His voice wavers between anger and frustration. Didn’t we learn anything from the Holocaust, he asks? Wasn’t the world shocked and sickened enough to never let anything like that happen again?
The answer is, sadly, no. So, Michael Berenbaum had no choice. He’d have to take the world by the shoulders and shake it violently, because violence seems to be the only way to get its attention anymore.
For the next seven years, the curator of a traveling exhibition that will bring you to tears and anger at the same time will visit cities all over the world with “Auschwitz — Not Long Ago. Not Far Away.”
It opens March 24 for a limited engagement at the Ronald Reagan Presidential Library in Simi Valley, its only West Coast showing. If Berenbaum had a choice, it wouldn’t be opening anywhere.
“Even our title is a scandal because it’s saying ‘Not long ago, not far away.’ We should live in a world where Auschwitz is far away and long ago. Where it’s ancient history and should have repulsed people enough that the world would never go near that again.
“Unfortunately, we live in a world where the Holocaust has become more relevant with time, not less. So, we had to create something that was timeless and, unfortunately, provocatively timely,” he said.
Almost every artifact and photograph in the exhibit comes from the museum at Auschwitz — visited each year by two million people from all over the world. Not nearly enough eyes on it to move the needle.
If the world was not going to Auschwitz, Berenbaum and his team of Holocaust historians would bring Auschwitz to the world. The question was, did the world want to see it? It opened in Madrid last year and drew 600,000 people in a limited engagement.
“You’re always wondering who’s going to be interested?” Berenbaum said. “When we built the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum in Washington D.C., we asked how was it going to relate with the farmer from Kansas?
“We were certain it was…
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