believed to be buried today under the Chinese embassy in Warsaw, and has never been recovered.
Of all the thousands of images in this extraordinary permanent exhibition, a curator says that one picture is seared in her mind. “It’s a young woman holding a baby. It’s the last moments of their lives. She’s waiting to be shot. I can’t forget that picture”. She doesn’t say so because she doesn’t need to: it could have been any one of us.
The IWM permanent Holocaust and Second World War galleries open to the public on October 20, admission free. The museum is publishing a new book of untold personal stories, The Holocaust, by IWM historian James Bulgin, on the same date. Personal stories also feature in an illustrated history of the Second World War, Total War, A People’s History, by Kate Clements, Paul Cornish and Vikki Hawkins, published in partnership with the IWM.