This blog was written for us by Ibrahim, a 15-year-old second generation Sudanese boy. He is interested in history, creative writing, and computer science.
During the summer, I visited the Imperial War Museum in London—an institution dedicated to documenting the global impact of conflict, from World War I through to the modern day. The museum features a vast collection of information and artefacts from key historical events, including World Wars I and II, the Korean War, the Cold War, and more recent tragedies like the September 11th attacks. Among all the exhibits, one stood out as the most harrowing and emotionally powerful: the Holocaust Gallery.
This gallery explores in depth one of the darkest chapters in human history, the Holocaust, the systematic attempt by the Nazi regime to exterminate the Jewish population of Europe. It’s widely regarded as the worst genocide in modern history, and the gallery doesn’t shy away from showing just how monstrous and inhumane it was. Over six million Jews were murdered, alongside millions of other victims, including Roma people, disabled individuals, and political dissidents. The methods of murder ranged from mass shootings to gas chambers, starvation, forced labour, and even medical experimentation. Yes—actual experimentation on human beings.
Before entering, visitors are warned that the exhibit is not recommended for children under the age of 14—and for good reason. The experience is not just educational; it’s emotionally overwhelming. The gallery begins by showing the lives of Jewish families in pre-war Germany, highlighting how they were already facing discrimination long before the Holocaust began. It then traces how Nazi propaganda, systemic laws, and public fear turned everyday citizens into bystanders—or participants—in a genocide.
What makes this gallery so impactful isn’t just the facts and figures—it’s the personal artefacts and immersive presentation. There are suitcases and shoes recovered from concentration camps, faded photographs of families who were never reunited, and actual train tracks symbolizing the deportation routes to death camps. One of the most haunting aspects is the visual and audio media: archival footage and survivor testimonies that make the horror inescapably real. At one point, I remember hearing the sound of a train rumbling in the background—a chilling reminder of the countless victims who were transported like cattle to their deaths.
The emotional weight became too much. My mother and I ended up leaving through the entrance, unable to go any further. And that’s precisely what makes this exhibit so important—it doesn’t let you look away. It forces you to confront what humanity is capable of when hatred and indifference are left unchecked. The discomfort it creates is deliberate and necessary.
Though we look back on these events in disgust and horror, we, as a society, sometimes neglect the several genocides happening as we speak. Not just genocide though, discrimination as a whole is a plague – a virus that we could vaccinate against, but some of us choose to and others don’t. Those others allow it to spread. We must do the necessary means to put an end to all of this, the killing, the violence, the hatred.
