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The Holocaust Exhibition

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Leslie Cole

'The Camp is large 12 sq miles and divided into compounds like chicken runs with huts bare of any furniture or conveniences. The huts normally accommodate 50 but as many as 400 were put in.'

Leslie Cole

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Leslie Cole, Belsen Camp: The compound for women. A view of the women's camp at Belsen showing piles of dead bodies with emaciated survivors wandering through the camp. The background shows numerous tents and huts scattered across the muddy wasteland of the camp. A woman is depicted mid-collapse in the centre of the image; the artist later noted that this woman collapsed while she was drawing.

Belsen Camp: The compound for women, 1945
oil, Imperial War Museum

Leslie Cole, Sick Woman and the Hooded Men of Belsen. A group of men wearing dark, hooded overalls stand amongst partially clothed and naked skeletal female inmates in Bergen-Belsen. At their feet are three women wrapped in blankets, lying on stretchers. Gathered in the centre of the painting are doctors and orderlies wearing anti-louse hooded outfits which cover them entirely except for their faces.

Sick Woman and the Hooded Men of Belsen, 1945
oil, Imperial War Museum

Leslie Cole, One of the Death Pits, Belsen. A view from one end of an enormous mass grave containing the emaciated remains of Belsen inmates. SS guards, guarded by British soldiers, can be seen throwing more bodies into the pit. The huts, tents, trucks and barbed wire fences of the Belsen compound are visible in the background, and smoke billows from larger buildings.

One of the Death Pits, Belsen. SS guards
collecting bodies, 1945
oil, Imperial War Museum

Leslie Cole was born in Swindon on 11 August 1910. He trained as an artist at the Royal College of Art in London and became a teacher at Hull College of Art in 1937.

Cole wrote to the War Artists Advisory Committee (WAAC) in 1940 asking for work as a war artist, but he was turned down. At this time, Cole also joined the RAF only to be discharged on health grounds soon after. Determined to be a witness to the unfolding events, he approached the WAAC again, sending pieces of completed work reflecting the war situation in Hull and his home town of Swindon.

Eventually, Cole became a salaried war artist with an honorary commission as a captain in the Royal Marines. He travelled widely, recording the aftermath of the war in Malta, Greece, Germany and the Far East. Cole's work consistently addressed the suffering of human beings, and in three oil paintings he bears witness to conditions in Belsen at liberation.

Cole did not return to Britain until the spring of 1946, having witnessed the horrors of Belsen concentration camp as well as Japanese prisoner of war camps in Singapore.

Leslie Cole died in 1977.

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Leslie Cole, Belsen Camp: The compound for women. A view of the women's camp at Belsen showing piles of dead bodies with emaciated survivors wandering through the camp. The background shows numerous tents and huts scattered across the muddy wasteland of the camp. A woman is depicted mid-collapse in the centre of the image; the artist later noted that this woman collapsed while she was drawing.

Leslie Cole

Belsen Camp: The compound for women
1945
oil, Imperial War Museum

'The Camp is large 12 sq miles and divided into compounds like chicken runs with huts bare of any furniture or conveniences. The huts normally accommodate 50 but as many as 400 were put in. The Woman's Compounds were the most tragic and horrible and the worst cases of disease were located here, both in number and intensity.
During my visit the victims were still dying in the open & the woman in the centre of the picture collapsed while I was drawing. There are many bodies lying about clothed & unclothed and these were left as the British MOs [Medical Officers] had not enough personnel to check if death had set in. If the body disappeared at night it was alive.'

Leslie Cole

Copyright IWM reproduction right

Leslie Cole, Sick Woman and the Hooded Men of Belsen. A group of men wearing dark, hooded overalls stand amongst partially clothed and naked skeletal female inmates in Bergen-Belsen. At their feet are three women wrapped in blankets, lying on stretchers. Gathered in the centre of the painting are doctors and orderlies wearing anti-louse hooded outfits which cover them entirely except for their faces.

Leslie Cole

Sick Woman and the Hooded Men of Belsen
1945
oil, Imperial War Museum

'Belsen No 1. Concentration Camp Germany. Showing Doctors & Orderlies in Anti Louse Clothing (bound ankles & gauntlets) waiting for next ambulance. Only non walking cases could be dealt with early. Typical of these scenes of relief were the sick women who congregated round the stretchers endeavouring by stripping to be regarded as eligible for the comparative paradise of hospital.
If the doctors did not stand guard, some of the women would have remove [sic] the stretcher cases & taken their place.'

Leslie Cole

Copyright IWM reproduction right

Leslie Cole, One of the Death Pits, Belsen. SS guards collecting bodies. A view from one end of an enormous mass grave containing the emaciated remains of Belsen inmates. SS guards, guarded by British soldiers, can be seen throwing more bodies into the pit. The huts, tents, trucks and barbed wire fences of the Belsen compound are visible in the background, and smoke billows from larger buildings.

Leslie Cole

One of the Death Pits, Belsen. SS guards collecting bodies
1945
oil, Imperial War Museum

'This represents one of the 5 pits already filled under the supervision of the British. There were other older pits made & filled by the Germans. The bodies being flung in are victims of starvation & typhus hence the skeleton like condition before death. The S.S. guards were not over careful with the bodies and were made to go into the pit and create some semblance of order, if the pit was not being neatly filled.
The bodies were mainly unclothed because the uniform was immediately used by the internees as fuel. The pits were filled in by bulldozers.'

Leslie Cole

Copyright IWM reproduction right