The “Light of Remembrance” award, which the Auschwitz Memorial gives to people who have made a contribution to education about Auschwitz and the Holocaust, was given to Luis Ferreiro, director of the Spanish company Musealia, informed the Auschwitz Museum on Tuesday.
Auschwitz Museum Director Piotr Cywiński presented the award to the laureate on Monday in Kansas City (USA) during the official opening in that city of the exhibition “Auschwitz. Not long ago. Not far away”. It was created in collaboration between the Spanish company and the museum.
“Luis Ferreiro has done an extraordinary thing – he has built the largest travelling exhibition on Auschwitz to date. It was shown in Madrid, then New York, and today, June 14, it opened in Kansas City. The number of visitors at these three sites is likely to exceed one million. This shows the enormous educational potential of the events that take place not only at the Memorial Site, on the grounds of the former camp, but also throughout the world. Seen from this point of view, this great exhibition project is also one of the largest educational programs devoted to the history of Auschwitz in recent decades,” said Piotr Cywiński, quoted in the communiqué.
So far, the Light of Remembrance has been awarded to: Władysław Bartoszewski, Krystyna Oleksy, Avner Shalev, Serge Klarsfeld and Sara Bloomfield.
Several hundred items from the Auschwitz Museum are on display in Kansas City. These include personal items belonging to the victims, such as suitcases, glasses and shoes. On display are concrete pillars that were part of the Auschwitz camp fence, fragments of the original barrack for prisoners in Auschwitz III-Monowitz, a desk and items that belonged to camp commandant Rudolf Hoess, and a lithograph depicting a prisoner’s face by Pablo Picasso.
The exhibition will be on display in Kansas City until January 22 of next year.