• Portrait of Hana Maria Pravda
    © IWM
    Holocaust

    Writing The Unimaginable

    The people who used the power of the written word to record what they saw happening during the Holocaust. 

  • Freddie Knoller
    © IWM
    Holocaust

    Concentration Camp Survivors Share Their Stories

    The Holocaust was the systematic murder of Europe’s Jews by the Nazis and their collaborators during the Second World War. The Nazis also enslaved and killed other groups who they perceived as racially, biologically or ideologically inferior or dangerous. Hear seven survivors talk about and reflect on their experiences.

  • A passer-by giving money to two destitute children on the street in the ghetto.
    © IWM (HU 60653)
    Holocaust

    Daily Life in the Warsaw Ghetto

    On 2 October 1940, Ludwig Fischer, Governor of the Warsaw District in the occupied General Government of Poland, signed the order to officially create a Jewish district (ghetto) in Warsaw. It was to become the largest ghetto in Nazi-occupied Europe.

  • Nuremberg thumbnail
    © IWM
    Holocaust

    Nuremberg Trials: Films that brought the Nazis to justice

    The Nuremberg Trials were held at the end of the war to try the leading figures of the Nazi regime. This was the first time that international leaders had attempted to put another nation on trial for war crimes, and numerous innovations were introduced in the trials, including the extensive use of film. 

  • The Holocaust Exhibition © IWM
    The Holocaust Exhibition © IWM
    Holocaust

    Collecting for the Holocaust Exhibition

    When The Holocaust Exhibition opened in June 2000 one reviewer wrote: ‘tireless searching for artefacts, relics and film has given us something which takes at least two hours to examine properly and will, I suspect, stay in the memory forever’.

  • A soldier stands in front of a sign erected by British Forces at the entrance to Bergen-Belsen concentration camp, Germany, 29 May 1945.
    © IWM BU 6955
    Holocaust

    Belsen on Trial, 1945

    The Belsen Trial gave the world its first real glimpse of the fathomless horror of the Holocaust. 

  • Drawing by kindertransport refugee
    © IWM (EPH 3902)
    Holocaust

    6 Stories Of The Kindertransport

    In 1938 and 1939, nearly 10,000 children fleeing the persecution of Jews in Greater Germany (Germany, Austria, Czechoslovakia, and the Protectorate of Bohemia and Moravia), were brought to Britain on the Kindertransport ('children’s transports').

  • Majdanek served as a slave labour camp that provided materials and manpower for German construction projects in occupied Poland and the Soviet Union. This jacket is part of the uniform worn by prisoners at Majdanek.
    © IWM (UNI 11110)
    Holocaust

    What Was The Holocaust?

    The Holocaust was the systematic murder of Europe's Jews by the Nazis and their collaborators during the Second World War. This programme of targeted mass murder was a central part of the Nazis’ broader plans to create a new world order based on their ideology.

  • On the right two benches of the accused leaders stretch away from the foreground to the centre of the painting. Behind the defendants stands a line of white-helmeted military police who guard the benches and separate them from the court beyond. On the left, in front of the defendants, sit two rows of lawyers, largely in black robes. The lawyers and the defendants study sheaves of paper.
    © IWM Art.IWM ART (LD 5798)
    Second World War

    A Short History Of The War Crimes Trials After The Second World War

    After the end of the Second World War, the Allies brought the leading civilian and military representatives of wartime Germany and Japan to trial on charges of war crimes, crimes against peace and crimes against humanity. 

  • Still from © IWM (ARY 172) - young Holocaust survivors on their way to Britain
    Holocaust

    Rare Footage Of Young Holocaust Survivors On Their Way To Britain

    In August 1945, a group of teenagers and younger children who had survived the concentration camps were flown to the UK by the RAF. The group of refugees arrived from Prague airport on Stirling bombers, touching down at the aerodrome at Crosby on Eden in Cumberland, where they began their long recuperation. 

  • Holocaust video thumbnail
    Holocaust

    How did the Holocaust happen?

    From the mid-1930s until the end of the Second World War, the Nazi regime carried out a campaign of sustained antisemitic persecution that developed into a coordinated programme of mass murder. This genocide is now known as the Holocaust. This video is part one of an introduction to this complex history.

  • Still from Adam Wells's film Shemira
    © Courtesy Adam Wells
    Holocaust

    In Focus: Shemira

    In Shemira by filmmaker Adam Wells. Audiences are allowed an intimate look at the life of Myer as he spends the night saying goodbye to his beloved wife, Leah. Myer recalls moments they shared from the unexpected, to the seemingly insignificant, to the devastating events of the Holocaust.

  • Sam Pivnik after liberation from Auschwitz-Birkenau in 1945. © IWM HU 110854
    Holocaust

    Surviving the holocaust: Sam and Ezra's stories

    The Holocaust claimed the lives of up to 6 million European Jews. Three very personal objects included in the new Holocaust display case at IWM North help to explain the significance of this catastrophic event in the history of Europe’s Jews. They tell the remarkable stories of two survivors who made their homes in Britain after the war.

  • Prayer book from Lodz Ghetto
    © IWM LBY 96 / 2676
    Holocaust

    Conservation in action: The story of a prayer book

    Find out more about one of the objects on display in the new The Holocaust Galleries at IWM London and the vital conservation work has undergone. 

  • Photograph of Holocaust survivor Lili Pohlmann
    Holocaust

    'It’s most important to teach about this'

    Survivor Lili Pohlmann on the importance of people learning about the Holocaust and the role IWM's new galleries can play in ensuring the personal stories of those who were affected are told.