June 7, 2014

Iconic Documents Featured in New York Display 

Churchill Centre Trustee Kenneth W. Rendell is the world’s leading collector of artifacts and documents of World War II and founder of the acclaimed Museum of World War II in Natick, MA. For the first time, a selection of unique material from the Museum is being presented in New York in a special exhibit entitled “The Power of Words and Images in a World at War.” The show has been personally curated by Mr. Rendell and will be on display at the Grolier Club, 47 East 60th Street, until August 2.

The exhibit encompasses the Holocaust (with little-known material from the family of Anne Frank); Russia (including German invasion maps); Japan (with rare patriotic banners and magazines) and the entry of the United States into the war (a telegram announcing the bombing of Pearl Harbor and the teletype of Franklin Roosevelt’s “This day will live in infamy” speech.)

Other material covers the Pacific (including the bombing of Hiroshima) and D-Day (Eisenhower’s letter to his wife the day before the German surrender.) Also included are speech typescripts with hand-written annotations by figures such as Winston Churchill, Adolf Hitler and Charles de Gaulle and a rare bound copy created for Gen. Douglas MacArthur of the Japanese Instrument of Surrender signed on Sept. 2, 1945.

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Numerous British posters, leaflets and periodicals created during the Battle of Britain and the Blitz are displayed, including the famous “Holding the Line” poster featuring Winston Churchill’s head on the body of a bulldog.

Mr. Rendell, a longtime Trustee and supporter of The Churchill Centre, is a leading rare book, autograph and manuscript dealer who founded the Kenneth W. Rendell Gallery in 1959. He is the author of several books including World War II: Saving the Reality and Politics, War and Personality: Fifty Iconic World War II Documents that Changed the World.

In reviewing the exhibit the New York Times noted that the artifacts, “give sharp, incisive glimpses of passions and experiences” and that the show “manages to give a powerful compact survey, while suggesting how much of that epochal conflict yet remains beyond easy understanding.”Photo by Gavin Ashworth for New York Times