In this podcast episode, the object of our attention is a delicate paper heart, a small work of art, crafted by Elisabeth Salomon. You can enfold the 'heart', like a flower, and on each petal, you will find the name of the woman or girl (sometimes a boy or man) who made it, maybe a date or place, and endearing messages of gratitude. Elizábeth was not the only woman who crafted this paper heart. There are many paper "hearts", all with their own uniqueness, in the Swedish Holocaust Museum, that was opened in the summer of 2023. Many carry a message on one of the petals that is more or less similar to the one by Elizábeth: "Andi erinnerung liebe Vrou Wanda", not so good German for "of/for the memory of dear Mrs Wanda".
Elizábeth, called Bössi by family, Salomon, was Romanian and Jewish. We don't know much about her life until she was one of the prisoners of Bergen Belsen when the camp was liberated on 15 April 1945. Like all prisoners in the camp, she was in a horrible condition, close to death.
Inthe summer of 1945, Sweden agreed to allow 10,000 ex-inmates of Belsen, Buchenwald and other German concentration camps to travel to Sweden and stay there for a period of six months recuperation. Elisabeth and a relative, possibly cousin, Laura, who also survived the camp, were brought on one of the so called White Boats to Sweden where they recovered in a hospital. It was here that they met Wanda Lanzer, an Austrian-Jewish woman who had sought and found refuge in neutral Sweden and was now involved in helping the survivors of the camps. Like many others, Elisabeth felt very grateful to Wanda and developed a special bond with her. She wrote to her also after her release from hospital and Wanda helped her with books and housing. After a while though, Elisabeth returned to Romania. We don’t know anything about her from then on.
The paper hearts are now part of the collection of the recently opened Swedish Holocaust Museum in Stockholm.
Featured guests:
Yael Fried is curator at the Sveriges Museum om Förintelsen, the Swedish Holocaust Museum. Podcast host is Kevania de Vries-Menig.
Music accreditation: Blue Dot Sessions. Tracks - Opening and closing: Stillness. Incidental, Gathering Stasis, Pencil Marks, Uncertain Ground, Marble Transit and Snowmelt. License Creative Commons Atttribution-NonCommercial 4.0 International (BB BY-NC 4.0).
Andy Clark, Podcastmaker, Studio Lijn 14