Mixing It: The Changing Faces of Wartime Britain

Permanent

IWM North

The WaterWay

Free event with general admission

Image used with kind permission of the Trustees of the RAF Museum

Mixing It: The Changing Faces of Wartime Britain reveals the forgotten histories of service personnel and civilians who came to Britain during the Second World War – a time when the national and ethnic diversity of the population was unprecedented.

The powerful stories in this small display are based on specially recorded oral histories, presented alongside archive material and new research by the University of Huddersfield in partnership with IWM.

Whilst our galleries are temporarily closed - you can still explore the many stories of wartime Britain in our collections online.

Luke Radcliff’s documentary Burma’s Forgotten Army uses archive material and interviews with Burmese soldiers to shed light on the little known but significant contribution of Burmese hill tribes of the Second World War. Here he discusses the challenges of making his film and the incredibly diverse stories he discovered during the process.

Pilot Officers Jan "Donald Duck" Zumbach (left) and Mirosław "Ox" Ferić playing with the Squadron's mascot

IWM CH 1537

Second World War

The Polish Pilots Who Flew In The Battle Of Britain

On 1 September 1939 the German Army, supported by the Air Force (Luftwaffe) and Navy (Kriegsmarine) invaded Poland from three sides. Polish defences, already strained under a powerful and innovative German assault, collapsed shortly after the Soviets launched their own invasion from the east on 17 September.

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.