Archivist discusses unspoken holocaust history

Artist Arnold Daghani was victim and witness to a part of the Holocaust which has attracted little public attention.

Between 1941 and late 1943, over 100,000 people would act as forced labourers on a strategic highway across the Soviet Union.

That highway would support the Nazi drive on Stalingrad and, within the Nazi elite, it was known at the Street of the SS.

Russian prisoners of war together with Jews from the Ukraine and Romania would labour as slaves on the road which, for many, would become their grave.

Daghani documented the brutality and suffering in the work camps and along the road in his art and diary, which are archived at The Keep.

After the war, he continued the fight to bring to justice those responsible for the horrors he had experienced and witnessed, before managing to escape with his wife.

It is a remarkable story that offers us an insight into a lost landscape of terror.

Mass Murder, Nazi Visions of Empire and the Art and Writing of Arnold Daghani: Documenting a Neglected Aspect of the Holocaust, with historian and writer Dr Harry Bennett at The Keep Archives, Woollards Way, Brighton BN1 9BP.

The talk takes place Wednesday 21 February, 5.30-6.30pm.