By Matilda Svensson Chowdhury
The boy in the black and white photograph is smiling widely at the camera. He is well-groomed and well-dressed in a white shirt and a dark jacket. His eyes are glistening. This photograph is the first picture in a Swedish exhibition on Aktion T4. Across the boy's chest there’s a turquoise text: “Aktion T4 – on the view of human beings in Nazi Germany”. The boy in the picture is named Robert and a little further in the exhibition, we learn how his mother cunningly was able to could save him from becoming a victim of T4.
The Living History Forum (The LHF) is a Swedish public authority [myndighet] which, on behalf of the Swedish government, shall “promote work to enhance democracy, tolerance and human rights with special focus on the Holocaust.” It might seem a bit strange to have a public authority working with these issues, but this is the way it has been in Sweden for the last almost 20 years. A large part of the work the LHF is doing is directed at school children and thus there is almost always an educational framing to the produced material, for example in the form of teachers’ guides. One of the first information materials, which was developed already in 1998, was the book “Tell Ye Your Children...”. This book was however intended primarily for an adult audience and came about as a part of the first information campaign, Living History. To date, more than 1.5 million free copies have been distributed in Sweden.
The boy in the black and white photograph is smiling widely at the camera. He is well-groomed and well-dressed in a white shirt and a dark jacket. His eyes are glistening. This photograph is the first picture in a Swedish exhibition on Aktion T4. Across the boy's chest there’s a turquoise text: “Aktion T4 – on the view of human beings in Nazi Germany”. The boy in the picture is named Robert and a little further in the exhibition, we learn how his mother cunningly was able to could save him from becoming a victim of T4.
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| Picture of Robert, exhibition on Aktion T4 |
The Living History Forum (The LHF) is a Swedish public authority [myndighet] which, on behalf of the Swedish government, shall “promote work to enhance democracy, tolerance and human rights with special focus on the Holocaust.” It might seem a bit strange to have a public authority working with these issues, but this is the way it has been in Sweden for the last almost 20 years. A large part of the work the LHF is doing is directed at school children and thus there is almost always an educational framing to the produced material, for example in the form of teachers’ guides. One of the first information materials, which was developed already in 1998, was the book “Tell Ye Your Children...”. This book was however intended primarily for an adult audience and came about as a part of the first information campaign, Living History. To date, more than 1.5 million free copies have been distributed in Sweden.
