Holocaust

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This was was one of the most successful Russian artillery pieces of the Second World War. This object helps tell the story of the war between Germany and the Soviet Union and emphasises the industrial miracle that enabled the Soviet Union to drive out the invaders. Defeats in 1941 had deprived the Soviet Union of 40% of its coal and steel and 32% of its industrial workforce. The V-1 bomb that will occupy a space between the new Holocaust gallery and second world war exhibition. Photograph: Andrew Tunnard/IWM

Imperial War Museum galleries show where innocence ended New Imperial War Museum galleries show where innocence ended

On 14 December 1938 Leonhard and Clara Wohl, Jewish couple originally from Northern Germany, sent their two younger daughters, Eva and Ulli, to Britain on a Kindertransport. On entering the new Holocaust Galleries at the Imperial War Museum London (IWM), visitors will see a 1942 quote from Nachum Grzywacz. As a second-generation inheritor of my family’s Holocaust legacy, I firmly believe that racism grows where racism is enabled. The enablers can be active, or by virtue of apathy and indifference, passively looking away. Human beings might never rid themselves entirely of prejudice, being of itself a distortion of our own nature, but Bulgin touches on something fundamental: never to take for granted that our common humanity can only be preserved by us all challenging the very tolerance of hatred, as well as facing down the hatred itself. Visitors to the galleries don’t meet Anita again until much later, when her experiences of Auschwitz-Birkenau are told in the section about slave labour in concentration camps. Anita’s story is told through her red jumper. Students that chose Anita’s story in the first room of the galleries are directed to find her jumper. They learn that Anita was sent to Auschwitz-Birkenau at the age of 18, where she was recruited into the women’s orchestra at the camp as the cellist. She was forced to play upbeat marches as prisoners walked in procession to and from work and for the SS. Anita’s role in the orchestra meant that she was given extra bread. She exchanged some of this bread for the jumper now on display and wore it both day and night to protect herself against the harsh winter – hidden underneath her camp uniform. She continued to wear it in Bergen-Belsen from where she was liberated in April 1945. Kate Phillips, Director of Unscripted, says: “Holocaust Memorial Day is an important moment to stop and reflect on a period in our history which showed both the worst, and the best, of the human spirit. By showing these documentaries, we hope to shine a light on history’s darkest days and ensure that the stories of those whose lives were lost in the Holocaust are never forgotten.”

New Imperial War Museum galleries show where innocence ended and Shoah horror began

In one of innumerable chilling insights into the Nazi mindset, on show is the callous Juden Raus (Jews Out), promoted as a “thoroughly enjoyable party game”, whose goal was to round up Jews for deportation to Palestine.

How the Holocaust Began | Imperial War Museums

The emphasis will be on the contemporary, with testimonies only from the time, to illustrate how events were perceived as they unfolded. The word Holocaust is not used, as it was applied post-genocide. On 20 October 2021, IWM London’s new Second World War and The Holocaust Galleries opened to the public. Holocaust survivor Anita Lasker-Wallfisch had heard our plans for the galleries and allowed us to copy dozens of her photographs showing her family life before the war. She had also told us how she wished her jumper to be displayed: ‘with the sleeves showing; the sleeves must be shown.’It is the story of the first defining act of the greatest crime in history, a holocaust of bullets that preceded the holocaust of gas. Millions of victims - men, women and children – were shot and buried in thousands of trenches and ditches in fields and forests across eastern Europe; often unrecorded and uncounted. Announcements placed in the personal columns of The Times under “married couples and manservants” included: “Couple, middle-aged, husband former higher clerk of a banking house, wife very good cook… refugees from Austria [still abroad], with excellent character, seek post.” Mr Bulgin added that in documenting the “visceral, bloody and barbaric” nature of the Shoah, the IWM had wanted to show the wider context. “People have a sense of the Holocaust being around camps. It also happened to people in environments familiar to them.” IWM’s paintings conservator Nicoletta Tomassi conserving the painting BATTLE OF BRITAIN by Paul Nash, which is on display in the Second World War Galleries. Kristallnacht is instead referred to as “the November pogrom”, Mr Bulgin stressing the importance of conveying that it was about more than shattered windows and the destruction of synagogues.