The First Testimonies

When the Soviet liberation of Majdanek became known in July 1944, it became clear that the Nazis had constructed a system of systematic and industrially organized mass murder. Shortly thereafter, Swedish newspapers began publishing testimonies and attempts to describe what had taken place.

An early example was Arbetar-Tidningen, which in August 1944 wrote about the death camp Kulmhof (Chełmno), describing it as a systematic extermination camp.

The Germans built the largest ‘death factory’ in Europe […] in Lublin […] such a complete collection of terrible instruments and inventions for the Germans’ lust for extermination.

As more camps were liberated, details emerged about gas chambers, crematoria, and mass graves. The newspaper Hudiksvallstidningen described the technical solutions used to carry out the killings:

They were technically excellently designed […] where hundreds of people were killed daily with gas, steam, and even by shooting.

The brutal system was presented as efficient and well-organized. Testimonies spoke of trains filled with people who were immediately sorted for labor or execution.

In April 1945, Hugo Valentin wrote in Dagens Nyheter about estimates of the number of victims:

According to the Nazi daily newspaper Danziger Vorposten on 13 May 1944, approximately 5 million Jews had been ‘eliminated’, a figure which, however, is lower than the results of later estimates.

Through the Swedish press, the public gained early insight into the scale of the genocide, despite the fact that the war was still ongoing.