This month sees the Imperial War Museum open the world’s first dedicated Holocaust and WWII galleries under the same roof

After two years in the making, the Imperial War Museum London is finally set to open its brand new Second World War and The Holocaust Galleries on Wednesday 20 October. At three times the size of their award-winning First World War Galleries, the two adjoining galleries span two floors and will make IWM the first museum in the world to house galleries dedicated to World War II and the Holocaust under one roof.

Personal stories will be at the heart of the £30.7 million project, which brings together unseen objects, untold stories and unheard voices. Follow the development of the most devastating conflict in human history chronologically through six separate spaces. Look at the global situation at the end of World War I and pinpoint how violence towards Jewish people and ‘other’ communities grew through the 1930s, and how Nazi policy crossed the threshold into wide-scale, state-sponsored murder.

Highlights include:

• A 783kg V-1 flying bomb known as the 'Doodlebug'. Thousands of concentration camp prisoners died making these weapons in Nazi Germany and the bombs killed over 6,000 people when more than 10,000 were launched at British cities.

• A wedding dress belonging to Gena Turgel, who was liberated from Belsen Concentration Camp on 15 April 1945. Two days later she met Sergeant Norman Turgel and the pair married on 7 October 1945 in Lubeck.

• The final Red Cross telegrams between Eva Wohl and her father Leonard who, along with Eva’s mother Clara, was murdered at Auschwitz in 1943. The German Jewish couple had previously sent their two young daughters, Eva and Ulli, to Britain on a Kindertransport in 1938.

To coincide with the opening of the adjoining galleries, IWM is publishing two books. Total War: A People’s History of the Second World War by IWM curators Kate Clements, Paul Cornish and Vikki Hawkins offers an illustrated history of the historic period, told with the help of personal stories from across the globe. The second book, The Holocaust by IWM historian James Bulgin, examines how the course of World War II, as well as ideology and individual decisions, were critical factors in the execution of the Holocaust, featuring a wealth of archival material, including emotive objects and personal testimonies.

By Danielle Goldstein

Second World War and The Holocaust Galleries open at Imperial War Museum London on Wednesday 20 October. Both publications will be available from Tuesday 12 October. iwm.org.uk/transformingiwmlondon