about

My name is Leandra Kos and I was born in Alkmaar, a city in the Netherlands. I grew up in a small town nearby called West-Graftdijk.

Drawing has been my hobby since childhood and I did this every single day. Mostly I drew cartoons and celebrities.

At the end of primary school I learned for the first time about the Second World War and Anne Frank. I was so Intrigued by this history lesson that I wanted my parents to buy me a book about this subject. That was when I learned about Josef Mengele and other perpetrators who still fascinate me until this day.

When I was thirteen I started taking art classes and a year later I sold my first painting at an art gallery. Back then the topics of my paintings were animals, flowers and celebrities.

A few years later in 2005 I saw a photo of a man with a remarkable appearance on the front page of De Telegraaf (a Dutch newspaper) with the headline “Dr. Dood” (Dr. Death). I read the article and was stunned to learn what this camp doctor, who was working in Mauthausen concentration camp, had done for horrific acts on innocent people. The crimes were not exactly similar to the acts of Josef Mengele, the camp doctor of Auschwitz, but still very brutal. I cut the article out and kept it to this day in a drawer. The story got stuck in my head for a long time and there was something sinister about his face that got my attention. Maybe it was the scar in the corner of his mouth or maybe the look in his eyes. To me this was more the appearance of a criminal rather than a doctor. I had to draw this man! As I saw more and more pictures of criminals I started to see a pattern. The crueller a person’s actions, the crazier the look in their eyes. I did not noticed that before and this started to fascinate me even more.

My interest for the Second World War, that was faded over the years by other passions, was once again awoken after my visit to Auschwitz-Birkenau in 2019. This lead me to read dozens of books more about WWII and especially Auschwitz. The books that made the biggest impression on me were I Escaped From Auschwitz by Rudolf Vrba and Eyewitness Auschwitz by Filip Müller. These books are written by concentration camp survivors who wrote every single jaw dropping atrocity down, so detailed that you feel like you were there. A part of the cruellest times of history.

The pictures that I encountered in most of the books were often of bad quality and not very clear. This gave me the idea to copy these pictures with pencil and paper and add some more detail and definition to the face. Filip Müller’s descriptions of the victims and perpetrators of Auschwitz were so detailed that it helped me a lot with my drawings.

In the upcoming years I would like to fill my website with portraits of SS officers, victims and survivors of concentration camps and politicians who played a role during the Second World War. Because I think there are more people like me who wonder what these people have looked like, I want to share my drawings with the rest of the world so that everyone can get a clearer picture of history. 

I have written a short summary about the person of my drawing from the knowledge I have gained over the past years of reading all these books and internet articles. At the bottom of the summaries I have done my best to list all the sources. 

The people in my drawings are  drawn in neutral clothing because I want all the attention to the face. So no distractions from clothing, hate symbols or whatsoever.

This website is for educational purposes and it is made from historical interest only and not created to incite hatred. I would like to make it clear that I distance myself from the ideology of Nazism, racism, anti-Semitism and all other possible forms of discrimination. Comments or emails that are racist or anti-Semitic will not be answered and will be deleted. Let’s respect each other.

Thank you in advance.