Women, Archives and the Work of Memory
Pia-Kristina Garde in conversation with Ulla Chowaniec, Lecturer at Lund University
In 1945, women who had survived Nazi concentration camps arrived in Sweden. They carried memories of unimaginable suffering, but also stories of courage, friendship, survival and the hope of beginning life again.
Some of these women wrote down their experiences. Others told their stories to someone who could write for them. Their words, photographs, letters and memories became part of archives that preserve their voices to this day.
In this conversation, Pia-Kristina Garde and Ulla Chowaniec share their encounters with these remarkable women and their stories. Drawing on Garde’s lifelong work tracing survivors and their lives, and Chowaniec’s research into the Ravensbrück Archive in Lund, they will explore what happens when we return to testimonies many decades later. Who were the women behind these documents? What became of them after the war? And what can their stories tell us today?
Through personal stories, photographs and discoveries made in the archives, this conversation is about remembering not only what these women endured, but also who they were, the lives they rebuilt, and the voices they left for us to hear.
Above all, it is a conversation about memory, human connection and hope — and why these stories still matter.
The event will conclude with an open conversation with the audience.
About the Speakers:
Pia-Kristina Garde (b. 1951) is an actress and author based in Sweden. She has written about vulnerable people, including impoverished artists, dying patients, and survivors of the concentration camps. Her work about the survivors was published in Sweden and later in an expanded Polish edition, featuring additional chapters in Polish, published in 2009. She has also devoted much of her professional life to researching the writer Karin Boye and the wide circle of people around her.
Urszula Ulla Chowaniec is an Associate Professor of Polish Literature at Lund University, specializing in the Polish language, Jewish women’s writing, and women’s literature in Yiddish. Her research focuses on contemporary Polish women’s literature, including the work of writers such as Wioletta Grzegorzewska, and explores themes of memory, identity, trauma, and post-Holocaust narratives. She has written extensively on the works of Zenia Marcinkowska Larsson, Chava Rosenfarb, and Irena Klepfisz. She teaches Polish language and literature, Polish and Yiddish women’s culture, and memory studies. She is also actively involved in literary outreach and public cultural engagement.
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