Victoria Van Orden Martínez

I am a historian with a Ph.D. in History and I work as a researcher at Lund University in Sweden. I am also the editor-in-chief of Collections: A Journal for Museum and Archives Professionals, published by Sage. Formerly, I worked as a freelance writer and independent historical researcher. This site includes published work from both my academic research and my former work.

A Bit of History •

The Mittwerda List: “Stolen” Evidence of Nazi Atrocities

“There is an original document, dated April 6, 1945, which is one of the departure lists for the mythical camp called Mittwerda—perhaps the last such list, but in any case the only one which, to my knowledge, remains intact. It includes 480 names,” explained Germaine Tillion, a French survivor of the Ravensbrück concentration camp, in her 1973 book titled Ravensbrück. “The identical meaning of ‘Mittwerda’ and ‘gas chamber’ had been obvious from the first to the prisoners who had the responsibility of maintaining the Mittwerda lists, since they recorded the names and numbers of the victims as they were taken away.”[i] The existence of this singular document showing the names of individuals sent to the gas chamber, known as the Mittwerda list, is thanks to former Polish political prisoner Halina Strzelecka (1907–1968), who was involved in the early collection work in Sweden of survivor evidence and testimony and who later became one of the nine survivor employees of the Polish Research Institute in Lund.
The Holocaust as European Memory / Förintelsen som europeiskt minne •

‘Our duty to present and future generations’: Victims’ Efforts to Document the Nazi Atrocities

My contribution to the anthology The Holocaust as European Memory / Förintelsen som europeiskt minne (Lund: Sisyfos förlag, 2025), edited by Ulf Zander, highlights unique items in the collection of the Polish Research Institute in Lund (PIZ) held at Lund University Library. This collection, also known as the “Ravensbrück archive,” was recently placed on the UNESCO Memory of the World register in recognition of its cultural and historical significance. The cover of the book is a nod to this archive in that it features a sketch of two unknown women in the Ravensbrück concentration camp that was made in August 1944 by Polish artist and political prisoner Jadwiga Simon-Pietkiewicz, who smuggled it and other artworks out of the camp and to Sweden in May 1945. In my chapter, I mention Simon-Pietkiewicz and her artworks, which I have also written about more extensively elsewhere. In fact, the entire collection of PIZ materials at Lund University Library and the corresponding artifacts at Kulturen i Lund have been hugely important to my past and ongoing research.
De Gruyter Brill •

Women’s Work, Women’s Networks: Correspondence and Knowledge Circulation Between the Polish Research Institute in Lund and Survivor Historical Commissions in the Early Postwar Period

Throughout history, women's work has been unseen, invisible labor. To participate in male-dominated professions and discussions, they frequently had to do so from within the private sphere, often the home, but also behind the scenes in institutional contexts. This chapter seeks to gain a better understanding of the role of women’s informal networks during the early postwar period, activated through correspondence, in the circulation of knowledge – with regard to both the Nazi atrocities and the efforts themselves (methods, materials, etc.) – between the Polish Research Institute in Lund, Sweden (PIZ) and other similar initiatives, especially the ones conducted by survivors of Nazi persecution.
EHRI Document Blog •

Unraveling “Sabotage Socks”: The Materiality of Nazi Concentration Camps in Sweden – Document Blog

Through the metaphorical unraveling of the socks at Kulturen, we can begin to understand them beyond their current contextualization as “sabotage socks” of a specific type. That they were made of a silky material and were given as a gift, provides alternative contextual clues as to the social life of these socks and raises questions like: Would socks intended for the SS – with or without defects – be knitted using silk or something akin to it? Would socks intended to injure the wearer be given as a gift? Our point, however, is not to argue against the contextualization as “sabotage socks” but rather to tease out layers of meaning.
Zagłada Żydów. Studia i Materiały/Holocaust Studies and Materials •

Emotions as testimony: Documenting the psychological aspects of witnessing in an early survivor historical commission

In 1945–1946, nine Polish former prisoners of Nazi concentration camps (one Jewish and eight non-Jewish) living in Sweden as refugees were employed to record other Jewish and non-Jewish Poles’ experiences of persecution for history and justice. Although none of these individuals were psychologists, they believed recording the psychological aspects of witnessing was essential to their documentation work. The written testimonies they recorded, which are preserved in the archive of the Polish Research Institute in Lund, Sweden (PIZ), thus include revealing and often caring comments about the witnesses’ emotions and emotional responses during the interviews. I argue that this method made emotions integral to the testimonies and validated emotions as testimony. The significance of this argument is magnified when non-Jewish Poles interviewed Jewish Poles and vice versa since the comments reveal how they were relating to one another on a personal and sensitive level. This article builds on the author’s previous and ongoing analyses of these witness testimonies through close readings of the comments that consider the psychological aspects of witnessing. By contextualizing these comments and the testimonies they refer to alongside theories on the value of emotions for knowledge, the author explores what knowledge the method of recording witness testimonies contributed to creating in the early postwar period and what knowledge it creates now.
History of Intellectual Culture •

