Impressions of the Auschwitz - Not Long Ago - Not Far Away Exhibition

On Saturday, March 21^st two members of the Neighbor-to-Neighbor ministry team travelled to Cincinnati to view this exhibition. It was a challenging and even emotional experience, and here are a few thoughts about what we encountered.

Elizabeth Sammons: The Holocaust exhibit was housed on the bottom floor of Cincinnati’s historic railroad station, an art deco building now converted to various museums and exhibit halls. While children ran and shouted in the outer space, I noticed immediately the stillness of nearly everyone actually visiting this exhibit of several rooms, which housed artifacts, videos, posters and photos of the systematic killing of people considered subhuman or abnormal by the Nazi regime.

Though the scope of cruelty is impossible to portray or imagine, several points of light captured my heart. For example, after the killings or sterilizations of tens of thousands of people with disabilities, the regime stopped this process in 1941 owing to pressure from the Christian community. Additionally, many people recalling their time in camps stressed the role of faith and kindness in supporting one another. One witness recalled an elderly woman lighting a Sabbath candle and praying in a crowded railroad car on the way to the camp. I hope and believe the light of such a candle could shine all around our troubled world!

Sharon Hamersley: There were many objects, photographs, posters, and vignettes that invited inspection and reflection. What struck me repeatedly were the placards next to some of the displays. Here are three that I found eerily reflective of our current era.

• “The art of all truly great national leaders at all times consists in not dividing the attention of the people, but in concentrating it upon a single foe.” Adolf Hitler, 1925
• “More unnerving was the disappearance of a number of quite harmless people who had in one way or another been part of daily life. One did not know whether they were dead, incarcerated, or had gone abroad. They were just missing.” Raimund Pretzel (aka Sebastian Haffner), German author writing from exile in Britain, 1938
• “My family had it good in Auschwitz, every wish that my wife or my children had was fulfilled. The children could live free and easy. My wife had her flower paradise…there was always something new and interesting in the garden.” Rudolf Höss, Auschwitz Commandant, testifying at Nürnberg, 1947.

Like Elizabeth, I found some light in the darkness through the testimonies of those who experienced the faith and kindness of their fellow prisoners. “Never again” needs to be more than a motto. It needs to guide our actions today whenever we encounter hate and cruelty directed towards any of our neighbors.