Selected records from the Sigtuna Foundation in Sweden

Sigtunastiftelsen 

The Sigtuna Foundation is a private non-profit foundation, established in 1915 in Sweden. The organization is under the leadership of the Executive Director who servers under the board of nine people. The Foundation offers a neutral ground to people of different backgrounds, traditions and/or viewpoints who wish to meet, interact and learn from one another in an atmosphere of mutual respect. After the war ended, through an arrangement with UNRRA, Sweden agreed to receive 10,000 survivors from Bergen Belsen.They were brought from Luebeck with hospital ships to various harbors and divided among 135 accommodations. Sigtuna was the only such location in the Stockholm region. The SS Kastelhom made three voyages between Luebeck and Stockholm with about 200 patients in each, most of them were young Jewish women. Many of the patients were in such poor condition that they died shortly after their arrival in Sigtuna. The last parts of the Sigtuna hospital were closed at the beginning of 1946. 

Selected records from the Sigtuna Foundation in Sweden 

folders 2 417 digital files, JPEG and PDF 69 pages of photocopies, 

Records from a hospital, set up in Sigtuna, Sweden, in 1945, which cared for about 1200 patients who had been released from the Bergen Belsen concentration camp. The collection includes photographs of patients and nurses, administrative and organizational records, including pages from the Statement of Operations, newspaper clippings, including an article in a college magazine about the hospital, as well as materials from Marthe Rydback, who worked as a nurse at the hospital, including a copy of an emblem of the hospital, a visitor book with signatures of the patients, photographs, Christmas cards, postcards, and thank you letters from patients, as well as some records of the patients. 

Copyright Holder: Sigtunastiftelsen 

Arranged in five series: 1. Photographs of hospital patiens and staff; 2. Hospital visitor book, correspondence, letters and postcards; 3. Organizational records, 1945; 4. School magazine"Sigtunaringe" (nr 3, 1945), and newspaper clippings from"Siguna Bygden" 1945; 5. Statement of Operations, 1945-1946. Photographs numbered 23D-33D were taken by the janitor Jonas Andersson Fisk and the others were donated by the sister of Marthe Rydback. The digital folder"Folio photo" contains raw photos taken of the folio photos from an the exhibition"Back to Lif" on display at the Sigtuna Foundation in 1995 by Magdalena Kellerman and Pia Kristina Garde.