Not long ago.
Not far away.

Now Closed

THANK YOU

SEEMS INADEQUATE For What You’ve Done To Make Such A Difference.

Nearly nine months ago Auschwitz: The Exhibition opened in Kansas City and the voices of millions of Holocaust victims and survivors implored each of us to “Do Something”. . .  and you did.

You Donated.  You Visited.  You Encountered.  You Discussed.

Now all of us are better equipped to recognize and reject the seeds of Hatred, Intolerance and Indifference.

We are profoundly grateful to the more than 315,000 people who attended.  

We will not forget.  We will not look away.  We will be the change this world needs.

Photo of Grand Plaza with Auschwitz Banner Hanging

SPECIAL THANKS TO:

  • Bank of America
  • Edward F. Swinney Trust, Bank of America, N.A., Trustee
  • Marion & Henry Bloch Family Foundation
  • Hall Family Foundation
  • Ewing Marion Kauffman Foundation
  • Kemper Family Foundations – UMB Bank, N.A., as Trustee
  • Sosland Family
  • Victor E. and Caroline E. Schutte Foundation Trust E, David Frantze & Bank of America, N.A., Trustees
  • In Loving Memory of Ilsa Dahl Cole and Walter Joseph Cole by Ann & Kenneth Baum
  • Claims Conference
  • In Loving Memory of Fred & Maria Devinki by the
  • Sam Devinki-Stahl-Fink Families
  • Shirley and Barnett C. Helzberg, Jr. 
  • William T. Kemper Foundation – Commerce Bank Trustee
  • Berkley Family / Tension Foundation
  • Craig & Ida Kolkin and Family
  • Oppenstein Brothers Foundation – Commerce Bank Trustee
  • Steven and Karen Pack Family Fund
  • Regnier Family Foundations
  • Arvin Gottlieb Charitable Foundation – Peter W. Brown, Barton J. Cohen, UMB Bank, N.A., as Trustees
  • City of Kansas City, MO Neighborhood Tourist Development Fund
  • Michael & Cathy Schultz
  • Copaken Family Foundation
  • JE Dunn Construction
  • Haverty Family Foundation
  • Jackson County MO
  • Muriel McBrien Kauffman Foundation
  • Merriman Foundation
  • Harry Portman Charitable Trust, UMB Bank, N.A., as Trustee
  • Sherman Family Foundation
  • Jewish Community Foundation of Greater Kansas City Legacy Fund
  • Louis & Frances Swinken Foundation
  • Herbert Buchbinder
  • In Honor of Cole, Dahl, David and Green families by Steven and Beth Cole
  • Blue Cross and Blue Shield of Kansas City
  • Kansas City PBS
  • Westin Kansas City Hotel at Crown Center

An International Exhibition of Unprecedented Importance. A Story to Shake the Conscience of the World.

This groundbreaking exhibition brings together more than 700 original objects and 400 photographs from over 20 institutions and museums around the world. Auschwitz. Not long ago. Not far away. is the most comprehensive exhibition dedicated to the history of Auschwitz and its role in the Holocaust ever presented in North America, and an unparalleled opportunity to confront the singular face of human evil—one that arose not long ago and not far away.

Location
Bank of America Gallery located within Union Station
Type
Educational Historical

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The Exhibition

For the first time, 75 years after the liberation of Auschwitz, a touring exhibition dedicated to the historical significance of the camp is being presented to a U.S. audience.

Auschwitz. Not long ago. Not far away. opening in Kansas City June 2021 after the exhibition closes at New York’s Museum of Jewish Heritage – A Living Memorial to the Holocaust. The exhibition 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.

Auschwitz. Not long ago. Not far away. was conceived by Musealia and the Auschwitz-Birkenau State Museum and curated by an international panel of experts, including world-renowned scholars Dr. Robert Jan van Pelt, Dr. Michael Berenbaum, and Paul Salmons, in an unprecedented collaboration with historians and curators at the Research Center at the Auschwitz-Birkenau State Museum, led by Dr. Piotr Setkiewicz.

The exhibition features artifacts and materials—never before seen in North America—on loan from more than 20 institutions and private collections around the world. In addition to the Auschwitz-Birkenau State Museum and the Museum of Jewish Heritage – A Living Memorial to the Holocaust, participating institutions include Yad Vashem in Jerusalem, the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum in Washington, Auschwitz Jewish Center in Oświęcim, the Memorial and Museum Sachsenhausen in Oranienburg, and the Wiener Library for the Study of the Holocaust and Genocide in London.

