Voices from the Holocaust

The Story of the Ravensbrück Archive

Abstract

This article contains narrative stories about the origins and evolution of the widely acclaimed Ravensbrück Archive Project at Lund University, as well as my personal journey that led to my involvement in this project. The project resulted in the recovery, translation to English, digitization, and publication by the Lund University Library of one of the Holocaust's most unique archives. The Ravensbrück archive includes a collection of over 500 systematically collected eyewitness testimonies from survivors of the former Ravensbrück concentration camp (which primarily housed women and children), handwritten in Polish by Zygmunt Lakocinski, and a treasure trove of unique artefacts carried to Sweden by the survivors, including prisoner diaries, notebooks, correspondence, original artwork, photographs, drawings, poems, handwritten teaching aids for the children, and a tiny mirror made out of cardboard and glass shards. This long lost archive provides unique insights into the treatment of women
and children in the Holocaust. I also offer my personal thoughts on the significance of this archive to the world, and why it was so important to give these women and children their voices back after 70 long years of deafening silence.