WEBVTT

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Ok. Lets begin.

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Lovö.

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“In the beginning of August we had to leave Hjälmared.

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With a heavy heart I watched from the bus as the camp disappear into the distance.

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Right up to the end, I kept waving frantically to Tord, the camp supervisor,

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with whom I had had a little romance.

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At Alingsås we boarded the train that was to take us to Stockholm.

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“What I’m about to describe here is my experience on Lovö.

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After a long bus trip from Stockholm Central Station

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we arrived at a place that was enclosed in barbed wire.

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At the sight of it I let out long-suppressed sobs that I could not stop.

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The place reminded me of our camp in Vedel (Germany) −

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even the barracks were of the same dull grey.

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The staff who received us tried to console me -

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- that the barbed wire was merely a formality intended to protect us from curious nearby residents,

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but it was very hard for me to calm down.

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After having installed us in a barracks (No. 7) along with seven girls

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Their names were: Kati, Pacsi, (Adèle), Zsuzsi, Rella, Isabelle, Hédi, and me. Livia.

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And we began to familiarise ourselves with the place.

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It wasn't particularly inviting,

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but the advantage was that you could easily go in to Stockholm,

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and Hédi and I did so as often as we could...

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“We have known each other since 1945. That's 73 years now.

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“We were to go to Sweden directly from Bergen Belsen

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and it was a boat trip on white boats called "Rönnskär"

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that took us to Lübeck, and that is where we met.

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We introduced ourselves and somehow...we each realized we'd found a friend”.

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“Lovö − I mean it was summer of course, and we were living in these barracks,

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and like I said, I didn't stick around − I ran off to Drottningsholm Park.

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The park was wonderfully vast and there was lots to see − it was summertime...

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“There was a laundry service on the Drottningsholmsvägen,

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where you can now see buildings on both sides,

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and I got to know a girl there, a Swede, who was also working,

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and I was invited to her home.

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I was amazed!

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They had masses of modern art on the walls, even if it wasn't originals.

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But I thought,

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when a working-class family − the father was a labourer − could have their own house,

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such a beautiful home, and so on, this is where I wanted to stay”.

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“We discovered Stockholm − we met people whom we got to know; we got invited to their homes.

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There was a Jewish family that we happened to meet on the street,

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and we were invited to their home − and we appreciated that especially.

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They were the Rubenowitz family.

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And then we met other people, and we tried to go to

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museums and theatres − as much as we could afford.

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“As a young girl we listened a lot to radio and classical music at home,

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and it was an amazing experience to be able to go to the Konserthuset hall for the first time

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and hear wonderful symphony concerts”.

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“At the end of the summer, around August,

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a bunch of ladies came, all looking for a domestic helper.

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So I became a domestic helper with the Källström family who lived

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on Bolinder square on the tenth story.

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“It's a big building that is still there,

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above the Serafimer Hospital. And that's where I became a domestic helper.

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The domestic helpers' afternoon off was on Wednesday.

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And we'd get together at Ogo.

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There was a famous café on Kungsgatan that isn't there any more, that was called Ogo.

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“We were not used to drinking coffee; we were there for the cookies

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and delicious pieces of cake.

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We sat in the Ogo café and ordered cake,

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and I especially remember this custard square.

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We sat there eating and they asked what we wanted to drink.

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"Just a glass of water, please".

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So we sat there, each with her piece of custard pastry and a glass of water and we talked −

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there were about six of us − no doubt we sat there a long time. Finally they came over to us

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we couldn't sit there any longer − we had to leave, thank-you very much.

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We hadn't ordered anything to drink and that wasn't proper. It wasn't the Swedish way!

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“I'd completely forgotten about that. Now when she mentioned Ogo

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it made me think of that.

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Do you remember when we were thrown out of Ogo because we sat and talked too long?

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Oh? No, I don't remember...

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No, perhaps you weren't there either...

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some of us were there at any rate.

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“Don't remember especially,

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but the Swedes looked at us like we were some sort of Martians,

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like we were from another planet. We were so extremely different −

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they had never seen such strange beings before.

