In this report we discuss how testimonies from survivors of the Holocaust and Nazi persecution have been defined, collected, and used in Sweden during the period 1939-2020. Although we were originally asked by the Living History Forum to focus our research overview on Holocaust survivors (meaning Jewish survivors of the Shoah) we decided to include other survivor experiences as well. This choice was not made to diminish or marginalize Jewish survivor stories. Rather, we decided to use a broad and inclusive definition of the term survivor (“överlevande”) because we have found that, in a post-war commemorative and historiographical context, different survivor histories and identities are inextricably linked. Polish Catholic survivors in Sweden helped bring awareness to the Holocaust and Jewish survivors were some of the first to study and explain Porrajmos, Nazi Germany’s genocide of the Roma. These liaisons led us to focus on survivor activism and agency, and the solidarities that came thereof, rather than the particularities of one group’s experiences. In addition to applying a broader definition of the term survivor, we also chose to extend the time-period specified in the brief for this report. Instead of beginning in 1945, we take 1939 as our starting point in order to underscore the fact that Holocaust testimonies were collected even before the end of the Second World War. Using the Oneg Shabbat archives, established in 1939 and the historical commissions that were formed at the end of the War as a backdrop, we thus begin by explaining how and by whom collections of Holocaust testimony first commenced. Here, we emphasize the fact that little scholarship exists on the situatedness of Swedish collection efforts in a greater European and international context. Furthermore, although some efforts have been made recently to highlight that the survivors themselves were some of the most ardent collectors of testimony, these aspects need to be further explored in relation to earlier historiographies on Swedish collections. This argument continues throughout the second section of the report in which we discuss efforts during the 1950s and 1970s to collect survivor stories and study survivor afterlives in a Swedish context. Continuing with “the Era of the Witness”, we discuss how different definitions of the term testimony and methodologies of collecting developed through the creation of large-scale witnessing projects in the United States during the 1980s and 1990s. This is done in order to understand the methodologies (as well as the ontologies that underpinned them) that informed Swedish Holocaust collections such as Jewish Memories at the Nordic Museum and The Memory Archive collected by the Committee for Living History. Through these discussions we question the assumption that testimonies are simply a giving and taking of a narrative. Based on the American psychologist and Holocaust researcher Henry Greenspan’s writings on listening to Holocaust survivors, we argue that the term testimony is only one of many terms that describe the ways in which survivors express their memories. Perhaps, we contend, it is time to consider a different set of terms – stories, recounting, ways of telling – so that we can grasp the entire spectrum of how survivors communicate, and have communicated their thoughts, ideas and memories. We also problematize the fact that discourses on survivor silence have obscured further knowledge on different forms of survivor expression, and that more research is needed in order to understand how and within which institutional contexts survivors have told their stories. Finally, we address questions regarding the second and third generation of survivors. What are their roles in telling the stories of their parents and grandparents? How can we understand their own stories in relation to Holocaust memory? These are questions that are beginning to emerge within Swedish Holocaust research but that need more attention in relation to literary and artistic expression, practices of archiving and processes of digitalization and open access. Even though we were asked to write an overview of research that concerned definitions as well collections and use, it was difficult to say anything conclusive about the first of these three. To this date, no research exists that significantly engages with definitions of the terms “överlevande” or “överlevare” which are commonly used today to refer to survivors in Sweden. We, therefore, hope to see more studies that aim to understand both how these terms have developed over time, but also how they relate to the formation of survivor identities and conditions for commemorating and remembering the Holocaust. These issues become increasingly important as steps are taken towards a Swedish Holocaust museum. Hopefully, this new institution will view survivors, not merely as living documents of Holocaust history, but as people with agency and a history of their own.