...In the early spring of 1945, Doris worked as an official war artist. She was commissioned by the War Artists Advisory Committee which was part of the Ministry of Information, to travel to newly liberated Europe and record the activities of the north west Europe Commission of the Joint War Organization of the Red Cross and the Order of St John. Doris recorded the commission’s post-war relief activities as well as the rehabilitation and repatriation of prisoners of war. She traveled all over north west Europe by lorry and by air, and also recorded the activities that took place at the liberated Bergen-Belsen concentration camp. She sketched images and took them back to Brussels where she was based, and transformed them into oil paintings. Doris spent three long days at the Bergen-Belsen camp. Her seductive, vibrant, and sometimes whimsical style that had characterized her society portraits and advertising posters had been replaced with a style that had become dark and dismal as her subject matter became grittier. Her once flamboyant palette of rich colors had now been replaced with greys, browns, and muted hues, while her images had become both graphic and sobering. Doris’s experiences at Belsen were harrowing to say the least. In letters that she wrote to her husband, she described the horrendous aftermath of the horrors that had taken place as well as the distinctive nauseating odor that prevailed in and around the camp. She stayed at the camp until it was finally burnt down on May 21, 1945. She later wrote, “The shock of Belsen was never to be forgotten. First of all was the ghastly smell of typhus. The simply ghastly sight of skeleton bodies just flung out of the huts.” [http://museumstjohn.org.uk/zinkeisen-sisters-behind-glitz-glamour/]