Holocaust

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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. While the Holocaust has attracted a great amount of historical and scholarly attention, with about 4,000 new books a year, the temptation had been to “push it to the margins”, to think of it in isolation and separate from what was going on elsewhere, he said.

BBC iPlayer - How the Holocaust Began

For beyond that prescient quote, the initial space in the impressively detailed and diverse galleries is devoted to photographs and film clips of Jewish life in Europe and beyond, before the Shoah — family portraits, businesses, celebrations and holidays. Images of innocence, gaiety, hope and ambition, which contrast starkly with the grim spectre of what was to come. James Bulgin tells an important story that highlights how, to many people, the above placenames might sound unfamiliar, as Auschwitz fills Holocaust consciousness for the sheer scale of its horror ( Hitler didn’t build the path to the Holocaust alone – ordinary people were active participants, 27 January). But in truth, all sense of scale is lost when imagining the implications of the Nazis’ genocidal politics, while the human psyche is overwhelmed by the implication of such murderous intent to humanity itself. More importantly, he correctly emphasises that evil can, under particular circumstances, look very much like any one of us. This is, as Hannah Arendt describes, the sheer “banality of evil”. That’s not how it really was. Holocaust museums for years have been asking visitors: ‘Beware the Holocaust because you could have been a victim.’ I suppose we are thinking: ‘Beware the Holocaust because you could have been a perpetrator.’” 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.Another exhibit is a red woollen jumper which helped protect Anita Lasker-Wallfisch, a cellist in the women’s orchestra at Auschwitz, against the harsh winter elements, having been acquired in exchange for some extra bread she had received. In How the Holocaust Began on BBC Two and iPlayer, historian James Bulgin uncovers the lost origins of the Holocaust following the Nazi invasion of the Soviet Union, exploring the mass shootings, collaboration and experimentation that led to the Final Solution.

Holocaust survivor to go on display at Wedding gown worn by Holocaust survivor to go on display at

Clare Lawlor, from IWM’s Public Engagement and Learning team, shares the story of a red jumper that makes up part of the new Holocaust Galleries at IWM London. She explains what this simple artefact can tell us about a young woman’s experiences during the Holocaust. James meets image analysts and forensic experts as well as relatives and eye witnesses to piece together what happened to the lost victims of the Holocaust, identifying forgotten graves and revealing the mass shootings, collaboration and experimentation that led to the Final Solution. 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. The V-1 bomb that will occupy a space between the new Holocaust gallery and second world war exhibition. Photograph: Andrew Tunnard/IWM

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The Holocaust has become defined by centralised “tropes” – Auschwitz, trains, people being selected left and right on ramps, anonymous piles of shoes. Yet the majority of those murdered weren’t selected like that, except at Auschwitz. It happened because of European rail networks, collaboration between different people and organisations and businesses across Europe working together, Bulgin added. 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.” 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. But the vast majority of the people responsible for these things were infinitely more ordinary and more normal than that.”