In this chapter we trace the journey of the Polish Research Institute (PIZ) archive at Lund University Library from the making of the archive at Lund, to its deposition at the Hoover Institution Archives at Stanford University, to its return to Lund University Library, and its early digitization. Studying this archival journey, we specifically engage with a set of different ethical dilemmas that have been involved in these each of these processes and spatialities. We suggest that the collection and creation of the archive until the point of digitization has been a history of contested spaces and this journey has involved the creation and maintenance of different kinds of ‘vulnerabilities'.

Although many survivors of the Holocaust came to and remained in Sweden after the Second World War, Swedish historiography has never shown much interest in their lives and the roles that they played in Swedish political, cultural, and social life. More than twenty years after the Stockholm international forum conferences, this panel thinks it is time that survivors – as complex figures who continued to survive in their new country –receive the scholarly attention they deserve: as historical figures, discursive constructs and as archival subjects. Together, the three panellists are endeavouring to redefine what “Sweden and the Holocaust” means, arguing that victims and victimisation as well as survivors and survival constitute equally important phenomena compared to the much-explored subjects of bystanderism and rescue. 

Kapitlet tar sin utgångspunkt i tidigare forsknings diskussion om olika händelser som har varit viktigaför framväxten av en minneskultur kring Förintelsen, och hur ”de överlevande” över tid har blivit personer som ska hyllas, intervjuas och ihågkommas. Författaren ansluter sig till den forskning som har framhållit att det är viktigt att synliggöra hur centrala de förföljda och senare de överlevande själva har varit under degångna snart 80 åren, för att driva kunskapen omoch minnet av Förintelsen och nazisternas brott motmänskligheten framåt. I kapitlet argumenterar författaren för att Ilona Karmels bok Den polska flickan, som gavs ut på svenska 1954, kan förstås som ett viktigt bidrag till en sådan kunskapsproduktion, och att den kanses som en tidig publicerad berättelse från en judisk överlevande med anknytning till Sverige. Det som analyseras är dock inte Den polska flickan i sig, utan hur Ilona Karmel och boken mottogs av litteraturkritiker i svensk och svenskjudisk press. 

In this keynote I will discuss how persons who have experienced and survived the Nazi persecution and genocide have worked to keep the memory of their and others experiences alive. Drawing from different collecting initiatives, of memories, testimonies and stories, during the last 80 years, by and from Holocaust survivors, I will explore and discuss the role that survivors have played in the development of memory culture and historical research.

In July 2020, two Holocaust memorials disappeared from a Jewish cemetery in Stockholm where Holocaust survivors who died soon after coming to Sweden for medical treatment in 1945 are buried. Though it occurred in the midst of both the global #TakeItDown movement and the Swedish government’s plans to establish a Holocaust museum in Sweden, this removal garnered no media attention or public outcry. Moreover, it was not, as might be expected, a case of antisemitic vandalism but a planned removal by the Jewish Community in Stockholm. This chapter takes this unexpected example of contested spaces of memory and heritage as a point of departure to consider and reflect on how ‘dead survivors’ of Nazism buried in Sweden have been commemorated. The analysis considers three Swedish cemeteries by delving into the sites’ past and present, the presence and absence of monuments and other forms of memorialization and contextualization, and how these aspects relate to the discursive and historiographical treatment of victims of Nazi persecution who came to Sweden in both historical and contemporary contexts, particularly in relation to issues of gender, place, and identity and belonging. 

There are a great number of archival collections containing testimonies or stories from Holocaust survivors. This presentation explores the making of one such collection: the Raoul Wallenberg Project Archive. The motives for and practices of how to collect, archive and use testimonies or stories from persons categorized as survivors have varied over time. Documentation methods are never neutral; rather they are rooted in a specific time and place, and sometimes also in specific sets of institutional histories, practices and ideas. According to Jacques Derrida, “…archivization produces as much as it records the event.” (1996:17) The purpose of this presentation is to explore Paul A. Levine’s and the other initiators and creators motives for making the Raoul Wallenberg Project Archive. 

This anthology is the result of an international workshop with the aim to initiate new discussions and new research on cultural heritage – contested as well as uncontested. The workshop was held at the Department of Society, Culture and Identity at Malmö University, in October 2022. Contested heritage, sometimes also referred to as “dissonant heritage” or “difficult heritage” has been discussed, explored and studied by cultural heritage scholars from various disciplines over the last two decades. However, there is still limited knowledge about what contested or dissonant heritage is. How, when and by whom heritage can be contested and how it is related to or understood in relation to uncontested heritage are also unresolved questions. The contribution of this anthology thus falls at an intersection between the process-perspectives of critical heritage studies of cultural heritage, the empirical-historical studies of power and agency in social and cultural history (after the archival turn), and the conceptual fields that examine the use of history and history mediation. It rests firmly on the collective expertise drawn from historians and other scholars, at different stages of their careers, from researchers with theoretical proficiency as well as practical experience from cultural heritage work, both within and outside of traditional cultural heritage institutions. The result, if not a comprehensive rendering, is a range of multifaceted insights into research on why and how cultural heritage can be both contested and (un)contested.

Collecting in times of crisis is a precarious task. In recent years, oral historians have considered the risks and pitfalls that so called crisis or rapid response collecting entail. However, in countries where oral history practices are not dominant within the cultural heritage sector, these discussions surrounding ethics and collecting have had little impact. In this article we problematize the absence of oral history perspectives on the ethics of crisis collecting through a Swedish case study involving the daily newspaper Dagens Nyheter (DN) and Sweden's most prominent cultural heritage institution, Nordiska Museet (the Nordic Museum). In 2015, DN started interviewing refugees for a social media-based project entitled RefugeeSweden. Excerpts from the interviews as well as photographs of the refugees were published on Instagram and Twitter, with Nordiska Museet later acquiring this material. Through this case study we show how the act of digitization constitutes a process of transformation which fundamentally affects collections and how they can be understood. In addition, we demonstrate how seemingly inclusive notions of digitization and representation can obscure exclusionary practices of institutions that have not considered cocreation or participatory practices.