Exciting new Lund University archive will showcase Ravensbruck survivors

Woman facing right, in glasses, is Zita Tepper who came to Ravensbruck via Auschwitz. Post war, Zita came to the US, married, had one child and died in Atlanta, GA.

I was thrilled to see that Lund University, one of Scandinavia’s oldest and largest institutions for education and research, just announced they are working on creating an archive to preserve Ravensbruck concentration camp survivors’ stories. They already have a wonderful online research site full of Ravensbruck information, which has been very helpful to me in my research for Lilac Girls, but this new archive takes it to a new level.According to Sven Stromqvist, deputy vice chancellor for research at Lund, the testimonies of the Ravensbrück survivors represent an invaluable resource.

“What’s so exceptional about these testimonies is that they were given in real time, while the survivors’ wartime experiences were still fresh in their minds, not years or decades later,” he said. “We get constant inquiries from children and grandchildren of these survivors, as well as from scholars and researchers.” Prisoners’ notebooks, diaries, poems, recipes, photos, drawings and official Nazi documents, as well as transcripts of the 1946-47 trial in Hamburg of the Ravensbrück commanders and guards will be included in the new archives.

According to Stromqvist, all the written material will be translated, categorized, digitized and made available to a worldwide 21st-century audience through a searchable website and traveling exhibits.

Ravensbruck was the Nazi’s only all-female concentration camp, so it’s especially important to preserve the testimonies, this look into what an all-female camp was like. Hopefully at some point the exhibit will come to the U.S.!

Ad utrumque, ‘prepared for both’, is Lund University’s motto, referring to the book and the sword in the University’s 17th century seal. Today this motto can be applied to the way they are prepared to fight to keep history alive for generations who need to know these stories. Bravo to Lund for taking this on. You can read the whole article, including a few brief excerpts of survivors’ testimony, here: http://www.jewishjournal.com/los_angeles/article/swedish_university_to_archive_ravensbrueck_survivors_stories