“A strong network of institutions was engaged in the project and it is an example of good practice for partnerships between non-profit and for-profit organisations. The exhibition opens up the platform for increasing the knowledge, collection and interpretation of the documentation. Its display succeeded in recreating the emotional experience of visiting the real site, which is challenging for a travelling exhibition and is thanks in part to the richness of the content,” the Jury continued.
The first presentation of the exhibition took place in Madrid where it was visited by over 600 thousand people. Now it is displayed in the Museum of Jewish Heritage in New York. Featuring more than 700 original objects, the New York presentation of the exhibition allow visitors to experience artifacts from the Auschwitz-Birkenau State Museum including hundreds of personal items—such as suitcases, eyeglasses, and shoes—that belonged to survivors and victims of Auschwitz. Other artifacts include concrete posts that were part of the fence of the Auschwitz camp; fragments of an original barrack for prisoners from the Auschwitz III-Monowitz camp; a desk and other possessions of the first and the longest serving Auschwitz commandant Rudolf Höss; a gas mask used by the SS; Pablo Picasso’s Lithograph of Prisoner; and an original German-made Model 2 freight wagon used for the deportation of Jews to the ghettos and extermination camps in occupied Poland.
The European Heritage Awards / Europa Nostra Awards were