INTERVIEW

A Presentation Like No Other.

Since 2008, the president and CEO of Union Station, George Guastello, has brought dozens of eye-popping displays to Kansas City. However, the current exhibition, “Auschwitz. Not long ago. Not far away." is unlike all the rest.

Telling this story has changed the storyteller.

I had to grow up. I can’t talk the way I usually talk. I can’t laugh the way I usually do. In this particular instance, I have to choose my words carefully. I have to be prepared. The stories of these people, and the survivors, deserve all I can give.

I grew up in a primarily Jewish neighborhood. My friends were Jewish. I was five years old going to the Jewish Community Center on a bus for summer camp. Little did I know that the monument we drove by would mean so much today.

This exhibit calls for a totally different tone; doesn’t it?

Almost anything we’ve ever done here is like a Broadway show. An opening number. A plot filled with twists and turns. Characters. Stories. We take you on a journey. We play a movie in your mind.

I take great pride in being called P. T. Barnum. But I never had my Bailey until I got here, Union Station, with this staff. These are the people that are the Bailey. They’re the ones that make it all happen.

Starting with the railcar out front. Six thousand miles. That’s how far the 1916 German-made railway freight car, the kind used to transport innocent victims to the camps, travelled from Spain to New York to the front of Union Station. When it was delivered and installed, there were two Holocaust survivors here. That was a moment I felt, “Okay, we’re are doing this the right way. For these two strong women and their lost friends and family. We are telling their stories.”

These people. These men and women who were murdered, in the end, they won. Yes, they lost their lives, but Hitler’s final solution never came to reality. Came very close, but in the end, these individuals, their spirit, their soul, the seed that they placed in other’s lives, is now blossoming. It is a David and Goliath story. So many perished, but, in the end, evil did not win.

“Auschwitz. Not long ago. Not far away." with its 700 artifacts, 400 photographs, story after story, is only being seen in two places in this country, New York and Kansas City. How did that come to pass?

My mom would always say people are sent to you for a reason. You won’t know why they were sent to you at the time. Years later, you’ll look back and you’ll see all those individuals and how they led you. You never know what that seed is that was given to you. But many years later, it comes to fruition. Every connection is vitally important.

The success of Union Station is about relationships. That is how this exhibit came here. I met a young man named Luis Ferreiro six years ago. Luis lost his brother just a few years before that and had been given the book Man’s Search for Meaning by Viktor Frankl. It recounts Frankl’s experience in the Nazi camps. Luis knew he had to share that story and began creating this exhibition. When Jerry Baber (VP/COO of Union Station) and I met Luis and heard about his vision, we knew we had to be part of it. It has been a six-year courtship, and, now, it is here.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Joel Nichols has been interviewing fascinating people from Kansas City and around the nation for 35 years. Today, he does freelance work for a number of area organizations, as well as emcee events in our town. Please, visit Joel Nichols Communications, online.

Michael Stern,music director

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Jeffrey Kahane,piano Our New Season Begins! MAHLER’S “TITAN”

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