IWM Exhibition Puts Holocaust Survivor's Teddy on Display
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- Imperial War Museum will open 'Childhood in War' on 31 July, combining hundreds of objects with immersive environments including a full-size railway carriage, a wartime classroom, and a cold war living room and kitchen.
- John Hajdu, 89, is lending the teddy bear he received at age 3 — the only surviving object from his childhood — for its first-ever public display, alongside his testimony of hiding in a Budapest neighbour's cupboard and later surviving the Budapest ghetto after his mother was sent to Mauthausen.
- Curator Fran Singleton said the exhibition was timed for a moment 'with more conflicts in the news,' deliberately pairing Hajdu's story with contemporary accounts from children in Ukraine, Sudan and Afghanistan, including a 360-degree virtual tour of an underground Ukrainian school built by one of its pupils and drawings from Sudanese children later submitted as evidence to the International Criminal Court.
- The exhibition also examines how childhood is politicised, displaying material from the Hitler Youth and Soviet Komsomol movements, and features a Kindertransport red knitted jumper given to Jochewet Heidenstein before she fled Berlin for Britain.
- Hajdu, now a grandfather of four, said releasing teddy from his home for the first time has been 'surprisingly difficult,' and urged younger generations to interview their own grandparents about trauma as the number of living Holocaust survivors declines.
- The family was reunited after Soviet troops liberated the Budapest ghetto in January 1945; Hajdu and his mother later crossed into Austria and arrived in Britain in 1957 on a Red Cross train, with the teddy travelling with them throughout.
Why it matters: The exhibition opens at a moment when the IWM's curator explicitly cited current conflicts as motivation, and when the last generation of Holocaust survivors is passing — making the 89-year-old Hajdu's first public display of his teddy bear a one-time opportunity to anchor contemporary children's experiences in Ukraine, Sudan and Afghanistan to first-hand testimony from WWII.