Special thanks to these supporters for helping bring the Auschwitz Exhibition to Kansas City:

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Presented By

Supported By

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Hotel Partner

Media Partner

Speaker Series

Union Station Kansas City and The Midwest Center for Holocaust Education are pleased to present the following educational programs associated with the exhibition Auschwitz. Not long ago. Not far away.

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David Marwell – Mengele: Unmasking the “Angel of Death”

Robert Jan van Pelt – Auschwitz

Caroline Sturdy Colls – Archaeology of the Holocaust: Treblinka and Bergen-Belsen

Our Mothers Were in Auschwitz – Three Daughters Remember

Sam Kassow – Times Capsules Under the Rubble: the Ringelblum Archive in the Warsaw Ghetto

Sam Kassow – The Overlooked Jewish Resistance

Photo of Dr Dane Sommer

Dr Dane Sommer, D. Min., M.Div., BCC – Never a Means to an End: How the Atrocities of the Holocaust Impact Modern Research

Lawrence Douglas – From Nuremberg to Demjanjuk: Justice and the Trials of the Holocaust – Annual Kristallnacht Commemoration

Shelly Cline – Belzec to Auschwitz

Holly Huffnagle – 75 Years After Auschwitz: Antisemitism in America

Anna Hájková – Terezin & Deportations from the West

Beth Griech-Polelle – Hitler’s First Victims: The Nazi Forced Sterilization Program and the Euthanasia Project

Non-Jewish Victims of the Holocaust: A Panel

William Spurlin – Queering Holocaust Studies

Paul Salmons – Frozen moments – what is revealed in the photographs of Auschwitz?

David Marwell – Mengele: Unmasking the “Angel of Death”

Robert Jan van Pelt – Auschwitz

Caroline Sturdy Colls – Archaeology of the Holocaust: Treblinka and Bergen-Belsen

Dr. Sturdy Colls will present on her research as an archaeologist at the sites of Treblinka and Bergen-Belsen.

Presented by the Midwest Center for Holocaust Education and Union Station Kansas City in support of the exhibition Auschwitz: Not long ago. Not far away.

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Our Mothers Were in Auschwitz – Three Daughters Remember

Sam Kassow – Times Capsules Under the Rubble: the Ringelblum Archive in the Warsaw Ghetto

Sam Kassow – The Overlooked Jewish Resistance

While accounts of Jewish resistance during World War II tend to focus on armed uprisings in ghettos and guerilla warfare and sabotage in the forests of Europe, the fight against the Nazis involved more than guns and explosives. Many Jews took nonviolent action, assisting one another in hiding and taking steps to preserve their faith and culture through writing, schooling, religious observance, smuggling, and collective activities.

In a special, late-morning Library presentation, renowned historian Samuel Kassow explores these potent, if overlooked, ways in which Jews defied Nazi attempts to dehumanize them and break their morale. The event is co-presented by the Midwest Center for Holocaust Education and Union Station Kansas City in conjunction with the exhibition Auschwitz. Not long ago. Not far away. on display at Union Station through January 30, 2022.

Kassow is the Charles Northam Professor of History at Trinity College in Hartford, Connecticut, where he has served on the faculty since 1972. He is the author of Who Will Write Our History: Emanuel Ringelblum, the Warsaw Ghetto, and the Oyneg Shabes Archives, which was adapted into a film documentary in 2018, and The Clandestine History of the Kovno Jewish Ghetto Police.

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Dr Dane Sommer, D. Min., M.Div., BCC – Never a Means to an End: How the Atrocities of the Holocaust Impact Modern Research

We are still learning lessons from the horrors of the Holocaust as we remember the past and redefine the present and future. This lecture explores the human suffering that occurred as individuals were permanently harmed and killed to explore the limits of human life. They had become a means to an end. The world responded with imperatives that would guide all future human subjects research. How do the heinous atrocities that occurred during the Holocaust provide a constant vigil over the increasing complexities of modern research? Can lament and hope coexist?”

For AOA CME credit of this event it must be added to the DO’s AOA reporting when they log activity.  No certificate can be provided. DO’s simply go to https://osteopathic.org/cme/cme-self-reporting/ and follow the directions.