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“Yeah, but you know, we dressed differently, we behaved differently −

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we were too loud, we had dark hair.

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No, they hadn't seen any immigrants period.

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There were no immigrants in Sweden at all. That was kind of the first wave of "refugees"...

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“Why did they call us refugees? We hadn't fled −

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we had been invited there by the Swedish government.

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We'd been basically shipped here, or something.

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So I don't know why they called us refugees.

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Then, gradually, we became "immigrants".

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We never became immigrants because we obtained Swedish citizenship,

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but this designation gave way to us being called "immigrants".

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Except that today they really are refugees because they are fleeing from something”.

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“I wanted to learn Swedish

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and I learned Swedish simply because the newspaper, Dagens Nyheter,

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came every morning, and before I served coffee etc. to my employers

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naturally I leafed through the Culture section.

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And I wanted to learn Swedish − there was nothing for us −

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no Swedish-Romanian dictionary or anything − it was awful.

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But there there was a course at the so-called citizens' school on Birger Jarlsgatan.

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Every Monday evening.

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It was very far to go and not worth much,

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as there were twenty of us of ten nationalities,

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so the poor teacher had to translate every word into different languages”.

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“The Jewish congregation arranged dance evenings for young people

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so they could meet each other.

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And I always went there with one of my friends

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and one evening I went with Isa, one of the seven.

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You weren't there and not Hédi either.

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I had on a red dress − red was my favourite colour −

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it was a dress I'd been given by some kindly matron. I couldn't afford to buy my own.

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And there I sat with my friend. A good-looking young man asked me to dance −

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he was blond and blue-eyed. I always had a weakness for blue eyes.

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I danced with him and he was extremely nice, and then we danced again, and so on.

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Then I had to go home and he asked if I minded if he walked me to the train −

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we were taking the Djursholm train.

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Then he asked if he could see me again and I said yes.

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He got the telephone number to the place where I lived, and that's how it started.

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But, I mean it was up and down until we really found one another and he proposed.

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But the interesting thing is that..so we've been married for fifty something years...

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that he was there with a buddy, and before he asked me to dance, he said to his buddy:

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"Ya see the girl in the red dress?" "Yeah, what about her?"

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"I'm going to marry her" he said.

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And the buddy has confirmed that he did say that − otherwise I wouldn't have believed him.

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“Hans Fränkel”.

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"We had a good friend − Bertil Schönkopf...

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"Oh, so you were part of it, too...?

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"...who came from Skåne in southern Sweden,

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who got his graduate's cap, and we marched with him to Stockholm's Skansen park

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to experience the midsummer night.

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"We lived − Hédi and I, that is − in a furnished room on Grev Magnigatan,

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on the ground floor.

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And both of us were working at the chocolate factory, and it was Midsummer Eve.

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It wasn't a full-day holiday; it was a half-day holiday.

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I remember we got home early. We were tired.

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We didn't know what special evening it was, but we were both in a very bad mood.

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We crawled into bed very early, even though the sun was still high in the sky.

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And we were both in bed. It was no later than seven.

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It often happened that the young men we knew walked past and knocked

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on the window from the street, since it was on the ground floor.

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Someone knocked on the window and we looked out,

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and there stood this Bertil Schönkopf.

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‘Girls, what are you doing?’ ‘We've just gone to bed’.

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‘Are you crazy? Have you gone to bed on Midsummer Eve?’

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‘Yeah, what's Midsummer Eve?’

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‘Get dressed, and you'll find out.’

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So we jumped into our clothes and went with Bertil to Skansen,

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and apparently that's where we met.

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Our first Midsummer in Sweden, and we didn't know what it was.

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Magic it was not. We were extremely depressed just then −

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I mean, our mood went up and down all the time.

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Both of use had days when we sank pretty deep into depression

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and didn't think the future had anything...

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but at any rate the sun was up

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all night long. It must have been a beautiful night,

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for a change”.