New CMC Exhibition Documents the Realities of Auschwitz During the Holocaust

Photograph courtestyMusealia

The Cincinnati Museum Center and the Nancy & David Wolf Holocaust & Humanity Center will open their doors on October 18 for the arrival of new exhibition Auschwitz. Not Long Ago. Not Far Away., offering a glimpse into the realities of the Nazi extermination camp.

The exhibition—one of the largest and most comprehensive collections of artifacts from the Holocaust outside of Europe—documents the rise of Nazi ideology and the transformation of German-occupied Polish town Oświęcim into one of the most significant Nazi concentration and extermination camps of the Holocaust. Around one million Jewish people and over a hundred thousand other prisoners were murdered at Auschwitz during its operations in World War II.

The traveling exhibition has toured in other major cities including New York City, Los Angeles, Kansas City, Toronto, and now at the Queen City’s Union Terminal. Tickets have been in high demand since they went on sale in May, and spots remain limited each day.

According to Elizabeth Pierce, president and CEO of the Cincinnati Museum Center, the exhibition features more than 700 original objects and 400 photographs, sourced from the Auschwitz-Birkenau State Museum and more than 20 other international institutions and museums. The exhibition features personal items of Holocaust victims (including toothbrushes, shoes, and buttons from coats), parts of barbed wire fence and a concrete post from Auschwitz itself, and fragments of prison barracks. The display will also include Pablo Picasso’s Lithograph of a Prisoner, a lithograph drawing done of a prisoner’s face. “It gives you the whole scope and gravity of what took place at Auschwitz as a death camp,” explains Pierce.

What makes the presentation of this exhibition in Cincinnati so unique is its venue, Union Terminal. “Union Terminal itself is a part of [Holocaust] history, both for liberators and survivors who passed under its rotunda,” says Pierce. The historic former train station is the site where more than 1,000 Holocaust survivors, many arriving directly from Ellis Island, first stepped off to pursue their newfound freedom in America.

Photograph courtesy Musealia

This powerful local connection has been a driving factor behind the Holocaust & Humanity Center, which moved into Union Terminal in 2019 and has played a vital role in Holocaust education in Cincinnati and beyond. “The Holocaust & Humanity Center tells the story, collects the artifacts and the stories of our community of Holocaust survivors who live in the region,” says CEO Jackie Congedo.

One such story is that of Werner Coppel, the first Holocaust survivor in Cincinnati to publicly share his experience at Auschwitz, which is highlighted in Auschwitz. Not Long Ago. Not Far Away. Coppel escaped the extermination camp during a death march in 1945 and was eventually nursed back to health in Gleiwitz by a woman named Trudy, who later became his wife. After Coppel immigrated to Cincinnati with his family, he read an opinion article in the Cincinnati Enquirer that alleged that The Diary of a Young Girl by Anne Frank was a fake and questioned if six million Jewish people were really murdered during the Holocaust. Coppel knew he needed to speak out against such claims and doubts.

“Of course, other survivors followed suit,” says Congedo. “And that group of survivors was the group that founded our museum [in 2000].”

Visitors can also take a guided multimedia audio tour, which tells the story of Auschwitz alongside videos that detail the events leading up to World War II and other survivor testimonies.

“The exhibition demystifies Auschwitz in a way that encourages you to bear witness, confront the history of the Holocaust, and connect with the survivors and those who perished there,” says Pierce. “It helps make the lessons learned in that terrible place very clear so that we can confront the destructive power of hate in our time.”

Produced in partnership with Musealia, an organization in Spain dedicated to preserving historical memory, Auschwitz. Not Long Ago. Not Far Away. gives Cincinnatians an opportunity to explore the human stories behind one of the world’s darkest chapters of history.

“I think this [exhibition] really powerfully conveys the capacity that exits in all of us for both good and evil,” says Congedo. “That the enemy isn’t over there somewhere, and the heroes aren’t over there somewhere. We hold the capacity to be both the worst and the best at humanity.”

Auschwitz. Not Long Ago. Not Far Away. will be shown from October 18 to April 12, 2026 at the Cincinnati Museum Center. Tickets are required for admission.