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| Upon a recent visit to the cemetery on August 8, coinciding with the date of death of four of the young victims, we discovered a terrifying scene of neglect. This picture shows the neglected grave of Rywka Posladek from Lodz. More pictures will be sent together with a full report to The Swedish National Heritage Board that gave grants to Jewish Congregation that were aimed for the stone restoration. Not a single crown was, however, used for that purpose and zero crowns are left! |
These days a very sad view appears when you visit the graves of the Holocaust victims who survived the atrocities of the war but perished soon after and were buried at the time by the grace of the Swedish Government in the North Jewish Cemetery in Stockholm. After a half-century of neglect, these graves were first uncovered in 1995 and then meticulously restored by the actions of the Swedish Holocaust Memorial Association (SHMA) which also designed and erected a Holocaust Monument of Six Stones marking the six death camps, Auschwitz, Treblinka, Majdanek, Belzec, Chelmno, Sobibor, where most of the victims' families had perished. The ceremony to unveil and sanctify the Monument took place in October 2019 and yet as early as July 2020, in the middle of the pandemic, the Jewish Congregation of Stockholm suddenly removed the Six Stones, effectively desecrating the Monument, even though - during fundraising - they took co-ownership of the project. What's even more tragic is that this act apparently gave rise to a progressive neglect of the graves which are again beginning to disappear under the grass, debris, and earth, making it difficult to read the names of the victims. Yellow grass shows that the area is not watered regularly. There are markings of the heavy machinery regularly crossing the area. One might ask, how is it possible that an official organization representing the Swedish Jewry would not care to preserve the Jewish heritage of the Holocaust survivors who succumbed to death despite the medical care they received in Sweden and not to honor the virtuous act of their burial by the Swedish government at the time?
Upon a recent visit to the cemetery on August 8, coinciding with the date of death of four of the young victims, we discovered a terrifying scene of neglect. Below there are three pictures: (1) the state of the graves before SHMA started the project in 2018, (2) the appearance of the graves after restoration in 2019, and (3) the current state of August 8th, 2021. These pictures speak for themselves.
Upon a recent visit to the cemetery on August 8, coinciding with the date of death of four of the young victims, we discovered a terrifying scene of neglect. Below there are three pictures: (1) the state of the graves before SHMA started the project in 2018, (2) the appearance of the graves after restoration in 2019, and (3) the current state of August 8th, 2021. These pictures speak for themselves.
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| Upon a recent visit to the cemetery on August 8, coinciding with the dates of death of four of the young victims, we discovered a terrifying scene of neglect. Below there are three pictures: (1 top left) the state of the graves before SHMA started the project in 2018, (2 below) the appearance of the graves after restoration by SHMA in 2019, and (3 right) the current state of August 8th 2021. These pictures speak for themselves. |
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| The grave of the first Holocaust survivor, Vera Krémer died in Stockholm. The grave was only indicated by the grave number while the entire tombstone was fully overgrown and 10 cm below the grass level. On the right, the appearance of the grave after the full restoration by SHMA in 2018-2019. |
The graves were fully forgotten until the mid-90s. It was a chance event that brought the attention of Roman Wasserman Wroblewski (RWW), the Secretary General of SHMA to the sight. He was approached by a dying survivor from Israel asking for help to locate the grave of his niece from Lodz. There were no published lists of the buried, and Wroblewski who worked as an associate professor at Karolinska Institute overlooking the graveyard, spent several lunch hours cutting out grass to find the grave. The grave of Frymeta, the girl from Lodz, only eleven when the war started, was one of the last of the 80 graves uncovered in 1995. This was the first step in the unique research project undertaken by SHMA that led to the identification and often correction of the names, dates, and places of birth of the victims, their vicissitudes, and even information about what happened to their families. It turned out that the girl from Lodz was only eleven when the war started and that both her first and family names were misspelled. The majority of the victims buried in the Cemetery were very young at the outset of the war.
In section J of the North Jewish Cemetery in Stockholm, there are three rows of Holocaust victims, in the next section at least 13. They were brought from Bergen-Belsen in July 1945. Some of the former inmates were in such bad condition that they died during the transport on UNRRA's White Boats or during the first hours or days after arrival at Frihamnen port. The dates of death on their tombstones begin in July and continue in August which was a real death month with several burials on the same day. On the tombstones paid by the Swedish Government, there are also places and dates of birth.
By 2018 the tombstones had sunk under the grass and there was a kind of a view hole of 10-15 cm which gave the possibility of cutting the grass with big machines driving over the graves and tombstones. But uncovering the graves would not reveal the stories behind the victims. It required painstaking research by RWW in the Swedish archives to find out who the victims were, where they came from, what happened to them before coming to Sweden, and what happened to them afterward, thus including their medical history. It turned out that previously unknown information was discovered in the Swedish archives thanks to the care offered by the Swedish doctors to the victims that documented not only the physical state of the patients but also took their full family histories. Further, it turned out that the various entry/exit documents issued to the survivors in various camps before coming to Sweden traveled with the people and were attached to the medical cards. This way SHMA discovered that many young and completely orphaned survivors desired to settle in Eretz Israel despite the offer of residency in Sweden. Also, this way SHMA gained information about the fate of their families which was often recorded in the archived documents. As most of the survivors lost their parents and siblings in one of the death camps, the idea of using the empty spaces dispersed among the graves for the erection of the Six Stones - Six Million Memorial came to life. The Six Stones represented the link between the victims and their families murdered in the above-mentioned death camps.
