Kem and I took advantage of her birthday gift from the kids Monday. It was a sobering but memorable experience.
Auschwitz, an exhibit focused on the most infamous World War II death camp, is on display at the Cincinnati Museum Center. The lengthy tour takes you firsthand through the early days of its focus as a prisoner-of-war camp on through its use as the worst of the death camps, with harrowing inhumanity the single through line. Photos, artifacts and recorded interviews with survivors tell the gruesome story.
Sadly, today there seems to be a resurgence in efforts to downplay or even celebrate Nazi ideology. This exhibit is a powerful rebuttal to those misguided ideas.
The exhibit is at the Museum Center through mid-April, for any Midwestern folks. If it someday makes its way to your community, jump at the chance to see it.
Polish-born French-Jewish artist David Olere survived his experience in Auschwitz, where he was put to work as a Sonderkommando (the men forced to empty the gas chambers and burn the bodies). He provided testimony to the horrors of Auschwitz through his drawings, like this one of Crematorium 3.
Polish priest St. Maximilian Kolbe was among the victims of Auschwitz, volunteering to die in place of fellow prisoner Franciszek Gajowinczek, who ended up surviving the war. St. Maximilian Kolbe was killed by the Nazis by lethal injection.
52 Masses 