What's Up - Your guide to what's happening in Fayetteville, AR this week!
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SEPTEMBER 12-18, 2021 WHAT'S UP! 37 COVER STORY PRESIDENT Brent A. Powers EDITOR Becca Martin-Brown 479-872-5054 bmartin@nwadg.com Twitter: NWAbecca ASSISTANT EDITOR Jocelyn Murphy 479-872-5176 jmurphy@nwadg.com Twitter: NWAJocelyn REPORTER Lara Hightower 479-365-2913 lhightower@nwadg.com DESIGNER Deb Harvell ! UP WHAT'S ON THE COVER Many visitors to the "Auschwitz. Not long ago. Not far away." exhibit currently open at Union Station in Kansas City, Mo., talk about a single little shoe, with a tiny sock tucked neatly inside it, as the most poignant artifact of the World War II death camp, imagining a child expecting to put his shoes back on after a "shower." (PAWEL SAWICKI, AUSCHWITZ MEMORIAL) What's Up! is a publication of the Northwest Arkansas Democrat-Gazette. But perhaps more important is information about what The Chronicle calls "the development of Nazi ideology and the transformation of Auschwitz from an ordinary Polish town known as Oswiecim to the most significant Nazi site of the Holocaust — at which approximately 1 million Jews, and tens of thousands of others, were murdered." The Chronicle points out that victims were not only Jews but political prisoners, Roma (also known as Gypsies), Soviet POWs, Jehovah's Witnesses and anyone the Nazis labeled as "homosexual," "disabled," "criminal" or "inferior." Mike Shores, writing in the July 24, 2021, edition of the Joplin (Mo.) Globe, says the impact of the exhibit came home to him with three artifacts — a heavy door with a viewing hole, used to see if the prisoners in the gas chamber were dead yet; a cage from inside the gas chamber into which the poison pellets were dropped, enclosed so prisoners could not try to stop the fatal gas; and "the well-made shoe of a child about 4 years old." "It was," he writes, "excavated from the ruins of the gas chambers at Auschwitz, though it could have come from any number of such camps. Carefully placed inside the shoe was a sock. It was found this way. Perhaps the mother or a thoughtful child had placed it there to ensure it did not get lost, so they could put it back on when they returned from their 'shower.' By this time, the mother was probably beginning to doubt that they would be coming back. But she carefully shielded her child from reality, and placed the shoes and other items carefully beneath their numbered coat hook." "Each object in the exhibition is unique," says Ferreiro, director of "Auschwitz. Not long ago. Not far away." "They are all fragments of history and each one of them has its own echo. It is fascinating to see how visitors establish different relationships with them. For many, personal items from the victims — little shoes, glasses, suitcases, mirrors — are profoundly touching. Their nature helps them easily identify with them. And for others, iconic objects will become the ones that get to them: posts from the camp, a section of a barrack, elements from the perpetrators…. "It is impossible to predict which one will be more powerful for each one of us," he concludes. "I can only say that we present them in a way that allows each object to speak for itself, to tell their story. And, whenever possible, we identify the original owner. The authenticity that the objects bring makes the exhibition a very personal experience for visitors, and an invitation for reflection." Auschwitz Continued From Page 10 Jews deported for extermination were told that they were being resettled. Therefore they packed their most important belongings for the journey. Everything was stolen when they arrived at the camp, Sawicki says. (Pawel Sawicki, Auschwitz Memorial) After the German attack on Poland in September 1939, the town of Oswiecim was within the territory annexed directly into the Third Reich. The name of the town was turned into Auschwitz. (Pawel Sawicki, Auschwitz Memorial)