In section J of the North Jewish Cemetery in Stockholm, there are three rows of Holocaust victims, in the next section at least 13. They were brought from Bergen-Belsen in July 1945. Some of the former inmates were in such bad condition that they died during the transport on UNRRA's White Boats or during the first hours or days after arrival at Frihamnen port. The dates of death on their tombstones begin in July and continue in August which was a real death month with several burials on the same day. On the tombstones paid by the Swedish Government, there are also places and dates of birth.
By 2018 the tombstones had sunk under the grass and there was a kind of a view hole of 10-15 cm which gave the possibility of cutting the grass with big machines driving over the graves and tombstones. But uncovering the graves would not reveal the stories behind the victims. It required painstaking research by RWW in the Swedish archives to find out who the victims were, where they came from, what happened to them before coming to Sweden, and what happened to them afterward, thus including their medical history. It turned out that previously unknown information was discovered in the Swedish archives thanks to the care offered by the Swedish doctors to the victims that documented not only the physical state of the patients but also took their full family histories. Further, it turned out that the various entry/exit documents issued to the survivors in various camps before coming to Sweden traveled with the people and were attached to the medical cards. This way SHMA discovered that many young and completely orphaned survivors desired to settle in Eretz Israel despite the offer of residency in Sweden. Also, this way SHMA gained information about the fate of their families which was often recorded in the archived documents. As most of the survivors lost their parents and siblings in one of the death camps, the idea of using the empty spaces dispersed among the graves for the erection of the Six Stones - Six Million Memorial came to life. The Six Stones represented the link between the victims and their families murdered in the above-mentioned death camps.
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| In 2019, SHMA organized the gathering to commemorate the anniversary of the Crystal Night by illuminating the 80 graves and the Holocaust Monument "6 Stones - 6 Million". |
In 2019, SHMA organized the gathering to commemorate the anniversary of the Crystal Night by illuminating the 80 graves. In April 2020 on the day of the Liberation of Bergen-Belsen, three months before the Six Stones - Six Million Memorial was destroyed, SHMA placed soil from Israel on the graves as most of the Holocaust survivors dreamed of life in Eretz Israel. In a short time, the Monument started serving as a focal point for both individual visits and public ceremonies.
During 2020 the Jewish Congregation did nothing about the graves except using public, most likely taxpayers funds for a costly removal of the Six Stones. Paradoxically, they used the main part of the Government grant to pay wages to Daniel Leviathan, an archeologist, who identified himself as a Ph.D. student at Lund University, and who copied already published results by Wasserman-Wroblewski as his own. Leviathan presented the plagiarised material as his own research in public media, including television, limiting himself to the information already published by Roman Wasserman Wroblewski. The case was notified to the Dean of Lund University as plagiarism. When three scientists from three different research institutions in Sweden wanted to be involved in the case, the Dean abandoned the entire investigation. Plagiarism is an act of academic dishonesty, there was a breach of journalistic ethics, and above all, a publishing crime was committed.
Research by SHMA does not end with the preservation of the memory of the victims buried in the North Cemetery. It also intended to serve as an educational tool for Swedish children, using such modern tools as QR codes. The research resulted in the digitalization of several thousands of Swedish Medical Cards and British Field Cards. Above all, to this day, SHMA provides heartbreaking information about the lives of the Holocaust victims to the living members of their families all over the world. We receive constant inquiries, identify new pictures, and meet with the survivors. In 2020, SHMA published a book (168 pages) written by Roman Wasserman Wroblewski, "The Liberated 1945, White Boat Mission from Bergen-Belsen to Sweden" and it produced a virtual exhibition tracing the life stories of several survivors, available on www.shma.online. In the coming year, SHMA will be publishing a book about "Kinderheim", a group of children originally from Piotrków Trybunalski who survived the war and passed through Sweden.
Today´s text is by:
Helena Roza Brus, A.B. Harvard, B.Sc. LSE.
Secretary-General
Swedish Holocaust Memorial Association
Secretary-General
Swedish Holocaust Memorial Association
and Roman Wasserman Wroblewski, Chairman.
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| "6 Stones - 6 Million" unveiling ceremony. The rabbi. |
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| "6 Stones - 6 Million" |
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| In April 2020 on the day of the Liberation of Bergen-Belsen, three months before the Six Stones - Six Million Memorial was destroyed, SHMA placed soil from Israel on the graves as most of the Holocaust survivors dreamed of life in Eretz Israel. In a short time, the Monument "6 Stones - 6 Million" started serving as a focal point for both individual visits and public ceremonies. |
Secretary General
Swedish Holocaust Memorial Association
