Details

Object type

pencil sketch

Title

Germans made to drag away the dead bodies; Sketch for 'Dead body of Belsen camp' (verso)

Artist/Maker

Marianne Grant maker

Culture/School

Czech

Place Associated

Germany, Bergen-Belsen Concentration Camp (place depicted)

Date

1945

Materials

pencil on paper

Dimensions

overall: 131 mm x 210 mm

Description

Marianne arrived at Bergen-Belsen Concentration Camp in northern Germany with her mother on 5 April 1945, having been moved from Neuengamme Concentration Camp by train and on foot as part of the notorious death marches. The camp had been hit by a typhus epidemic and there was severe overcrowding, insufficient food and sanitation, resulting in the deaths of over 36,000 prisoners in the spring of 1945. Marianne was shocked to find piles of bodies, the dead and dying lying together, the dead unburied and the sick untreated.

The British 11th Armoured Division led by Field Marshal Montgomery entered the camp on 15 April 1945 after the retreating Germans surrendered peacefully. Marianne recorded their arrival in quick pencil sketches made on the spot on scraps of torn paper, whatever she had to hand. Although she had managed to bring some art materials with her from Neuengamme, her supplies must have been low by this time.

In this drawing she shows German soldiers straining as they pull corpses behind them; in the foreground are the sick and the dying. Immediately after their arrival, the liberating army faced the task of burying over 13,000 dead in various stages of decomposition. Initially, surrendered German soldiers were forced to clear the camp, but soon bulldozers had to be employed. Marianne’s friend Dita Kraus (née Polachová; b. 1929), who she shared a room with in the Displaced Persons (DP) Camp set up by the British, recalled: ‘The dead bodies were scattered everywhere. Everywhere you looked there were corpses. When the British arrived, they could not bury them individually. They had to use bulldozers to clear away the bodies and put them together into huge graves’.

On the back of this drawing, Marianne sketched a single dead body, showing that despite the vast numbers and dehumanised piles of corpses, she was still thinking in terms of individuals, of people whose lives had ended. It is also significant that she used both sides of the paper, paper being limited and precious. Later she had access to better quality paper from the British army, who she worked for as a translator, signwriter and distributor of cigarette rations to the soldiers, and indeed was commissioned by some officers to make drawings.

Credit Line/Donor

The Marianne Grant Holocaust artworks collection was purchased in 2004 with grant aid assistance from The Heritage Lottery Fund, The National Art Collections Fund and the National Fund for Acquisitions.

Collection

Marianne Grant Holocaust Artworks Collection

ID Number

PP.2005.38.38

Location

Kelvingrove Conflict and Consequence