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Imperial War Museum London > Holocaust Exhibition

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Holocaust Exhibition
The Holocaust Exhibition


'The silence and intensity of emotion only deepens as
you go further into the exhibition'

Holocaust Exhibition

Admission to The Holocaust Exhibition is free.

Under the cover of the Second World War, for the first time in history, industrial methods were used for the mass extermination of a whole people.

Holocaust Exhibition, IWM London
The Holocaust Exhibition uses historical material to tell the story of the Nazis' persecution of the Jews and other groups before and during the Second World War.

Taking as its starting point the turbulent political scene in Europe immediately after the First World War, the exhibition traces the rise of the Nazi party, how antisemitism as a Europe-wide phenomenon made a fertile seedbed for Hitler's anti-Jewish beliefs, the perversion of science to support Nazi race theory, the isolation of German Jews, the refugee crisis and the advent of so-called 'Euthanasia' policies in 1939.

Photographs, documents, newspapers, artefacts, posters and film offer stark evidence of persecution and slaughter, collaboration and resistance.

Holocaust Exhibition, IWM London
A funeral cart from the Warsaw Ghetto sits adjacent to diaries and photograph albums of those who died through hunger and disease; part of a deportation railcar - given by Belgian Railways - is on display; visitors can walk up to a wagon once heaved by slave labourers in a concentration camp.

Contrasting with the story of industrialised murder is that of the men, women and children who endured Nazi policies and in most cases died as a result of them.

Toys, diaries, photograph albums, story books, hand-made mementos - these remnants show individual efforts at survival, while the testimony of eighteen survivors of the Holocaust brings a fresh and haunting perspective to the narrative; how families responded to the direst circumstances; the resilience and luck which allowed some to survive.

To discuss any exhibition-related enquiries please contact:

Hazel Brown, Research Assistant
020 7416 5286