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New exhibit at The Castle at Park Plaza commemorates the Holocaust

The international exhibition “Auschwitz. Not Long Ago. Not Far Away.,” arrives in Boston on March 15.

Prisoner uniforms on display as part of "Auschwitz. Not Long Ago. Not Far Away."

January 9, 2024

A Holocaust exhibition featuring over 700 original artifacts makes its New England debut this March.

The exhibition, “Auschwitz. Not Long Ago. Not Far Away.,” uses artifacts from the Auschwitz-Birkenau Memorial, Yad Vashem, the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum, and over 20 other international museums to educate visitors about Auschwitz. These artifacts are curated to tell the personal stories of the victims and survivors of the Holocaust.

“It is a tribute to the memory of the victims,” Luis Ferreiro, the executive producer of the exhibition, told Boston.com. “It is a reflection on a past that is very near us. And it is a way to also have a better, more critical understanding of our own present.”

The exhibition is the first time such a large collection of artifacts from Auschwitz has traveled outside of Poland, Ferreiro said. Boston will likely be the exhibition’s only stop on the East Coast, as it travels to 14 cities for a stay of 6 months in each.

Michael Berenbaum, a historian who worked on the exhibition, told Boston.com the exhibition targets its story to each city it visits.

“In Boston, docents will emphasize that [the Holocaust] was done with the greatest technological and scientific skills, because Boston is a hub of science and technology, scholarship and learning,” he said.

Berenbaum worked with other historians and curators to tell the story of the Holocaust from a unique angle. With the help of individual audio devices, the exhibition guides visitors through the atrocities that took place at Auschwitz. The audio tour is approximately two hours long.

“[The exhibit] is not a chamber of horrors, and it’s not a theme park of evil,” Berenbaum said. “It’s meant as a serious encounter with one of the most important places on Earth.”

For more information, visit TheAuschwitzExhibition.com.