The Swedish Memorial Association (SHMA) has made great efforts to honor the 75th anniversary of the deaths of the young victims buried in the Northern Cemetery in Stockholm. The SHMA erected a Holocaust Monument in October 2019 in Stockholm to commemorate the lost lives of the Holocaust victims brought to Sweden from Bergen Belsen in 1945. The Monument was established jointly with the Jewish Congregation of Stockholm and supported by the Heckscherska Foundation as well as other private funds.
The Jewish Congregation of Stockholm specifically approved the design and site of the Monument, as it was previously jointly presented to the Stockholm City Council in January 2019. The Monument unveiling ceremony took place on October 6, 2019, at the Northern Jewish Cemetery in Stockholm and was attended by many. The Monument consists of six simple memorial stone columns representing six death camps, as well as six million Jews who perished. The stones were placed among the graves of about 80 Holocaust victims who died shortly after arriving in Stockholm and were buried at the Cemetery. They were among approximately 600 Holocaust survivors brought from Germany to Stockholm Harbor in UNRRA White Boats to receive medical care. As part of the Monument, these 80 gravestones, hidden for almost 75 years, were dug out, uncovered, and cleaned, and some were fully restored by SHMA. Each uncovered tombstone contains personal information about the victim, including date of birth, country of origin, and date of death.
Many of the victims were in their early teens when WWII started and thus were very young when they died in 1945-46 in Sweden. Poland, Hungary, Romania, Czechoslovakia, Austria, Germany, Yugoslavia, and Greece were among the countries of birth. The assembly of these newly unearthed tombstones, together with the memorial stones, provided unique and precious information about the otherwise completely lost individuals and their tragic histories.
The personalized experience and the testimonies (direct or indirect) of the fate of single individuals seem absolutely crucial in efforts to educate future generations about the Holocaust and to preserve the memory of the Holocaust. The research Group at SHMA began gathering this information from the Swedish archives.
The personalized experience and the testimonies (direct or indirect) of the fate of single individuals seem absolutely crucial in efforts to educate future generations about the Holocaust and to preserve the memory of the Holocaust. The research Group at SHMA began gathering this information from the Swedish archives.
"The Liberated 1945, White Boat Mission from Bergen-Belsen to Sweden" by Roman Wasserman Wroblewski was published in 2020 to commemorate the Holocaust victims brought to Sweden from Bergen-Belsen in 1945.
SHMA is currently completing an illustrated book under the title "The Liberated 1945, White Boat Mission from Bergen-Belsen to Sweden" telling a largely unknown story of the important humanitarian mission to rescue the Holocaust survivors from Bergen-Belsen and bring them to Sweden in the context of the end-of-the-war political maneuvering like White Bus transports run in March-April 1945, thus just before WWII ended. The book, in English (170 pages and 85 photos) tells the story based on archival photographs, using historical records such as testimonies, and archival materials such as passenger lists, registration documents, and Swedish medical records that allow reconstruction of the journeys of the individual survivors and the fates of their families who perished earlier in the death camps.
