will open at Union Terminal on Oct. 18 and feature over 500 artifacts and 400 photographs from the concentration camp, with the most extensive and comprehensive collection of artifacts from Auschwitz outside Europe. It will also highlight the humanity of those who died there and offer a poignant and sobering look at the suffering they endured. It also traces the rise of Nazi ideology and how the Polish town of Oświęcim transformed into the camp.
As the museum prepares for the exhibit, the first of these 500 artifacts arrived at the gallery this week: a set of iron train wheels from a 1930s German National Railway locomotive. The wheels would have once pulled trains and boxcars across European rails — the same rails that took millions of Jews, Poles, Roma, Sinti and others to concentration camps like Auschwitz.
This week, museum staff carefully brought in the massive wheels — weighing almost 6,000 pounds — for installation in the gallery. You can watch a video of the install below or here.
In the ‘40s, Cincinnati’s Union Terminal served as a major transportation hub for World War II soldiers and was also an arrival point for Holocaust survivors and war refugees. CMC says this history and connection make the museum a powerful and profound space to learn more about and reflect on the atrocities of the Holocaust and the people who suffered.
“In Cincinnati, we have an important and specific opportunity to share the history of Auschwitz and its survivors,” CMC President and CEO Elizabeth Pierce said in a previous press release. “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.”
Along with the collection, exhibit visitors can also hear stories from local Holocaust survivors who came to Cincinnati after the war.
Auschwitz. Not long ago. Not far away. opens Oct. 18 at Union Terminal. You can learn more or join the waitlist for tickets here.
Cincinnati Museum Center, 1301 Western Ave., West End. More info: cincymuseum.org.
