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| The only problem is that the Six-Stone Holocaust Memorial in the North Jewish Cemetery in Stockholm unveiled in October 2019 is no longer there! The Six Stones or the six white granite memorial posts with the names of the six death camps have been removed in July 2020 without any explanation or notice. The Six Stones defined and framed the space where the Swedish government buried young people, mostly women, who succumbed to death right after coming to Sweden in 1945. In this way, perhaps inadvertently, the Swedish government created a sacred space containing the simple graves of some 80+ Holocaust victims who tragically died shortly after their arrival in Sweden despite the medical care that was so generously offered after their liberation in 1945. For fifty years, the rectangular space housing the gravestones with names, places, and dates of birth, was completely forgotten and neglected. Photo above was not included in the letter to Ms. Anna Ekström. |
To: Registrator, Utbildningsminister
utbildningsdepartementet.registrator@regeringskansliet.se
utbildningsdepartementet.registrator@regeringskansliet.se
Dear Ms. Ekström,
Below please kindly find the letter from the Swedish Holocaust Memorial Organization (SHMA)
Helena R Brus
Secretary-General
Swedish Holocaust Memorial Association (SHMA) &
Korczak Living Memory Association (KLHA)
Friedemsgatan 6/1203
11240 Stockholm, Sweden
helenarozabrus@gmail.com
Tel.: +46 70 625 8610
October 11, 2021.
Subject: Contribution to the International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance (IHRA) Meeting in Malmo on October 13, 2021, under the heading: "We act now to safeguard the record of the Holocaust"
To Whom It May Concern
The Swedish Holocaust Memorial Association (SHMA) has been active since the mid-1990s and it currently has some 1700 members. Its main goal is precisely what IHRA set up as the number one goal of the Conference, namely promoting remembrance, fighting distortion. Staffed entirely by volunteers, we have been conducting research based on original documents that have already helped to restore the knowledge of the fate of entire Jewish families, including two Hungarian surviving twin-sisters currently living in Israel tortured by Mengele in Auschwitz with whom we are currently in touch.
How was it possible to discover such information after so many years since WWII ended? It is because Sweden agreed to admit some 10 000 Jewish Holocaust survivors to be taken to Sweden in a largely unknown action conducted by UNRRA in June-July 1945 and called by SHMA a "White Boat" Mission. The documentation that traveled with them issued first by the Germans and then by the British was amply supplemented by the meticulous records created in Swedish hospitals. These records reside in the Swedish National Archives (Riksarkivet) but they were discovered and researched by SHMA and are a raison d'etre of the Six-Stone Holocaust Monument at the North Jewish Cemetery in Stockholm.
The only problem is that the Six-Stone Holocaust Memorial in the North Jewish Cemetery in Stockholm unveiled in October 2019 is no longer there! The Six Stones or the six white granite memorial posts with the names of the six death camps have been removed in July 2020 without any explanation or notice. The Six Stones defined and framed the space where the Swedish government buried young people, mostly women, who succumbed to death right after coming to Sweden in 1945. In this way, perhaps inadvertently, the Swedish government created a sacred space containing the simple graves of some 80+ Holocaust victims who tragically died shortly after their arrival in Sweden despite the medical care that was so generously offered after their liberation in 1945. For fifty years, the rectangular space housing the gravestones with names, places, and dates of birth, was completely forgotten and neglected until by chance the Chairman of SHMA was asked to search for the relative of a Holocaust survivor from Israel. It turned out that her grave was there and consequently SHMA volunteers have undertaken a huge task of uncovering the earth-covered graves and identifying the victims based on the previously untouched and thus unknown information kept in the Swedish National Archives. From the archives, SHMA has learned not only about the persons whose graves were uncovered but also about the tragic fate of the families of the victims buried in the plot. How was it possible? It turns out that some 10,000 Jews who were allowed to be admitted to Sweden from Bergen Belsen and came here by UNRRA-organized White Boat Mission, were accompanied by the documents issued by first the Germans and then by the British that were then supplemented by the detailed medical cards prepared by the doctors in Sweden, and also the police cards. Moreover, the lists of passengers were also kept in the archives. SHMA's research effort included identifying the people by examining the spelling of their names, the names of their parents, the places of birth to eliminate errors and duplication. Anamnesis, or taking patient medical histories, that was practiced by the Swedish doctors and nurses provided information way beyond the survivors but extended to the fate of their parents and siblings and other members of their families. What transpired is, not surprisingly, that they perished in one of the death camps such as Auschwitz, Treblinka, Majdanek, Sobibor, Chelmno. and Belzec. In the Monument, these six death camps were symbolically marked with simple white granite stones placed in-between the graves using otherwise empty unusable spaces.
The ceremony conducted in October 2019 at the site turned the recovered burial plot into a second Stockholm Holocaust Monument, next to the Name Monument near the Stockholm main Synagogue. On the eve of the major conference on October 13 this year in Malmö, where Sweden takes the Presidency of IHRA for a year from March 1, 2021, until February 28, 2022, the Six-Stone Holocaust Memorial should be celebrated as a proud achievement, a true Swedish act of remembrance. Instead, it might not be even mentioned and in the meantime, the graves are being covered by earth and debris once again.
It should be immaterial why the Stockholm Jewish Congregation decided to remove the Six Stones and thus destroy the Memorial but the value in honoring the lives of the Holocaust victims should override any parochial or personal squabbles. The Six-Stone Memorial was not to be somebody's centerpiece but a permanent source of valuable information about the people and the world that perished forever, and the human suffering of unbelievable proportions. Each grave was to be marked with a QR code with the information about each person buried in the grave, including their family history as derived from the archival documents. If there is a search for the truth, then this is the best testimony of what really happened and it is not colored by anybody's afterthought or interpretation. Especially that there are very few remaining survivors able to give testimonies. These materials, handwritten and scribbled by different hands and in different languages, speak for themselves the same way as the documents gathered by Ringelblum in his archives. Except that the persons can be positively identified and linked to the information collected in other major archives such as Arolsen, Auschwitz museum, Yad Vashem, USHMM.
The Six Stone Holocaust Monument was not the end in itself but the beginning of a long-term educational project for many interested researchers around the world. It is a pity that there is no chance to present it, for example, to the Swedish Delegate to the IHRA Malmo Forum, Ms. Annika Ben David, the Hon. Ambassador for Human Rights, Democracy and the Rule of Law. And yet the three main goals of the Swedish Presidency are 1. promoting remembrance, fighting distortions, 2. developing education and reaching new target groups, and 3. countering contemporary antisemitism.
We believe that the Six-Stone Holocaust Monument in the North Jewish Cemetery in Stockholm should be restored as soon as possible and the valuable SHMA research project should receive recognition and at least some moral support.
Helena R Brus
cc: Roman Wasserman Wroblewski, Chairman, SHMA
