Drawings Brian Stonehouse made after Dachau liberation to be shown in New York

Four charcoal drawings that Brian Stonehouse made the day after Dachau was liberated will be exhibited and offered for sale this month by the London gallery Abbott and Holder at the Master Drawings New York fair on the Upper East Side.

Stonehouse, a British soldier who posed as an artist and worked as an undercover wireless operator in occupied France, was captured by the Gestapo and sent to a series of concentration camps before arriving at Dachau. The day after U.S. forces liberated the camp on April 29, 1945, he sketched the mortuary, the crematory and gas chambers; “I visited and made sketches of piles of corpses at the Krematorium,” he wrote in his diary that night.

Curators say drawings by survivors are rare. Kyra Schuster of the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum noted that while many G.I.s and war correspondents photographed Dachau, survivor-made drawings offer a different perspective; “You can’t not be moved by these images,” she said. Abbott and Holder acquired one of the five drawings earlier and last year were contacted by a man who said he owned the remaining four, which are being offered at the fair for $100,000.

Tom Edwards, the gallery’s owner, said drawing had been important to Stonehouse’s survival and that he hopes the works will enter a public collection. Stonehouse later worked as a fashion illustrator and died in London on Dec. 2, 1998.

Key Topics

Culture, Brian Stonehouse, Dachau, Holocaust Memorial Museum, Gestapo