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.

The link between public health and migration control at the national level is well established in international migration research. This relationship is the starting point of our research on the Swedish management of refugees during the Second World War. The aim of the article has been to introduce the international research field migration and public health and analyze the role that public health strategies played in the organized refugee reception in the beginning of the 1940’s. We have studied the preparation and implementation of policies targeted to handle a larger amount of newly arrived refugees. Public health strategies played an important part in the preparations for the reception of a larger amount of refugees from Sweden’s neighboring countries. Existing laws and already established organizations created the frames for the emergence of organized refugee activities in the beginning of the 1940’s. This is very obvious in the routines that were established to identify and separate refugees that was suspected for having a contagious disease. In order to protect the national citizens all newly arrived had to pass through a health inspection. This included both a medical examination at the transit point as well as a two-week period in quarantine. After the quarantine the refugees were placed at permanent camps. The purpose of the isolation of the refugees was to prevent epidemics, most probably the isolation also contributed to perceptions about otherness of the newly arrived.

In this article we elaborate on the possibility to combine constructivist perspective and oral history within one methodological order to explore how identities are narrated and negotiated in different situations, contexts and interviewers. In oral history, the give voice” to marginalized or forgotten individuals or groups, stories and give them the possibility to speak from their perspectives. with these emancipatory aims of oral history. Simultaneously we analyze interviews in order to investigate identity constructions. concepts of intersectionality and narrated identity, which allow investigate how groups and individuals that are marginalized and negotiate their own and other identities. At the same time it is unclear interviewees understand these kinds of analysis of their narratives. combine a social constructivist perspective and oral history in a must be aware of this relation of power and explain to the interviewees doing and why we are doing it. In a broader research perspective deconstructive approach illustrates interesting assumptions about multidimensional identity constructions.

Inom forskningsfälten oral history, public history och public humanities är det vanligt förekommande att arbeta med utgångspunkt shared authority [delad auktoritet]. Med delad auktoritet avses inte något som ska göras (av forskarna) i relation till de som deltar forskningsprojekten, utan delad auktoritet är något som redan är. Vi har alltså inte en auktoritet som forskare som vi kan välja eller inte välja att dela med dem som vi forskar om och tillsammans med. Vi har en auktoritet som tränade och skolade akademiker och de som vi forskar med har en annan, de är experter eller auktoriteter på sina egna liv, minnen och erfarenheter. Denna syn på kunskapsproduktion som ett gemensamt projekt överskrider den traditionella synen på forskning och bildning som något som utförs och förmedlas av (ut)bildade personer vid universitet. Men vilka utmaningar och möjligheter finns det med att arbeta med utgångspunkt i delad auktoritet som humanistisk forskare? Vad medför idén om en delad auktoritet för konsekvenser för hur och vad som går att forska om? Med utgångspunkt i sina olika forskningsprojekt om och med olika minoriteter kommer dessa frågor att diskuteras av professor Malin Thor Tureby under årets Hans Ruin  studia generalia föreläsning.

Many documentation initiatives and collections of testimonies were initiated in the immediate postwar period. This article delves into one such initiative. It focuses on the practice of early recounting and active listening at boarding school for young Holocaust survivors in Sweden. The article explores, by a close reading of an article authored by one of the teachers and eight full-length essays from the students, both the teacher's perspectives on the young survivors' need for certain education and emotional assistance and the survivors' early reflections on the experiences of recounting, education, survival and life the first years after the Holocaust.

Genmäle i den pågående diskussionen mellan Malin Thor Tureby och Pontus Rudberg om svenk-judisk historieforskning (se Vol 31 No 1). 

Although digitization has become a word that is almost synonymous with democratization and citizen participation, many museums and other cultural heritage institutions have found it difficult to live up to this political vision of inclusivity and access for all. In Sweden, political ambitions to digitize the cultural heritage sector are high. Yet, institutions still struggle to reconcile their previous practices with the new technologies and ethical guidelines for collecting and curating material. This presenation discuss, with a collection of Holocaust stories that has not been digitized as an example, some of the the current gaps that exists between cultural heritage practice and government policy on digitization, open access, and research ethics. In the presentation I will also discuss some suggestions on how these issues can be resolved by reimagining digitization as transformation.

