Holocaust Victims - Holocaust Survivors - Difficult terminology in Sweden

A Holocaust survivor is defined as an individual who
1) meets the definition of Holocaust survivor established by the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum, or the Social Security Agency, or Yad Vashem or the Kinder Transport Association;
2) or defines themselves in reliable and verifiable sources as a Holocaust survivor;
3) or is described as a Holocaust survivor in reliable and verifiable sources.

There are of course several subcategories of the definition above - as "defines themselves in reliable and verifiable sources as a Holocaust survivor" is not a strict definition. Most of the European Jews that survived the Holocaust survived in Sovjet Union. They never been in the ghetto or concentration camp. Among the survivors in Sweden there was an long ongoing discussion about it.

In a way so are all the Holocaust survivors as well the Holocaust victims. I want, however, to use the definition of Holocaust victims mainly to the category of the peoples, read Jews (Sorry all Romani and homosexuals and other persecuted) that were murdered och died during the Holocaust. According to the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum (USHMM), "The Holocaust was the murder of six million Jews and millions of others by the Nazis and their collaborators during World War II". "The others" were however not a first target of the Nazis.

As a Secretary General of Swedish Holocaust Memorial Association - SHMA, I usually tried to explain for the group of survivors that "suffered more" why this group has to be regarded as regular Holocaust Survivors. My two main arguments were rather straightforward: The time in Russia was not easy, many of the survivors were sent to work in Siberia and over place where they were starving and forced to work. Many of them died there due to the malnutrition. The second argument related to their families that stayed in the occupied teritories. All the Jews that survived in SU had families that were murdered. Therefore, also the Jewish children that were send United Kingdom before WW II started - Kindertransport have to be regarded as the Holocaust Survivors. The United Kingdom took in nearly 10,000 predominantly Jewish children from Nazi Germany, Nazi-occupied Austria, Czechoslovakia and Poland, and the Free City of Danzig. The children were placed in British foster homes, hostels, schools and farms. Often they were the only members of their families who survived the Holocaust, like the Jews in the non occupied Russian territories.

In Sweden, I feel we have (had) both Holocaust Survivors and Holocaust victims. Here, I would lie to define the group of the Holocaust victims.
Holocaust victims are the one that died during the Holocaust and directly after the Holocaust when liberated from the camps.  Here in Sweden the category of Holocaust victims that came to Sweden during Spring and Summer 1945 is rather large. Just at the Jewish cemetery there are approx. 100 graves of former prisoners of Nazi camps that died in Sweden shortly after arrival.
Their grave place and their histories  are unknown.
Now, the histories that focus on notable survivors of the Holocaust excluding the total knowledge of  the Holocaust. They do play a valuable function, but they may also shift the emphasis away from the lives and experiences of the victims that not survived the Holocaust. The story of the dog of notable survivor and photographs of old faces of Holocaust survivors are served by Swedish massmedia instead of showing "the death factories" with gas chambers and crematoria and the brutality of the atrocities committed by the Nazis.

"Historien om Bodri" by Hédi Fried