Monuments Cast Shadows: Remembering and Forgetting the ‘Dead Survivors’ of Nazi Persecution in Swedish Cemeteries

In July 2020, two Holocaust memorials disappeared from a Jewish cemetery in Stockholm where Holocaust survivors who died soon after coming to Sweden for medical treatment in 1945 are buried. Though it occurred in the midst of both the global #TakeItDown movement and the Swedish government’s plans to establish a Holocaust museum in Sweden, this removal garnered no media attention or public outcry. Moreover, it was not, as might be expected, a case of antisemitic vandalism but a planned removal by the Jewish Community in Stockholm. This chapter takes this unexpected example of contested spaces of memory and heritage as a point of departure to consider and reflect on how ‘dead survivors’ of Nazism buried in Sweden have been commemorated. The analysis considers five Swedish cemeteries by delving into the sites’ past and present, the presence and absence of monuments and other forms of memorialization and contextualization, and how these aspects relate to the discursive and historiographical treatment of victims of Nazi persecution who came to Sweden in both historical and contemporary contexts, particularly in relation to issues of gender, place, and identity and belonging.