Union Station will extend Auschwitz exhibit, add special artifact from KC survivor
After setting a record turnout since its summer opening, Kansas City’s Union Station is extending its run of a highly acclaimed exhibit that offers a deep look at the horrors experienced by prisoners of the infamous Auschwitz concentration camp.
Originally scheduled to leave Kansas City in late January, the traveling exhibit “Auschwitz. Not long ago. Not far away” will stay through March 2022. Its extension is one of several announcements unveiled by its temporary curators this week, including the addition of a special artifact donated by a local Holocaust survivor.
Installed throughout the 20,000-square-foot Bank of America Gallery, the exhibt includes more than 700 artifacts and 400 photographs depicting the experiences of the 1.1 million Jews who were forced to work and then were murdered at the Nazi death camp during World War II. Among the items on display are striped uniforms worn by prisoners, concrete posts fitted with barbed and high-voltage wire, and, outside, a German-made freight car like the ones used to transport human cargo.
George Guastello, president and CEO of Union Station, told The Star that hosting the exhibit has been a gift from the Auschwitz-Birkenau State Museum and the Spanish company Musealia, which created the large-scale traveling exhibition. And following the successes already seen, Guastello anticipates even greater demand from visitors as it spends its final months on U.S. soil before being shipped back to Europe.
“We may start seeing even more people from around the United States that say, ‘Hey, if I don’t go to Kansas City, I’ve got to go to Switzerland? I’ve got to go to Sweden?’ So we may see a really huge outpouring, and we’ve seen it already,” Guastello said.
On Friday, Union Station hosted Swedish visitors touring the site before the exhibit heads there as its next destination. Station officials also announced a planned program to send area teachers to Poland to become Auschwitz scholars, providing a continuing education of WWII history and the Holocaust.
Also revealed was a special donation being made by 96-year-old Sonia Warshawski, one of Kansas City’s last living Holocaust survivors. She is giving a scarf, passed down within the family for generations, that was once her mother’s, who was killed in the camp’s gas chambers when Warshawski was 15 years old.
In June, Kansas City became the second of two U.S. cities to welcome the exhibit after its showing in New York’s Museum of Jewish Heritage. Brought to Kansas City amid strong competition with others around the nation, Guastello said the exhibit has become Union Station’s most well attended, drawing nearly 260,000 visitors so far — including nearly 22,000 students — with 40,000 more expected to come.
Attendance in Kansas City outpaced New York, Guastello said, and exceeded expectations from partners in Poland and Spain. And he anticipates more world-class exhibits to follow once it’s gone.
“This really puts the light on Kansas City in the international touring exhibition world, which will put us up many levels and continue to bring the kinds of exhibitions the community wants, over a New York, over a Chicago. And this really changes the bar and makes an imprint on our business and the community,” Guastello said.
This story was originally published November 12, 2021 at 10:00 AM.
