is only by making sense of our past that we can deeply understand our present,' he added.
The exhibition "Auschwitz. Not long ago. Not far away." was created in collaboration between Musealia and the Auschwitz-Birkenau State Museum. The curators of this unique exhibition are international experts: Dr. Robert Jan van Pelt, Dr. Michael Berenbaum, and Dr. Paul Salmons, who worked closely with historians and curators from the Auschwitz Museum Research Centre headed by Dr. Piotr Setkiewicz.
The exhibition depicts the successive stages of the development of Nazi ideology and describes the transformation of Oświęcim, an ordinary Polish town where Nazi Germany established the largest concentration camp and extermination centre during the occupation, where approximately one million Jews and tens of thousands of people of other nationalities were murdered.
The victims of Auschwitz also included Poles, Roma and Sinti, Soviet prisoners of war and other groups persecuted by Nazi ideology, such as people with disabilities, asocials, Jehovah's Witnesses and homosexuals. Furthermore, the exhibition includes objects portraying the world of the perpetrators - the SS men who created and managed this largest German Nazi concentration and extermination camp.
The public in Malmö can see several hundred items, mainly from the Auschwitz Memorial Collection, on an area of nearly 1,500 square metres. These include personal items belonging to the victims, such as suitcases, glasses and shoes. The exhibition will also include concrete posts forming part of the Auschwitz camp fence; fragments of the original barrack for prisoners in Auschwitz III-Monowitz; a desk and other items belonging to Rudolf Höss, the first and longest-serving commandant of Auschwitz; a gas mask used by the SS; and a lithograph depicting a prisoner's face by Pablo Picasso.
Additionally, the exhibition features individual objects on loan from more than 20 institutions, museums, and private collections worldwide, including Yad Vashem, the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum, the Wiener Library, and the Buchenwald Mauthausen and Sachsenhausen and Westerbork memorial sites.
Through the cooperation of the exhibition's creators with local museums, the exposition has been enriched with objects and stories showing local connections, emphasising the importance of the history of Auschwitz for the residents of Scandinavia. These include the story of Danish Jews fleeing to Sweden, the Swedish diplomat Raul Wallenberg, who rescued Jews in Hungary, and the relief operation for concentration camp prisoners commissioned by the Swedish government in spring 1945 known as the "white buses".
The presentation of the exhibition "Auschwitz. Not long ago. Not far away. "in Malmö is possible through institutional cooperation between the city and the Skåne region and the involvement of the Forum for Living History as an educational partner. In Sweden, the exhibition is presented thanks to local partner Nordic Exhibitions.
A rich cultural programme will accompany the presentation of the exhibition in Sweden. It will include lectures, talks and other events where survivors and experts get to share their insights on the history of Auschwitz and the Holocaust. Thousands of schoolchildren have also been invited to participate in the educational programme and will be able to visit the exhibition free of charge.
The exhibition "Auschwitz. Not long ago. Not far away." can be seen in Sweden until the end of September. For more information, visit auschwitz.net.