When Bereaved of Everything: Objects from the Concentration Camp of Ravensbrück as Expressions of Resistance, Memory, and Identity
When Bereaved of Everything: Objects from the Concentration Camp of Ravensbrück as Expressions of Resistance, Memory, and Identity
Johanna Bergqvist Rydén 0
0 Department of Historical Archaeology and AHU, MNO-huset, Lund University , Box 117, S-22100 Lund , Sweden
When survivors from the Ravensbrück concentration camp arrived in Sweden in spring 1945, some of the objects they brought with them from the camp were collected and preserved. These are modest in appearance, but were - as oral testimonies show - invaluable in camp. The concentration camp context of obliteration stretches the limits of interpretation of material culture to its extreme. In this article the objects are discussed as expressions of resistance, memory, and identity. These immaterial values were among the most vital coping strategies used by the prisoners against the dehumanization laid upon them by the camp administration. The material culture was central in enabling, upholding, and realizing these.
Ravensbrück; Material culture; Resistance; Memory; Identity
Introduction
The social significations and cultural contextual implications of objects are continually
discussed within the disciplines of material culture. Now and then the material remains
of the concentration camp infernos of WWII are used as a means to put into perspective
the potential power of an object, the possible multiple layers of meanings, and
representations beyond the obvious
(e.g., Cole 2013; Kelly 2010; Klang Eriksson
2002)
. The symbolic and existential density of the material cultures of concentration
camps thus serves to illustrate the gravity of meanings that objects have the potential to
carry, and as such they are a powerful tool: the context of obliteration stretches the
limits of interpretation of material culture to its extreme.
This material culture is, however, to an increasing extent also being studied and
discussed for its own sake, for the information it carries not only about the potency of
material culture in general, but about the very contexts in which it exercised its primary
importance
(e.g., Myers 2008, 2011; Sturdy Colls 2015; Theune 2011, 2015a, b)
.
In spring 1945, around 7,500 survivors, mostly women and children from the
concentration camp of Ravensbrück, arrived in Malmö in southern Sweden
(Leo
2006:512)
. On arrival they were given new clothes as their old ones, together with
other belongings, were burned, out of fear of contagion. At the Kulturen museum in
Lund there is, however, a collection of objects collected from and donated by survivors
upon their arrival. Most of it is on permanent display in the exhibition Att överleva –
Röster från Ravensbrück (To survive – Voices from Ravensbrück) (also digitally
displayed at http://www.kulturen.com/utstallningar/basutstallningar/att-overleva/; the
artifact database is available at http://carl.kulturen.com/web/). At the University
library in Lund there is, in addition to this, a large documentary archive, with
material which was partly used in the post-war trials in Hamburg, including interviews
committed to paper shortly after the arrival of the survivors in Sweden (http://www.ub.
lu.se/en/voices-from-ravensbruck).
In this article the objects are investigated as expressions of resistance and
sabotage, of memory and hope of a future, and of identity and human integrity.
Close readings of interviews of Ravensbrück survivors further inform us about
the gravity of the importance of material culture in the camp, produced under
uncharitable living conditions.
The Ravensbrück Material in Lund, Sweden
Many of the survivors arriving in Sweden were of Polish descent. Zygmunt Łakociński
(1905-87), at the time employed as a university lecturer in the Polish language at Lund
University, volunteered as an interpreter. Together with Professor of History, Sture
Bohlin, he organized a project where over 500 survivors were interviewed. Here, the
interviews will be referred to by their number, as this is how the information is most
easily traced, but the personal names of the interviewees are actually documented in the
reports. The project was called Swedish Institute of Foreign Affairs’ Polish Working
Group in Lund (officially shortened PIZ; and this abbreviation is henceforth used in this
article). PIZ was financed by the Swedish government and ran between October 1945
and November 1946.
The interviewees were encouraged to speak freely, but if needed they were to be
guided by Borientation questions^. The interviews were to be carried out as
matter-offactly and objectively as possible and the interviewers were not to influence the
interviewees in any way. Notes from a meeting of February 16, 1946 state that B[a]s
unwavering principles [for the interview process] are established that: nothing is to be
changed in the independent work of the witnesses, not in any way is the witness to be
influenced while giving evidence^ (Saml. Łakociński, Z, PIZ Vol. 44:6b, translated by
the author; Rudny n.d.). T (...truncated)