In the spring of 1945, prisoners liberated from Nazi concentration camps arrived in Malmö on the White Buses. Many of these prisoners were women from different backgrounds who had been in the Ravensbrück camp. Their eyewitness accounts and the objects they brought with them are preserved for posterity in an archive in Lund, known as the Ravensbrück Archive.

The Torsten Söderberg Foundation has contributed to the University Library’s efforts to catalog, digitize, and transcribe the contents of the archive. For several years now, this important material has been available in digital form to the general public and researchers worldwide.

“Highlighting testimonies from the Holocaust is important, not least so that future generations can learn from the victims’ stories. The fact that UNESCO is now designating the Ravensbrück Archive as a Memory of the World honors the vital archival work carried out in 1945, which we all now have access to digitally,” says Maria Söderberg, chair of the Torsten Söderberg Foundation.

The archive includes 5,500 meticulously recorded pages and over 500 unique eyewitness accounts, mostly in Polish, from Ravensbrück and other concentration camps. The Ravensbrück Archive is available on the Witnessing Genocide web portal.