Ok. Lets begin.
Lovö.
“In the beginning of August we had to leave Hjälmared.
With a heavy heart I watched from the bus as the camp disappear into the distance.
Right up to the end, I kept waving frantically to Tord, the camp supervisor,
with whom I had had a little romance.
At Alingsås we boarded the train that was to take us to Stockholm.
“What I’m about to describe here is my experience on Lovö.
After a long bus trip from Stockholm Central Station
we arrived at a place that was enclosed in barbed wire.
At the sight of it I let out long-suppressed sobs that I could not stop.
The place reminded me of our camp in Vedel (Germany) −
even the barracks were of the same dull grey.
The staff who received us tried to console me -
- that the barbed wire was merely a formality intended to protect us from curious nearby residents,
but it was very hard for me to calm down.
After having installed us in a barracks (No. 7) along with seven girls
Their names were: Kati, Pacsi, (Adèle), Zsuzsi, Rella, Isabelle, Hédi, and me. Livia.
And we began to familiarise ourselves with the place.
It wasn't particularly inviting,
but the advantage was that you could easily go in to Stockholm,
and Hédi and I did so as often as we could...
“We have known each other since 1945. That's 73 years now.
“We were to go to Sweden directly from Bergen Belsen
and it was a boat trip on white boats called "Rönnskär"
that took us to Lübeck, and that is where we met.
We introduced ourselves and somehow...we each realized we'd found a friend”.
“Lovö − I mean it was summer of course, and we were living in these barracks,
and like I said, I didn't stick around − I ran off to Drottningsholm Park.
The park was wonderfully vast and there was lots to see − it was summertime...
“There was a laundry service on the Drottningsholmsvägen,
where you can now see buildings on both sides,
and I got to know a girl there, a Swede, who was also working,
and I was invited to her home.
I was amazed!
They had masses of modern art on the walls, even if it wasn't originals.
But I thought,
when a working-class family − the father was a labourer − could have their own house,
such a beautiful home, and so on, this is where I wanted to stay”.
“We discovered Stockholm − we met people whom we got to know; we got invited to their homes.
There was a Jewish family that we happened to meet on the street,
and we were invited to their home − and we appreciated that especially.
They were the Rubenowitz family.
And then we met other people, and we tried to go to
museums and theatres − as much as we could afford.
“As a young girl we listened a lot to radio and classical music at home,
and it was an amazing experience to be able to go to the Konserthuset hall for the first time
and hear wonderful symphony concerts”.
“At the end of the summer, around August,
a bunch of ladies came, all looking for a domestic helper.
So I became a domestic helper with the Källström family who lived
on Bolinder square on the tenth story.
“It's a big building that is still there,
above the Serafimer Hospital. And that's where I became a domestic helper.
The domestic helpers' afternoon off was on Wednesday.
And we'd get together at Ogo.
There was a famous café on Kungsgatan that isn't there any more, that was called Ogo.
“We were not used to drinking coffee; we were there for the cookies
and delicious pieces of cake.
We sat in the Ogo café and ordered cake,
and I especially remember this custard square.
We sat there eating and they asked what we wanted to drink.
"Just a glass of water, please".
So we sat there, each with her piece of custard pastry and a glass of water and we talked −
there were about six of us − no doubt we sat there a long time. Finally they came over to us
we couldn't sit there any longer − we had to leave, thank-you very much.
We hadn't ordered anything to drink and that wasn't proper. It wasn't the Swedish way!
“I'd completely forgotten about that. Now when she mentioned Ogo
it made me think of that.
Do you remember when we were thrown out of Ogo because we sat and talked too long?
Oh? No, I don't remember...
No, perhaps you weren't there either...
some of us were there at any rate.
“Don't remember especially,
but the Swedes looked at us like we were some sort of Martians,
like we were from another planet. We were so extremely different −
they had never seen such strange beings before.
“Yeah, but you know, we dressed differently, we behaved differently −
we were too loud, we had dark hair.
No, they hadn't seen any immigrants period.
There were no immigrants in Sweden at all. That was kind of the first wave of "refugees"...
“Why did they call us refugees? We hadn't fled −
we had been invited there by the Swedish government.
We'd been basically shipped here, or something.
So I don't know why they called us refugees.
Then, gradually, we became "immigrants".
We never became immigrants because we obtained Swedish citizenship,
but this designation gave way to us being called "immigrants".
Except that today they really are refugees because they are fleeing from something”.
“I wanted to learn Swedish
and I learned Swedish simply because the newspaper, Dagens Nyheter,
came every morning, and before I served coffee etc. to my employers
naturally I leafed through the Culture section.
And I wanted to learn Swedish − there was nothing for us −
no Swedish-Romanian dictionary or anything − it was awful.
But there there was a course at the so-called citizens' school on Birger Jarlsgatan.
Every Monday evening.
It was very far to go and not worth much,
as there were twenty of us of ten nationalities,
so the poor teacher had to translate every word into different languages”.
“The Jewish congregation arranged dance evenings for young people
so they could meet each other.
And I always went there with one of my friends
and one evening I went with Isa, one of the seven.
You weren't there and not Hédi either.
I had on a red dress − red was my favourite colour −
it was a dress I'd been given by some kindly matron. I couldn't afford to buy my own.
And there I sat with my friend. A good-looking young man asked me to dance −
he was blond and blue-eyed. I always had a weakness for blue eyes.
I danced with him and he was extremely nice, and then we danced again, and so on.
Then I had to go home and he asked if I minded if he walked me to the train −
we were taking the Djursholm train.
Then he asked if he could see me again and I said yes.
He got the telephone number to the place where I lived, and that's how it started.
But, I mean it was up and down until we really found one another and he proposed.
But the interesting thing is that..so we've been married for fifty something years...
that he was there with a buddy, and before he asked me to dance, he said to his buddy:
"Ya see the girl in the red dress?" "Yeah, what about her?"
"I'm going to marry her" he said.
And the buddy has confirmed that he did say that − otherwise I wouldn't have believed him.
“Hans Fränkel”.
"We had a good friend − Bertil Schönkopf...
"Oh, so you were part of it, too...?
"...who came from Skåne in southern Sweden,
who got his graduate's cap, and we marched with him to Stockholm's Skansen park
to experience the midsummer night.
"We lived − Hédi and I, that is − in a furnished room on Grev Magnigatan,
on the ground floor.
And both of us were working at the chocolate factory, and it was Midsummer Eve.
It wasn't a full-day holiday; it was a half-day holiday.
I remember we got home early. We were tired.
We didn't know what special evening it was, but we were both in a very bad mood.
We crawled into bed very early, even though the sun was still high in the sky.
And we were both in bed. It was no later than seven.
It often happened that the young men we knew walked past and knocked
on the window from the street, since it was on the ground floor.
Someone knocked on the window and we looked out,
and there stood this Bertil Schönkopf.
‘Girls, what are you doing?’ ‘We've just gone to bed’.
‘Are you crazy? Have you gone to bed on Midsummer Eve?’
‘Yeah, what's Midsummer Eve?’
‘Get dressed, and you'll find out.’
So we jumped into our clothes and went with Bertil to Skansen,
and apparently that's where we met.
Our first Midsummer in Sweden, and we didn't know what it was.
Magic it was not. We were extremely depressed just then −
I mean, our mood went up and down all the time.
Both of use had days when we sank pretty deep into depression
and didn't think the future had anything...
but at any rate the sun was up
all night long. It must have been a beautiful night,
for a change”.