People who are aware of the language used by the Nazis to dehumanise vulnerable minorities are rightly sensitive about seeing similar terms and divisions being encouraged and normalised in current contexts. 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.

World War and The Holocaust Galleries Visit our new Second World War and The Holocaust Galleries

The Second World War Galleries are formed of six individual spaces which tell the story of the conflict chronologically, exploring its global scale and impact upon people and communities. Taking a robust view of perpetrators, it will say: “The men – and women – who did this, they weren’t unaware of what they were doing,” said the lead historian on the project, James Bulgin. Charlie English’s book The Gallery of Miracles and Madness, which follows the stories of artists in asylums studied by Hans Prinzhorn, suggests that the fusion of Hitler’s attitudes to disability and art (particularly artists’ explorations of insanity in the 1920s and 30s, which were prompted by Prinzhorn’s study) was an essential feature of his grotesque vision for Germany that led to the programmes of murder and genocide. Objects loaned from institutions across the world will include a V-1 flying bomb – or doodlebug – that will occupy a space between the Holocaust gallery and the second world war gallery. Other artefacts include the birth certificate of Eva Clarke, who miraculously survived after being born in Mauthausen camp in Austria days before liberation.To support students visiting IWM’s new galleries to learn about the Holocaust, IWM has developed a new Holocaust learning programme. There is deliberately no indication of what became of the author (head of content James Bulgin tells the JC that Grzywacz died during the Warsaw Ghetto uprising). The challenge had been to “get beyond some of the clichés and think about how catastrophic the loss remains — and how senseless it was”. Say the word ‘Holocaust’ and for most of us, the image that comes to mind is of death camps like Auschwitz; the enduring symbols of a highly organised machine of industrialised genocide. But few of us realise that the death camps were just the final act of the Holocaust. This film tells the story of what went before. But the vast majority of the people responsible for these things were infinitely more ordinary and more normal than that.”

My family’s Holocaust legacy taught me that racism grows

To support visitors wanting to delve deeper into the content and themes of IWM’s new galleries, and to further develop their understanding of the Second World War and the Holocaust, IWM is releasing two new publications in October 2021.The new galleries explore three core themes of persecution, looking at the global situation at the end of the First World War; escalation, identifying how violence towards Jewish people and communities developed through the 1930s; and annihilation, examining how Nazi policy crosses the threshold into wide-scale state-sponsored murder in the heart of twentieth century Europe. 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.”

How the Holocaust Began, review: a chilling reminder that the

Among several objects on display in the Second World War and The Holocaust Galleries are Eva Wohl's last exchange of Red Cross telegrams with her father. Leonard and Clara sadly did not move across to Britain to be with their daughters and were sent to their deaths at Auschwitz in 1943. In many other respects they were relatively normal; they had kids, social lives, did the things we all do. And they also killed people. It wasn’t a machine that killed people, which is what Holocaust galleries and representation have tended to suggest.” In an early display, Hitler and other Nazi leaders loom large in pre-1933 images: “We wanted to show them before the men they became,” Mr Bulgin explained. IWM’s Second World War and Holocaust Partnership Programme (SWWHPP) was established to collaborate with cultural partners across the UK and engage new audiences in projects which explore local Second World War and Holocaust collections and themes within the national context.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. One was North London-based John Hajdu, 84, whose contributions included the translation of a postcard dropped by a Hungarian from a train presumed bound for Auschwitz in June 1944. 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. I want the coming generation to remember our times,” it reads. “I don’t know my fate. I don’t know if I will be able to tell you what happened later.”