On September 4, 2025, the Museum of Kansas City launched an unforgettable new experience in its “Our City, Our Stories” gallery—an immersive exhibit centered around the remarkable life of Sonia Warshawski, affectionately known as “Big Sonia.” A Holocaust survivor, entrepreneur, great-grandmother, and pillar of her Kansas City community, Sonia’s journey is now preserved through a first-person interactive StoryFile installation, enabling museum guests to engage with her on a deeply personal level.

Presented in partnership with Sonia’s granddaughter, filmmaker Leah Warshawski, and developed by StoryFile, the project captures Sonia seated in her favorite leopard-print chair as she answered more than 400 questions about her early years in Poland, her survival during the war, her life after immigrating to the United States, and the values she carries forward. Through proprietary technology, each recorded response is indexed and made available for users to explore—so when a visitor asks a question, the system delivers the closest matching reply, preserving every nuance of her voice and expression.

Importantly, this installation underscores the difference between synthetic chatbots and authentic testimony: “StoryFile has not used artificial intelligence to modify, alter, or generate new responses,” states the museum’s announcement. That means every interaction with Big Sonia comes directly from her lived experience—no generated content, no guesswork—ensuring visitors hear her real story exactly as she told it. The exhibit opens with an intro from her oldest daughter, followed by a touchscreen interface where guests can select questions or use voice input to ask their own. Captioning supports clarity for viewers navigating her accent.

The exhibit is free to visit and is funded by the Barton P. Cohen & Mary Davidson Cohen Charitable Trust. It offers visitors of all ages the chance not just to view history—but to engage in it, asking Big Sonia about her earliest Kansas City memories, working life, family traditions, or reflections on resilience. As one local article noted, the experience invites the public to “ask specific questions of Kansas City resident Sonia Warshawski … through the use of specific technology.”

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By offering an interactive conversation with Sonia herself, this exhibit transforms passive observation into active storytelling—preserving a powerful legacy and placing the visitor in direct dialogue with history.