Stories of survivors

Follow some destinies from persecution to Sweden.

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Stories of survivors

Discover the stories of Holocaust survivors who, for different reasons and under varying circumstances, came to Sweden as a result of the Holocaust.

Before, during, and after the Holocaust, survivors arrived in Sweden. Some stayed and lived the rest of their lives here, others moved on to different countries, and some died shortly after reaching Sweden.

Choose a person to learn more about

Eva Israel

When Eva was barely three years old, SS soldiers came into the family kitchen searching for her father Gottfried. The situation for German Jews was getting worse and the family tried to get an entry permit to the USA. Instead, Eva and her mother Elsbeth came to Sweden. Her father Gottfried never got the opportunity.

Alice Grosz

Alice wears a disguise, but the veil of her widow's costume is turned up and her face can be seen when she meets someone she knows in the street. He recognises her and knows that Alice is Jewish. He exchanges a few words with her and wishes her good luck.

Czesław Aredzki

In August 1943, when Czesław was having his usual cigarette out in the street in Końskie in Poland, he was arrested by the Gestapo. Czesław didn't understand why he was being taken away. Nobody explained to him that he was being sent to Auschwitz.

Lilli and Walter Brünn

When the National Socialists came to power in Germany in 1933, Lilli and Walter Brünn were busy running the Berlin department store they had taken over after Walter’s father. Eventually. Lilli and Walter were granted Swedish residence permits and entered the country with identity cards stamped with the letter J.

Kiwa Zyto

Kiwa was only seven years of age when Poland was engulfed by war and he had only been in school for one week. When the war finally ended in 1945, he was 12; he had no idea where his mother was nor whether any of his family had survived.

Hanna Dimitri

Hanna held on tightly to her little sister Anita’s hand. The sisters had been taken to the extermination camp Auschwitz-Birkenau. Hanna was 10 years old, Anita three years younger, and she remembered clutching her sister's hand tightly throughout the ordeal, afraid they would be separated.

Lieselotte Jacks

Lieselotte Jacks was 15 years old in June 1939. Her parents, Gertrud and Alfred, had sent her to Sweden on the Kindertransport from Berlin to Gothenburg. They had no idea if they would ever meet again.

Tobias Rawet

In May 1944, eight-year-old Tobias was living with his family in the Łódź ghetto in Nazi German-occupied Poland. On 7 May, he spent his first money on a Mother’s Day card for his mother Ester.

Header photo: Refugees on board a ferry in 1945. They came to Sweden on Folke Bernadotte’s White Buses. Photo: K. W. Gullers, Nordiska museet (CC BY-NC-ND 4.0).