Auschwitz Artifacts Sent On Tour For First Time
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(JTA) — The museum at Auschwitz announced the first traveling exhibit about the Nazi concentration and extermination camp featuring more than 600 original artifacts.
The Auschwitz-Birkenau State Museum in Poland announced the exhibit in a news release Wednesday, saying it will visit seven cities in Europe beginning with Madrid and the same number in North America by the end of the year.
The artifacts, most of them belonging to the Auschwitz Memorial Collections, will include an original barrack from Auschwitz III-Monowitz, the largest of the subcamps of Auschwitz. Objects shown on the website announcing the exhibit include a pair of eyeglasses that belonged to an Auschwitz victim, an SS soldier’s belt buckle and a carved wooden box made by a prisoner.
“Nothing can replace a visit to the authentic site of the biggest crime of the 20th century, but this exhibition … can become a great warning cry for us all against building the future on hatred, racism, anti-Semitism and bottomless contempt for another human being,” Piotr Cywiński, director of the Auschwitz-Birkenau State Museum, said in a statement.
Organizers said the exhibit will focus on the prewar years of the Polish town of Oświęcim and on the German occupation and its “terror system.”
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