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Lawrence Douglas – From Nuremberg to Demjanjuk: Justice and the Trials of the Holocaust – Annual Kristallnacht Commemoration

Shelly Cline – Belzec to Auschwitz

Holly Huffnagle – 75 Years After Auschwitz: Antisemitism in America

Anna Hájková – Terezin & Deportations from the West

Terezín was operated by the Nazis between November 1941 and May 1945 as a transit ghetto for Central and Western European Jews before their deportation for murder in the East. The Last Ghetto offers both a modern history of this Central European ghetto and the first in-depth analytical history of a prison society during the Holocaust. During the three and a half years of the camp’s existence, prisoners created their own culture and habits, bonded, fell in love, and forged new families. Based on extensive archival research in nine languages and on empathetic reading of victim testimonies, The Last Ghetto casts light on human society works in extremis.

Dr. Anna Hájková, Associate Professor of Modern Continental European History, University of Warwick, is the author of The Last Ghetto: An Everyday History of Theresienstadt. Awarded the Irma Rosenberg and Herbert Steiner Prizes, the book focuses on the everyday history of the Holocaust, using the Terezín transit ghetto as a springboard to examine larger issues of human behavior under extreme stress. Her work examines the society in the camps, Jewish social and political elites, issues of nationalism and ethnicity, gender and sexuality, and the Jewish Councils.

Presented by the Midwest Center for Holocaust Education and Union Station Kansas City in support of the exhibition Auschwitz: Not long ago. Not far away.

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Beth Griech-Polelle – Hitler’s First Victims: The Nazi Forced Sterilization Program and the Euthanasia Project

When Hitler became Chancellor of Germany in 1933, eugenicists welcomed his appointment. Many in the eugenics community believed that Hitler would be the one to put their theories into real practice to “cleanse” the population of Germany. They were correct. Moving first against those deemed to be “unhealthy” and “unfit” to be members of the People’s Community, the Nazi regime began forced sterilizations. By 1939, Hitler was ready to move to eliminate the mentally ill and physically disabled in what came to be called the “Euthanasia” Project. Learning about the “Euthanasia” Project is critical to understanding the evolution of Nazi killing methods.

Dr. Griech-Polelle is Kurt Mayer Chair of Holocaust Studies, Pacific Lutheran University. She is the author of Anti-Semitism and the Holocaust: Language, Rhetoric and the Traditions of Hatred, Trajectories of Memory: Intergenerational Representations of the Holocaust in History and the Arts, The Nuremberg War Crimes Trial and its Policy Consequences Today, Bishop von Galen: German Catholicism and National Socialism.

Presented by the Midwest Center for Holocaust Education and Union Station Kansas City in support of the exhibition Auschwitz: Not long ago. Not far away.

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Non-Jewish Victims of the Holocaust: A Panel

Nearly 5 million non-Jews were murdered in the course of the Holocaust. This panel will explore the experiences of three of those victim groups – the Roma, queer victims, and the mentally and physically disabled. Gerhard Baumgartner, William Spurlin, and Beth Griech-Pollele will fill this panel and each will give an individual presentation on a separate date.

Presented by the Midwest Center for Holocaust Education and Union Station Kansas City in support of the exhibition Auschwitz: Not long ago. Not far away.

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William Spurlin – Queering Holocaust Studies

Professor Spurlin is Professor of English and Vice-Dean/Education in the College of Business, Arts & Social Sciences, Brunel University London. He has written extensively on the politics of gender and sexual dissidence and is widely known for his work in queer studies. His monograph, Lost Intimacies: Rethinking Homosexuality under National Socialism (2009), uses queer theory to read against the grain of hetero-textual narratives of the Holocaust and as a way for locating sexuality at its intersections with race, gender, and eugenics within the National Socialist imaginary.  His book also challenges prevailing assumptions in the received scholarship that lesbians were not as systematically persecuted by the Nazis.

Presented by the Midwest Center for Holocaust Education and Union Station Kansas City in support of the exhibition Auschwitz: Not long ago. Not far away.


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Paul Salmons – Frozen moments – what is revealed in the photographs of Auschwitz?

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Exhibition Videos

Auschwitz Opening Live Event

Auschwitz Opening Event

Auschwitz: Making Of An Exhibition. An Exclusive Conversation

Yom Hashoah

International Remembrance Day

In the Press