In a research project (funded by the Swedish Research Council), “Swedish-Jewish refugee receptions. Narratives and negations of “Jewish” identities and communities in Sweden 1933 –2013”, I work with narratives about and from ”Jews” in Sweden. The “Jew” has been a crucial category and even a stereotype in the formation of different Swedish national identities in different social contexts over time. In contrast to most other research projects with a focus on narrative material I want to analyse how a marginalized group like the Swedish Jews are negotiating their own identities and communities by othering and marginalizing or including other Jewish groups over time. I will do this by examining how the Swedish Jewish refugee activities have been narrated in different materials and contexts over the period 1933–2013. In this paper I work with narratives from the archive “Jewish memories” at the National Museum of cultural history (Nordiska Museet). During the years 1994 –1998 the museum collected autobiographical material (interviews and written life stories) from Jews in Sweden. Similar to how feminist researchers use the expression “doing gender”, I use the expression “doing Jewishness”. If doing gender refers to how the differences between men and women, masculinity and feminity are constructed and creates normative conceptions of what a true and correct masculinity/feminity is, I argue that you can investigate the doing of “Jewishness” in relation to Swedishness in the same way. In this paper I will focus on how “Jewishness” and “Swedishness” is negotiated in the interviews collected by the Nordiska Museet. How do the interviewees narrate “Jewish memories”? How do the interviewers ask about “Jewish memories” What themes are considered relevant to ask and narrate about? Who is interviewed and by whom? How do the interaction/communication between the interviewee and the interviewer create different types of narratives about “Jewishness”?

During the 1990s and early 2000s, Sweden saw an upsurge in state-sponsored memoryprojects pertaining to the country’s controversial and largely unspoken relationshipwith the Holocaust. The Holocaust memorial in Stockholm, the then Prime MinisterGöran Persson’s informational campaign Living History, and the StockholmInternational Forum Conferences, all demonstrated a heightened interest in theHolocaust—as history, as memory and as educational instrument. Central to theseendeavors was the collecting of survivor testimonies. One such example is thecollection Jewish Memories that was created during the years 1994-1998 by the NordicMuseum in Sweden. Today it is—comprising approx. 400 oral and written life stories,1 600 photographs and 100 objects and sound recordings—is, in sheer size, one of the most significant Swedish holdings of Holocaust memory in relation to Swedish-Jewish heritage. However, the materials were collected without informed consent and thecollection is protected by a 70-year clause that restricts access to the material on thebasis of it being too ‘vulnerable’. “Jewish Memories” remains hidden, inaccessible tothe public and to researchers without permission to study the material. The people whohave left their stories remain anonymous and their names, stories, and testimonies arenot heard in public or used by researchers. As survivor testimony continues to be acrucial genre to Holocaust studies, perspectives that pertain to how, and for whom,survivor stories are told highlight problems that relate to vulnerabilities, digitizationand accessibility. This paper would present the research project, The Ethical Dilemmas of Digitalization:Vulnerability and Holocaust collections, that was designed to research and explain how ethical problems become embedded in collections that pertain to Holocaust survivorsthrough processes of archivization, organization and digitization. The project also aimsto present suggestions for how these ethical problems can be addressed byreconceptualizing digitization as transformation by developing participatory and ethicalarchiving/digitization methods in order to make the collections like the Jewish Memories accessible.

In the spring of 1933, the halutz-quota was established in Sweden. This quota gave young German Jews the possibility to come to Sweden as transmigrants to receive training in agricultural work for 18 months and then continue to Palestine. In total, between the years 1933-1941 490 teenagers were sent to Sweden through the halutz-quota. The focus of this article is on how and what the young people communicate about their time in Sweden in different sources. Drawing from various unpublished materials produced within the movement in Sweden as well as interviews with former members of the He-Halutz, the aim is to place the persons who entered Sweden through the halutz-quota as central actors in the text, both as important agents in the past and as constructors of the stories of that past. 

