FAQs

Bergen-Belsen (hereafter referred to as Belsen) was a camp established in 1943 to hold Jews from overseas for a possible prisoner exchange. But from late 1944, thousands of Jewish survivors of death marches from the 'East' were crammed into the camp.

The camp authorities allowed the situation to deteriorate badly in the last months of the war, and when British soldiers entered Belsen on 15 April 1945, they walked into a nightmare. Ten thousand unburied corpses lay strewn about, while in the barracks some 60,000 starving and mortally ill people were packed together without food or water.

Official war artists Leslie Cole, Doris Zinkeisen, Eric Taylor and Mary Kessell all responded to the overwhelmingly distressing scenes they witnessed during their visits to the Belsen concentration camp.

The Unspeakable exhibition and website serve as an opportunity to see together the very different artistic perspectives encompassed in the Imperial War Museum's collection of art relating to the Nazi persecution of the Jews of Europe.

The information in the FAQ pages contextualises some of the experiences portrayed within the artworks, but is not by any means a complete historical account of the events which occurred in Nazi-occupied Europe.

For more information, please visit the website for Imperial War Museum London's The Holocaust Exhibition, where you can find information about the exhibition, survivors' testimonies and a list of links for further enquiry.