Northern trajectories of Stutthof memory: letters from Sweden to Iceland by Stasys Vainoras and Vytautas Meilus

Abstract

The publication presents, for the first time, letters written in 1945–1946 from Sweden by Vytautas Meilus and Stasys Vainoras, former prisoners of the Stutthof concentration camp, to their friend from Kaunas, Teodoras Bieliackinas, who was living in Iceland at the time. It also includes a translation from German of Stasys Vainoras’s testimony regarding the evacuation of Stutthof prisoners in the most severe physical condition, which began on April 26, 1945. All texts are supplemented with commentary. The introduction provides the biographical and historical context of these documents, reviews references to Meilus and Vainoras in Stutthof historiography, and discusses the significance of ego-documents in the field of historical and cultural memory.