Today we went to the Imperial War Museum. Somewhat surprisingly it concentrates on WW1,
WW2 and has an extensive gallery devoted to the Holocaust. They also have the
largest collection of Victoria Crosses in the world – 160. I had read somewhere that Australia did but that
obviously is incorrect. The museum was refurbished last year.
In the WW1 gallery they had a uniform of an Australian
soldier from the 1st Battalion and a flag from the 12th
Battalion. I did learn a few new things
like that poison gas could interfere with the operation of weapons and could
shrink leather gloves. They make excellent use of technology and the Holocaust
gallery was extremely well done given that we have seen several exhibitions as
well as Auschwitz itself. It reminded me
that Schindler had rescued Jews during WW2 at his factories in Krakow and our
tour guide from the bus pointed out where the factories had been. There have been lots of school groups at this museum as well as the other big ones we have visited and their behaviour has been extremely good. I had thought with a name like the IWM that it would have covered
colonial wars as well but it was created because of WW1.
With some museum
time up our sleeve we ventured to the National History Museum, thank goodness
we did not manage to get in last Saturday, it would have been chaos with kids
everywhere. Most is aimed at kids and
quite well done. The dinosaur collections
were good and the Kobe earthquake simulator was write memorable.
(Elizabeth pointed out a slight error in my post on the British museum which I have gone back to correct. The British Museum is NOT keen to return the treasures of the Parthenon to Greece - sorry to get anyone excited about that.)
Captions
Entry to the geological Earth display.
The original neanderthal skull found.
Some big lizards (or are they birds?)!!!
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