1945 hade främlingsfientlighet och rasism lagt Europa i ruiner. Miljontals människor hade mördats i den nazityska folkutrotningen, Förintelsen. De som överlevde kommer inte leva för alltid, men deras berättelser måste göra det.I utställningen Fading Stories har fotografen Sanna Sjöswärd porträtterat 20 överlevande från Förintelsen. Här berättar de om sina minnen. Några av dem har inte delat med sig av dessa tidigare, medan andra redan för flera år sedan började gå ut offentligt med sina fasansfulla upplevelser. Vad kan vi lära oss, och hur ska vi förvalta dessa minnen in i framtiden?Medverkande:Piotr Zettinger, som var fyra år när han år 1942 smugglades ut ur gettot i Warszawa genom kloakerna och sedan gömdes tills kriget var över. Piotr lever idag i Sverige och föreläser ofta om sitt liv under kriget och om flykten undan en säker död i förintelselägret Treblinka.Sanna Sjöswärd, prisad fotograf och författare, vars verk hänger på Nationalmuseum och Nordiska museet. Hon har gett ut flera böcker, senast Hatet mot judarna tillsammans med Björn Wiman (2021).Malin Thor Tureby, professor i historia vid Malmö universitet som forskar om Förintelseöverlevandes minnesaktivism i ett historiskt perspektiv.Samtalsledare är Ingrid Lomfors, historiker och tidigare överintendent Forum för levande historia.

Prof. Dan Michman Head of the International Institute for Holocaust Research, Yad Vashem. Prof. Emeritus at Bar Ilan university, in conversation with Prof. Malin Thor Tureby Malmö University.

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. 

Debatter kring kvinnor i arkiv och historieskrivning har förts i decennier och att kvinnorna generellt har saknats i historieskrivningen är numera välkänt. Välkommen på föreläsning med Malin Thor Tureby som diskuterar hur judiska kvinnor har hanterats i historieskrivningen om och av den judiska minoriteten i Sverige. Vem har hamnat i arkivet, vems historia har dokumenterats eller skrivits, vem har fått berätta och från vilka perspektiv?

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.

Muntlig historia kan användas som en dokumenterande metod för att skapa en ny primärkälla och för att nå ny eller utökad kunskap om det förflutna. Muntlig historia kan även praktiseras som en kulturanalytisk metod för att undersöka och söka förstå vilka kulturella komponenter som finns i en berättelse om ett ihågkommet och tolkat minne av det förflutna eller en särskild händelse i det förgångna. Minnet används då inte enbart som källa utan är i sig undersökningsobjektet. Utgångspunkten är då att minnet är en aktiv process som ständigt omförhandlar och skapar ett meningsfullt förflutet, och inte en passiv förvaringsbox för fakta om en förfluten tid. Forskningsuppgiften blir därmed inte enbart att söka nå och skapa ny empirisk kunskap om det förflutna, utan även att förstå denna aktiva process genom vilken en eller flera berättare skapar meningsfulla historier om det förflutna i olika situationer och kontexter. I detta kapitel diskuteras såväl den dokumenterande som den kulturanalytiska utgångspunkten för att praktisera muntlig historia.

In a research project (funded by the Swedish Research Council), “Swedish-Jewish refugee receptions. Narratives and negations of “Jewish” identities and communities in Sweden ca 1945–2010”, I work with narratives about and from ”Jews” in Sweden. The “Jew” has been a crucial category and even a stereotype in the formation of different Swedish national identities in different social contexts over time. In contrast to most other research projects with a focus on narrative material I want to analyse how a marginalized group like the Swedish Jews are negotiating their own identities and communities by othering and marginalizing or including other Jewish groups over time. I will do this by examining how the Swedish-Jewish refugee activities have been narrated in different materials and contexts over the period 1945–2010. In this paper I will focus on how Swedish Jewish identities and communities have been negotiated in relation to Jewish refugees and survivors in Sweden in individual life stories. Who are talking about Swedish-Jewish identities/communities in relation to refugee work and the Jewish survivors in their life stories? How and what is narrated about Swedish-Jewish identities/communities? How are ”the Swedish-Jews” and the ”survivors” related to the Swedish-(Jewish) society in the individual life stories? How are different groups and conceptions of identities created, while defined and categorized in the narratives about the refugee reception/activities? I work with material from the archive “Jewish memories” at the National Museum of cultural history (Nordiska museet). During the years 1994 –1998 the National Museum of Cultural History collected autobiographical material (interviews and written life stories) from three categories of people with Jewish origin; Jews who were born in Sweden, Jews who fled to Sweden before and during the Second World War, and Jews who came to Sweden from the concentration camps. The paper will also address epistemological and methodological questions about working with material (narratives, interviews and life stories) that have been created/collected by an institution such as the National museum of cultural history. Why was the collection of “Jewish memories” initiated at/by the Nordiska museet? What broad assumptions and specific issues animated / initiated the collection of “Jewish memories”? What intellectual, social, national and international contexts and influences shaped the collection of narratives?

