Shared Experience: Human Laundry, Belsen: April 1945
Art and War
Doris Zinkeisen
Human Laundry, Belsen: April 1945
oil
78.7 x 99cm
IWM ART LD 5468
The “human laundry” consisted of about twenty beds in a stable where German nurses and captured soldiers cut the hair of the inmates, bathed them, and applied anti-louse powder before their transfer to an improvised hospital run by the Red Cross. “Laundry” aptly described the pitifully flimsy condition of the victims. The tension in the composition lies in the enforced dealings between the emaciated and feeble former inmates and the overtly healthy medical staff treating them.
Paintings
- British Prisoners of War, Italy
Paul Bullard - Blind man in Belsen
Alan Moore - Roberts Hospital, Changi
Murray Griffin - Bodies in a Grave, Belsen
Alex Colville - Human Laundry, Belsen: April 1945
Doris Zinkeisen - Refugees in Udine, 1945
Edward Bawden - British Women and Children Interned in a Japanese Prison Camp, Syme Road, Singapore
Leslie Cole - Yes Sir
Ludwig Hirschfeld Mack