Doris and Anna Zinkeisen

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As girls in Scotland, Doris and her younger sister Anna had frustrated their governesses by drawing everywhere all the time even on their wallpaper.  Both sisters became well-known artists in London and volunteer nurses during the war.  Doris and Anna used their skills as artists to record what they saw and experienced for future generations.

Doris worked as the official artist for the St. John’s Ambulance Brigade and she never forgot what she saw.  She arrived in the concentration camp Belsen just after it was liberated by British forces in 1945.  Doris wrote; ‘The horror of the place had to be seen to be believed.’ 

‘The stable was used to wash any living creatures down before sending them into hospital to be treated.  Each stall had a table on which to lay the patient - the German prisoners did the washing.’

Her son describes the letters Doris wrote to her husband while she was at Belsen; ‘They are truly heartrending and reflect the agony she endured while doing her work as a war artist.  She always told us that the sight was awful, but the smell she could never forget.  She had nightmares for the rest of her life until she died in 1990.’

Official war photographers and film-makers filled in ‘dope sheets’ like this one when they sent in their film.  Usually they did not record much detail on these sheets, but this photographer felt he needed to describe what he saw at Belsen.

The British people who liberated Belsen were shocked and angry at what they found. The camp had been without food and water for seven days. 50,000 people were still alive but many were sick with dysentery, typhus and tuberculosis. 20,000 bodies lay unburied. The camp could be smelled from three miles away.

These 97 medical students from London volunteered to help care for the 20 000 seriously ill inmates at Belsen.   They had to develop special foods that were easy to digest and feed people who were too weak to feed themselves.

In the month after liberation, 28,900 former inmates were moved to hospitals and transit camps where they received medical care, clothing and help in finding their families.
13,000 were beyond help and died after Belsen was liberated.

‘The day will come when joybells will ring again throughout Europe, and when victorious nations, masters not only of their foes but of themselves, will plan and build in justice, in tradition, and in freedom a house of many mansions where there will be room for all.’
Winston Churchill

During the war, Anna spent her mornings nursing at the St. Mary’s Hospital in Paddington.  In the afternoons, she painted in an old operating room.  She made medical drawings of injuries and disease still studied by doctors today.

Look for Anna’s self-portrait on the National Portrait Gallery website.