What's Up - Your guide to what's happening in Fayetteville, AR this week!
Issue link: https://www.epageflip.net/i/1408892
10 WHAT'S UP! SEPTEMBER 12-18, 2021 COVER STORY Auschwitz Continued From Page 9 See Auschwitz Page 37 Dwight D. Eisenhower and troops leaving to defend America in World War II. Rather than just a story of horror, he says, "Auschwitz. Not long ago. Not far away." is about people, "the perpetrators and the prisoners, and the juxtaposition of their stories." "Now it is our goal to ensure it never happens again," Guastello says. "We always had a feeling that the story would resonate. But I have been so humbled by the response in the community. What better time for this exhibition than when we see what's happening in our world today? It speaks to the souls of the people. We're on a mission, not to sell tickets but to change the world one person at a time. I am humbled to even be in the presence of what [Luis Ferreiro] created." The Midwest Center for Holocaust Education is a partner in the exhibition, and CHE Executive Director Jessica Rockhold says having the Holocaust artifacts in Kansas City is "incredibly significant and an unprecedented opportunity." "The importance of an exhibition like 'Auschwitz. Not long ago. Not far away.' cannot be overstated," Rockhold said in a September 2020 story in The Kansas City Jewish Chronicle. "Most people will never have the opportunity to travel to Auschwitz and other Holocaust sites. This exhibit offers access to those precious artifacts that personalize and make tangible the history we learn in books." "Nothing can replace a visit to the authentic site of the biggest crime of the 20th century," Dr. Piotr Cywinski, director of the Auschwitz- Birkenau State Museum, said in the same story in The Chronicle. "But this exhibition can become a great warning cry for us all and allow people who may never get the chance to visit an opportunity to see and experience it like never before." The Experience According to The Chronicle, the exhibit "explores the dual identity of the camp as a physical location — the largest documented mass murder site in human history — and as a symbol of the borderless manifestation of hatred and human barbarity." Among the 700 artifacts included in the exhibition are hundreds of personal items — such as suitcases, eyeglasses and shoes — that belonged to survivors and victims of Auschwitz, The Chronicle catalogs. Other artifacts include concrete posts that were part of the fence of the Auschwitz camp; fragments of an original barrack for prisoners from the Auschwitz III- Monowitz camp; a desk and other possessions of the first and the longest serving Auschwitz commandant, Rudolf Höss; a gas mask used by the SS, Hitler's elite guard; Picasso's lithograph "Head of the Auschwitz prisoner"; and an original German-made Model 2 freight wagon used for the deportation of Jews to the ghettos and extermination camps in occupied Poland. "Auschwitz. Not long ago. Not far away." is about people, "the perpetrators and the prisoners, and the juxtaposition of their stories," says George Guastello, president and chief executive of Union Station. (Pawel Sawicki, Auschwitz Memorial) Registration images of prisoners of Auschwitz and a camp striped uniform are part of the touring exhibit now at Union Station in Kansas City, Mo. People incarcerated into the camp were degraded to numbers with no individuality. Their hair was cut, and most had to wear the same kind of clothing, says Pawel Sawicki. (Pawel Sawicki, Auschwitz Memorial) Some 232,000 children were deported to Auschwitz, 216,000 of them Jewish. Most of the Jewish children were murdered in gas chambers. In the touring exhibition now on show in Kansas City, you can see a "push chair" (stroller) that belonged to one of them. This doll (at right) was made of a camp blanket by an unknown female prisoner in Auschwitz. (Pawel Sawicki, Auschwitz Memorial)