Relic from Auschwitz echoes through Plum Street Temple for Rosh Hashanah

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE: September 26, 2025
MEDIA CONTACT: Cody Hefner (513) 608-5777, chefner@cincymuseum.org

Shofar from Auschwitz is blown during Rosh Hashanah services at Plum Street Temple

Will be on display as part of Auschwitz. Not long ago. Not far away. exhibition at Cincinnati Museum Center

CINCINNATI - The past echoed through Plum Street Temple during this week’s Rosh Hashanah services. A relic from Auschwitz connected the generations during a special moment as a shofar that was kept hidden inside the Auschwitz concentration camp was blown during the Jewish New Year service.

Shofar video

The shofar, a ritual musical instrument fashioned out of a ram’s horn and blown during Rosh Hashanah and Yom Kippur, was handmade in secret in one of the Holocaust’s most notorious camps and, despite the extreme risk, was blown during a clandestine service at Auschwitz over 80 years ago. To those few able to hear it in Auschwitz, the shofar was a symbol of resistance. A horn of hope and humanity that called its listeners to believe, to persist… to survive.

As the Soviet Army approached the camp and prepared to liberate it, the Nazis forced thousands of able-bodied prisoners on a death march to concentration camps in Germany, with many dying in the January cold along the way. The shofar, wrapped in a rag, was carried on this death march by a Jewish prisoner who would survive another three months in Buchenwald until the U.S. Army liberated the camp in April 1945.

This shofar, itself a survivor of the camps at Auschwitz and Buchenwald, is an enduring testament to the resilience of Jewish people in a place of such despair, reminding each of us of our humanity. As the congregants of Plum Street Temple heard the sound of the shofar they connected across time to a moment when its sound provided hope to Jews in a place of darkness.

The shofar is one of over 500 original artifacts from Auschwitz in the exhibition Auschwitz. Not long ago. Not far away. The shofar, like the exhibition, reminds us of our humanity – and awakens us to the terrible consequences when we deny humanity to others.

Auschwitz. Not long ago. Not far away. opens October 18 at Cincinnati Museum Center. The exhibition is one humanity needs you to see.

More information: www.cincymuseum.org/auschwitz 

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