While many, if not most, memes are harmless fun, others foster misogynistic stereotypes, willfully distort and obscure history, and spark abusive behavior on social media. Six years ago, I came across one of these and decided to uncover the real history behind the photo, never expecting the effect it would have.

Chapter 14 in “Fallen Monuments and Contested Memorials,” edited by Juilee Decker. This chapter, co-authored with Malin Thor Tureby, takes an unexpected example of contested spaces of memory and heritage as a point of departure to consider and reflect on how ‘dead survivors’ of Nazism buried in Sweden have been commemorated. The analysis considers five Swedish cemeteries by delving into the sites’ past and present, the presence and absence of monuments and other forms of memorialization and contextualization, and how these aspects relate to the discursive and historiographical treatment of victims of Nazi persecution who came to Sweden in both historical and contemporary contexts, particularly in relation to issues of gender, place, and identity and belonging.

Although the Polish survivors of Nazi persecution who came to the refugee camp in Öreryd were healthy enough to be moved from quarantine and hospitals, they were far from "recovered." They had just begun their long journey – physically, emotionally and psychologically – away from the atrocities they, their families and their homeland had been subjected to. Öreryd, like the other Swedish refugee camps, was only a short stop on the survivors' journeys from a life under Nazi oppression to something new and as yet unknown. (The chapter is in Swedish only.)

Among the hundreds of sites that housed survivors of Nazi persecution who came to Sweden in the spring and summer of 1945, one of the largest was at the small village of Öreryd. Between June 1945 and September 1946, around a thousand Jewish and non-Jewish Polish survivors came to this site. This article contributes to filling a gap in refugee history in Sweden, dealing with how survivors experienced Swedish refugee camps and shaped the refugee camp environment on their own terms.

This article makes visible and analyzes survivor testimonies gathered in interviews between Jewish and non-Jewish Polish survivors of Nazi persecution in Sweden in 1945–1946.

Sweden's rise to one of the most gender equal countries in the world did not occur because women won the "battle of the sexes", but rather because their access to equal rights benefited all of society.

Trump is what we might call a “pecuniary barbarian”: a member of the financial and social elite who, in the theory of Progressive Era economist and sociologist Thorstein Veblen, “is of a parasitic character, and [whose] interest is to divert what substance they may to their own use, and to retain whatever is under their hand.”

While the Green Book has become something of a buzzword lately thanks to Hollywood, the “mother” of the essential guide for African Americans navigating Jim Crow America has been overlooked and all but lost to history.

Visitors fixing their gaze on the imposing towers of the medieval cathedral in Lund, Sweden may not realize it, but 12 little heads are closely watching their every move. Created to represent the future of mankind, they peer out from a split in the protective cloak of the Skyddsmantelmadonnan sculpture.

What Harriet Beecher Stowe’s 1852 novel Uncle Tom’s Cabin did for the abolition movement in the United States, Fredrika Bremer’s 1856 novel Hertha did for the women’s movement in Sweden. Bremer’s boldly feminist novel graphically illustrated women’s oppression under Sweden’s antediluvian laws, and prompted a heated public debate that contributed to emerging social and legal changes for women. It also inspired an arm of the Swedish women's movement that continues to advocate for women today.

History has a way of being forgotten, whether by accident or design, especially when it’s painful. Histories with straightforward and happy endings make us feel good about ourselves and more hopeful about the outcome of our own uncertain times. Those that lack resolution or defy the need for an optimistic conclusion frequently exist in varying degrees of figurative darkness – ignored, neglected, forsaken. Sometimes, the darkness is also literal – a place so tucked away from view that the eyes of the collective consciousness barely need to look away to forget.

Junk history is embodied perfectly in a recent viral meme that portrays a nineteenth-century Persian princess with facial hair alongside the claim that 13 men killed themselves over their unrequited love for her. While it fails miserably at historical accuracy, the meme succeeds at demonstrating how easily viral clickbait obscures and overshadows rich and meaningful stories from the past.

A major New York City airport is named in honor of her brother, but Gemma La Guardia Gluck’s story of surviving Ravensbrück concentration camp as the political prisoner of Adolf Eichmann unjustly exists in the shadows of history.

In Stockholm's Northern Cemetery (Norra begravningsplatsen) is the large and well-maintained tomb of Count Folke Bernadotte, a member of the Swedish royal family whose role in negotiating the release and transport of some 21,000 prisoners of Nazi concentration camps to Sweden is well-documented. In the Jewish area of the cemetery not far away, lie the derelict and all-but-forgotten graves of 100 victims of the Holocaust. These were mostly very young women, who died not long after arriving i

If history can teach us something right now, it’s that the way to topple a bloated, greedy, inarticulate and dishonest political leader from New York who poses as a populist while perpetuating government cronyism is by revealing him to his base in a way they can understand.

When the son-in-law of POTUS 2 John Adams used the valuable government position he had gained through nepotism to help a Venezuelan friend start a revolution against Spain, he threatened a precarious peace between America and Spain, and endangered the lives of unsuspecting American citizens. Two centuries later, it’s a salient reminder of how nepotism and politics can be a disastrous combination.

...when looking at the columns of granite slabs listing the victims' names – grouped by the family name of the survivor or survivors who came to Sweden – along with their dates and places of birth and death, it is possible to comprehend how important a memorial like this is to the collective consciousness.

When writers broadly categorize and “market” women in history using terms like rebels, bad-asses, shady ladies, rejected princesses, etc., they are – unconsciously or otherwise – perpetuating the tradition of distorting women and their role in history.

From Art Nouveau theatrical poster to a Japanese art gallery, a unique serpent bracelet designed by Czech artist Alphonse Mucha for French actress Sarah Bernhardt has coiled its way through more than a century of history – disappearing, reappearing, and intertwining itself with an eclectic group of extraordinary people.