In celebration of the 75th anniversary of the liberation of Nazi-era concentration camps, Florida Gulf Coast Universitys Wilson G. Bradshaw Library has partnered with FGCUs Center for Judaic, Holocaust, and Genocide Studies, Sarasota-based non-profit Better Futures, and Swedens Lund University and Malm Museum.
The librarys spring 2020 exhibition To Life: The Liberation of Ravensbrck brings to Southwest Florida, for the first time, the story of the White Buses, a rescue operation undertaken by the Swedish Red Cross which brought thousands of women and children from Germanys Ravensbrck concentration camp to freedom at Malm Harbor.
To Life: The Liberation of Ravensbrck celebrates liberation from the perspective of the women and children rescued by the White Buses. Lund University and Malm Museum have generously loaned photographs, journals, drawings, clothing, and other personal effects of the survivors and rescuers to FGCU from their Ravensbrck archives. Through their stories, To Life shares a message of hope, heroism, compassion, and the perseverance of the human spirit.
In October 2019, the Wilson G. Bradshaw Librarys Archives, Special Collections, and Digital Initiatives team traveled to the Ravensbrck Memorial Site in Germany on a research and fact-finding mission aimed at faithfully recounting the stories of the women and children who survived Ravensbrck concentration camp. From there, the team traced the steps of the survivors all the way to Malm Harbor in Sweden, the place where they found freedom.
