Victoria Van Orden Martínez’s thesis, Afterlives: Jewish and Non-Jewish Polish Survivors in Sweden Documenting Nazi Atrocities, 1945-1946, examines how Polish survivors who came to Sweden in 1945 as refugees were engaged in transnational social and political processes, including documenting Nazi persecution and contributing to postwar humanitarian, human rights, and justice efforts.
My thesis takes one group of survivors in Sweden as refugees under its lens: Jewish and non-Jewish Polish survivors of Nazi persecution who came to Sweden in 1945 as ‘repatriates’ – refugees expected to stay for a limited period – who were associated with the Polish Research Institute in Lund, Sweden (PIZ).
PIZ, a transnational initiative that documented the experiences of Polish survivors of Nazi persecution for history and justice in 1945 and 1946, was one of the few such initiatives undertaken by survivors who were refugees in a country not directly involved in the Second World War. It is also noteworthy as one of the few survivor historical commissions of the early postwar period that involved and documented both Jewish and non-Jewish survivors and their experiences.
Polish survivors’ roles in this endeavor have been under-analyzed, and the historically important PIZ archive of survivor artifacts and witness testimonies, held at the Lund University Library in Sweden, continues to be described as though the primarily female Polish survivors were only passive contributors to the collection. Afterlives examines some of the specific ways the survivors contributed to social and political processes taking place in the postwar period; what role the survivors’ vulnerability, agency, and various forms of structural support had in their activities and efforts; and what part gender and other differences played in the actions of the survivors and continue to play in their discursive and historiographical interpretations and constructions.
My findings demonstrate how Polish survivors associated with PIZ, although living in Sweden in layered states of precarity and vulnerability, deployed their past activism and networks of resistance and support, and applied their knowledge, ethics, and practical strategies to improve their conditions and pursue justice. In doing so, Afterlives contributes new insight that begins to fill gaps in existing Swedish and international research on the Second World War and Holocaust, survivor historical commissions and documentation centers, displaced persons in the postwar era, post-conflict relations between Jewish and non-Jewish Poles, migrant knowledge and postwar humanitarian, human rights, and justice efforts.
In addition to providing perspectives missing from various entangled social and political processes of the early postwar period, I have drawn on archival material that has been under-analyzed or overlooked by scholars. Moreover, I have applied interdisciplinary theoretical concepts to contextualize the processes taking place ‘behind the scenes’ of an early initiative to document the Holocaust, such as the circulation of knowledge, restorative justice, ethics of care, refugee-led humanitarianism, and witnessing.
The result is a thesis that counters embedded narratives that have obscured the roles of historical actors who due to their gender, nationality, political status, and so forth, have been treated as passive and non-political figures. Furthermore, it makes important contributions to knowledge of the Second World War, the Holocaust, and the postwar period, provides a transnational history in the place of previously disjointed national narratives, and raises questions about possible continuities and interconnections in a variety of research areas.
Victoria Van Orden Martínez, PhD Candidate in History, Linköping University
Martínez, who is originally from the United States, worked for many years as a public historian and began researching and writing about survivors of Nazi persecution in Sweden during that period. She will defend her thesis on January 19, 2024, with Professor Tony Kushner of the University of Southampton as her opponent.
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