Textbooks about oral history usually discuss methods for how to collect and analyze interviews, that that you as a researcher has been part in creating and collecting. Very little has been written on how to reuse interviews already collected by another researcher or interviews created and collected by an archive, museum or other cultural institution. There has been some discussions on the ways in which oral history has informed the creation of cultural heritage and contributed to the producing of public or collective memories that make certain versions of the past public and render other versions invisible. These discussions have often concerned oral history in museums and to some extent in archives. How do we approach interviews that may have been collected maybe 50, 20 or 10 years before we use them, interviews that have been collected by someone else in a different social, political and scientific context and/or purpose than we have as contemporary researchers? This paper will suggest a method for how to problematize and work with interviews that have been created/collected by a cultural institution.

In a research project (funded by the Swedish Research Council), “Swedish-Jewish refugee receptions. Narratives and negations of “Jewish” identities and communities in Sweden ca 1945–2010”, I work with narratives about and from ”Jews” in Sweden. The “Jew” has been a crucial category and even a stereotype in the formation of different Swedish national identities in different social contexts over time. In contrast to most other research projects with a focus on narrative material I want to analyse how a marginalized group like the Swedish Jews are negotiating their own identities and communities by othering and marginalizing or including other Jewish groups over time. I will do this by examining how the Swedish Jewish refugee activities have been narrated in different materials and contexts over the period 1945–2010. In this paper I will focus on how Swedish Jewish identities and communities have been negotiated in relation to Jewish refugees and survivors in Sweden in individual life stories. Who are talking about Swedish-Jewish identities/communities in relation to refugee work and the Jewish survivors in their life stories? How and what is narrated about Swedish-Jewish identities/communities? How are ”the Swedish-Jews” and the ”survivors” related to the Swedish-(Jewish) society in the individual life stories? How are different groups and conceptions of identities created, while defined and categorized in the narratives about the refugee reception/activities? I work with material from the archive “Jewish memories” at the National Museum of cultural history (Nordiska museet). During the years 1994 –1998 the National Museum of Cultural History collected autobiographical material (interviews and written life stories) from three categories of people with Jewish origin; Jews who were born in Sweden, Jews who fled to Sweden before and during the Second World War, and Jews who came to Sweden from the concentration camps. The paper will also address epistemological and methodological questions about working with material (narratives, interviews and life stories) that have been created/collected by an institution such as the National museum of cultural history. Why was the collection of “Jewish memories” initiated at/by the Nordiska museet? What broad assumptions and specific issues animated / initiated the collection of “Jewish memories”? What intellectual, social, national and international contexts and influences shaped the collection of narratives?

With the point of departure in discussions on knowledge production within the research filed of oral history and Judith Butler’s discussions on vulnerability and agency this article explores the collecting practices and archiving of stories from one group that often is referred to as vulnerable in Swedish society, the Jewish minority. The analysis is based on life stories kept in the archive of the Nordic Museum in Stockholm (Nordiska museet), that came about as the result of project focusing on Jewish memories in Sweden. The article explores in which ways the different actors – the professionals from the museum and the interviewees – in the knowledge production reaffirmed or contested prevailing discourses about Jewishness in the 1990’s and how this is manifested in different ways during the collecting process, archival practices and in the archived materials. The analysis demonstrates how a memory institution, despite the best intentions, might contribute to maintaining stereotyping discourses on for example Jewishness. However, the analysis also gives examples on how vulnerability enters agency when some of the individual Jewish narrators resisted certain descriptive discourses on Jewishness during the interviewees and the archival process. Hence, an important conclusion from this study is that the power of the knowledge production in the archive does not only belong to the initiators and interviewers working with the collection, but also to the individual narrators – when their acts of resistance is recognized as central in the creation of the collection and its archived narratives

Panelsamtal i samband med invigningen av utställningen Oktober 1943 – Das Schicksal der Juden aus Dänemark