Objects from Auschwitz Museum featured in international travelling exhibition to warn against growing racism

In Poland the first-ever travelling exhibition of objects from the Nazi concentration camp at Auschwitz has been created. Organizers say its aim is to familiarize the broader public with the horrors of the Holocaust and to send a warning signal to the next generation.

The collection of 600 exhibits from the death camp will travel to 14 cities in Europe and North America, the Associated Press reports. Those interested will be able to see, among other things, a wagon in which the Nazis transported prisoners to the camp or an original mockup of the planned Auschwitz barracks.

The exhibition, entitled "Neither Long Ago Nor Far Away", will tell the stories of Auschwitz prisoners through their personal items. Visitors will see objects that belonged to the perpetrators of the horrors at Auschwitz, the men of the SS units who built the camp and supervised its operation.

The Auschwitz-Birkenau Memorial and Museum wants the travelling exhibition to familiarize people who probably will never visit the memorial in Poland with what happened in the camps. "The world is currently moving in an uncertain direction," director Piotr Cywiński said.

The exhibition, according to him, can become a warning that it is not possible "to build a future on antisemitism, hatred, infinite contempt for other human beings and racism". Between the years 1940 and 1944 more than one million people were murdered at Auschwitz in the gas chambers or died there as a result of disease, forced labor, or hunger.

In addition to European Jews, the Nazis imprisoned Poles, Romani people and Russians at Auschwitz. There were several thousand Czechoslovak Jews among the victims of the camp.

The memorial was established in 1947 to preserve the memory of the Holocaust victims. In 2016 it was visited by a record number of people, more than two million.