Harbour of Hope team is looking for survivors
The team behind Harbour of Hope has started documenting more of the Holocaust witnesses coming to Sweden in Spring 1945.
In January 2012, when Harbour of Hope was shown in Jerusalem a lady raised her hand after the screening. ”Excuse me”, she said. ”Did you see the little girl in the film with a blanket in her hand, who just had came off the ship? It is me”, she told the astonished audience. It was an amazing moment when the Harbour of Hope team realized that it’s still possible to identify survivors in the unique archive footage, which the film is based on.
The original archive material belongs to SVT, the Swedish National Television. The footage was mainly shot on April 28, 1945 the day several hundreds of concentration camp survivors came with ships from Copenhagen. Many of them came from the Ravensbrück camp, but also from other camps.
Director Magnus Gertten states:
’We want to put names to the thousand of nameless faces we see arrive in the Malmö harbour. Please spread the word that we are looking for survivors, who came to Malmö on April 28, 1945. There’s a possibility that the photographers in the harbour documented their arrival on this day. We are also interested in testimonies from survivors who came with the Swedish Red Cross mission to Sweden during the period March to May and the refugees who came during the summer of 1945. We want to share their stories of liberation and starting a new life in Sweden.’
The Harbour of Hope team is doing this research and documentation in co-operation with SVT. At this point it is not known exactly how the results of the continued research will be published, but it might even end up in another documentary film.
If you are one of the survivors coming to Malmö in Spring 1945 or have relevant details on these survivors, please contact the director Magnus Gertten at magnus.gertten@autoimages.se
Here you can read more about the Harbour of Hope search for survivors.
Harbour of Hope is currently screening at international film festivals. To stay updated on the progress of the film you can follow the Harbour of Hope Facebook page http://www.facebook.com/HarbourOfHope