Auschwitz exhibition in New York extended for eight months

An exhibition on the Nazi German death camp of Auschwitz that was scheduled to stay open at the Museum of Jewish Heritage in New York until January 3 has been extended until August 30.

Entrance to the former Auschwitz death camp with the infamous "Arbeit Macht Frei" (Work sets you free) sign. Photo: CC BY-SA 2.5 (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/2.5)

via Wikimedia Commons

The decision is in response to a record number of visitors, which has exceeded 106,000 since the exhibition was launched in May.

Students account for a third of the total number.

Entitled Auschwitz: Not so long ago. Not so far away, it is the first ever travelling exhibition on Auschwitz. It is made up of more than 700 objects, most of which come from the Auschwitz-Birkenau Memorial and Museum in southern Poland, and include personal belongings of prisoners and of the Nazi Germans who ran the camp.

Some 100 rare artifacts have been incorporated into the exhibition from the collection of the New York Museum of Jewish Heritage.

Bruce C. Ratner, chairman of the Board of Trustees of the Museum of Jewish Heritage, has told the media: “The number of adults and school visitors drawn to Auschwitz: Not long ago. Not far away has been incredible. This exhibition greets its visitors with a clear warning to be vigilant—to not allow this history to repeat and to never presume that it won’t.”

The director of the Auschwitz-Birkenau Memorial and Museum in the southern Polish city of Oświęcim, Piotr M.A. Cywiński, has welcomed the extension of the New York exhibition.

He said: “I don’t think that there is a more important exhibition in New York right now. It explores the essence of mankind, analyses the limits of what is human as well as asks important questions about our contemporary responsibility.”

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 earlier had a successful run at Madrid’s Arte Canal Exhibition Centre, where it was extended twice and attracted more than 600,000 visitors.

It is due to continue its worldwide tour after New York.

Large-scale international events to mark the 75^th anniversary of the liberation of Auschwitz will be held at the site of the former camp on January 27.

(mk/gs)

Source: PAP