Witnessing the Holocaust: Jewish Experiences and the Collection of the Polish Source Institute in Lund
The Polish Source Institute (PIŹ) in Lund in southern Sweden collected over 500 testimonies from Polish survivors in Sweden. The study analyses the work of the archive’s founder Zygmunt Łakociński and examines what role the Holocaust played in this docume
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Witnessing the Holocaust: Jewish Experiences and the Collection of the Polish Source Institute in Lund Izabela A. Dahl
In early 1945, Count Folke Bernadotte, nephew of the Swedish king and vice chairman of the Swedish Red Cross, made an agreement with Reichsführer-SS Heinrich Himmler to release Scandinavian prisoners from German concentration camps. The international aid expedition, the so- called White Buses, was carried out under Swedish leadership.1 The aim was to collect Scandinavian prisoners as well as Swedish-born women from Nazi Germany and bring them back home as soon as possible. However, in April 1945, the operation was unexpectedly extended to non- Scandinavian prisoners and, ultimately, it became one of the most significant rescue operations of the Second World War.2 The White Buses expedition was completed during the last days of the war and—following an agreement between the Swedish state and the United Nations Relief and Rehabilitation Administration (UNRRA)—it was followed by another relief effort that transported survivors from displaced persons camps in
I. A. Dahl (*) Örebro University, Örebro, Sweden e-mail: [email protected] © The Author(s) 2021 J. Heuman, P. Rudberg (eds.), Early Holocaust Memory in Sweden, The Holocaust and its Contexts, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-55532-0_3
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Germany to Sweden in the summer of 1945. Despite the uncertain numbers, it can be estimated that through these two rescue operations approximately 25,000 people were transported from the concentration camps to Sweden in 1945. According to a registration overview of the Foreigner’s Commission (Statens Utlänningskommission), there were 15,062 Polish women and men in Sweden in November 1945. Within this group of Polish citizens were around 6000 to 7000 Jews.3 The first contact with the concentration camp survivors was based on an immense social organisation on the part of Swedish society and could not have worked without the participation of active volunteers. Among those volunteers were Zygmunt Łakociński and his wife Carola von Gegerfelt who worked as interpreters helping to communicate with the former concentration camp prisoners.4 Due to Łakociński’s prior interest and activities collating evidence of the losses incurred by Poles as a result of the war and German occupation, direct contact with people who survived and carried with them personal experiences of the recent past opened up a new challenge—how to create a collection of testimonies.5 The Polish Source Institute (Polski Instytut Źródłowy or PIŹ) was therefore established and collected over 500 testimonies in addition to various items from Polish survivors between 1945 and 1946.6 The collection, located at the Lund University Library in Sweden, is today known as the Ravensbrück Archive since many of the survivors came from this camp. The archive is often described as an important source of material on the Holocaust, although most of the testimonies originated from non-Jewish survivors. The present study will analyse the work
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