Auschwitz artifacts begin to roll into Cincinnati Museum Center

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE: September 18, 2025
MEDIA CONTACT: Cody Hefner (513) 608-5777, chefner@cincymuseum.org

First artifacts roll in for upcoming Auschwitz exhibition

Auschwitz. Not long ago. Not far away features 500 original artifacts from the Holocaust's most notorious camp, opening Oct. 18

WHAT: Cincinnati Museum Center and the Nancy & David Wolf Holocaust & Humanity Center are preparing to host the largest collection of artifacts from Auschwitz outside of Europe, and this week the first of 500 original artifacts rolled into the gallery.

Artifact install video

A set of train wheels from a 1930s German National Railway locomotive, weighing nearly 6,000 pounds, was slowly rolled into place as museum staff begin the installation of the exhibition that will open next month. The wheels, and hundreds like them, once pulled trains and boxcars across thousands of miles of track that crisscrossed Germany and stretched across Europe – the same rails that carried millions of Jews, Poles, Roma, Sinti and others to concentration camps during the Holocaust, including Auschwitz.

The iron wheel set is one of over 500 original artifacts bearing witness to one of history’s darkest moments in the upcoming exhibition Auschwitz. Not long ago. Not far away. The exhibition opens at Cincinnati's Union Terminal on October 18 but presale tickets are available now.

More information: www.cincymuseum.org/auschwitz 

Exhibition b roll

Press release
 

The haul
Over the seven-week field season, crews found several hundred fossils, including multiple large sauropod femora from the long-necked herbivores who once thundered across the land. Among the discoveries were also several Allosaurus toes and claws. Despite dinosaurs’ massive size, some of the most exciting finds were tiny microfossils and teeth that fit in the palm of one’s hand. 

Further preparation of most of the fossils will take place in CMC’s Paleo Lab in the Museum of Natural History & Science, where guests can see staff and volunteers actively working to remove fossils from their rock matrix.

The collection 
CMC’s vertebrate paleontology collection is one of the largest in the country. The collection dates to 1818, when it was established by Cincinnati physician Daniel Drake and the Western Museum Society. Over two centuries, it has grown to over 30,000 fossilized bones, teeth, eggs, footprints and even fecal remains of extinct animals. Materials in the collection prominently include dinosaurs, as well as Pleistocene (Ice Age) mammals from Big Bone Lick, the birthplace of American vertebrate paleontology. While the majority of the vertebrate paleontology collection is maintained at CMC’s collections facility for preservation and research – both by internal and external researchers – significant materials are on display on the museum floor, including the only fully articulated Torvosaurus in the world, on view with several other dinosaurs in the Dinosaur Hall, and a mastodon and accompanying Ice Age fossils in the Ice Age Gallery.