Survivors of Nazi Persecution, Refugees, Knowledge Actors

This article studies how Jewish and non-Jewish Polish survivors of Nazi persecution arriving in Sweden in 1945 as repatriates and associated with PIZ were knowledge actors who, along with Bolin and Łakociński, were part of a cultural translation of knowledge. I argue that driven by a dedication to gathering evidence and testimonies from other survivors for the sake of history and justice, t he survivors not only brought knowledge of persecution and suffering under theNazis to the PIZ initiative but also knowledge of scholarly and popular methods developed in Eastern Europe before and during the Second World War.
Migrant Knowledge blog •

Suffering, Displacement, and the Circulation of Knowledge about Nazi Atrocities

“‘We suffered and can understand and orient this material.’ This quote suggests that suffering serves a key function in the circulation of knowledge because it can make sense of what might otherwise be disorienting material. The notion that suffering has epistemic value is progressive. Yet, this statement was made in 1948, not by a philosopher but by a Polish-Jewish survivor of Nazi persecution, Luba Melchior, who was a refugee in Sweden.”
A Bit of History •

Jadwiga Simon-Pietkiewicz: Reviving Forgotten Women Artists

Both the artist and her art are extraordinary. As a prisoner in Ravensbrück, she had risked death to draw and paint her fellow prisoners in the hope that the paintings, if not the people she painted, would survive to show the world what these women suffered at the hands of the Nazis. The risks she ran were not simply in the painting and drawing but also in “stealing” the necessary supplies needed to create these works of art and in effectively hiding them from her captors. Some of the artworks were smuggled out before her liberation while others were carefully concealed in her clothing on her arrival to Sweden.
A Bit of History •

What Women Want: A Review of “Political Women” by Maggie Andrews

Just because women have been formally excluded from politics for much of recorded history does not mean they have not been political actors. Even when disenfranchised and denied equal rights, women have fought for causes important to women and all people. Political Women by historian Professor Maggie Andrews (2024, Pen & Sword History) demonstrates this by exploring fifteen campaigns led by British women during the twentieth century that shaped the current century.
Professor Buzzkill History Podcast •

The "Princess Qajar" Meme: Junk History and Conceptions of Beauty

Dr. Victoria Martinez joins to debunk and explain Junk history is embodied a 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. It’s junk history! Episode 548
Culture Unbound •

Bridging Research Praxes Across Pluralities of Knowledge (special issue of Culture Unbound)

How can researchers working both within and external to academia in all
disciplines and areas of research recognize knowledge produced in other spheres
and engage more ethically and collaboratively with that knowledge and those
who create and circulate it? This was the central question behind the Bridging
Research Praxes Across Pluralities of Knowledge conference held at Linkoping
University in Sweden and on Zoom in April 2022. At the heart of the conference
was the recognition that searching for answers to this question cannot be left to
arbitrary and haphazard engagements and encounters but must be motivated,
reflected on, and formulated clearly in ongoing discussions. This special issue
of Culture Unbound continues the discussions begun at the conference.
Svenska Historiska Föreningen •

Afterlives: Jewish and Non-Jewish Polish Survivors of Nazi Persecution in Sweden Documenting Nazi Atrocities, 1945-1946

Victoria Van Orden Martínez’s thesis, Afterlives: Jewish and Non-Jewish Polish Survivors of Nazi Persecution in Sweden Documenting Nazi Atrocities, 1945-1946, examines how Polish survivors who came to Sweden in 1945 as refugees were engaged in transnational social and political processes, including documenting Nazi persecution and contributing to postwar humanitarian, human rights, and justice efforts.
Holocaust and Genocide Studies •

Witnessing the Suffering of Others in Watercolor and Pencil: Jadwiga Simon-Pietkiewicz’s Holocaust Art Exhibited in Sweden, 1945–46

In the Holocaust’s immediate aftermath (1945–1946), a small gallery in Lund, Sweden exhibited the paintings and drawings of Polish artist Jadwiga Simon-Pietkiewicz, which depicted her former fellow inmates in the Ravensbrück concentration camp. This exhibit and subsequent exhibitions elsewhere in Sweden marked rare instances of early postwar Holocaust art displayed in a country that had been relatively unaffected by the Holocaust. By analyzing the response of the Swedish public and press to the artwork in these exhibits, as well as Swedish and international responses to “atrocity photos” of the liberation, the author broadens our understanding of Holocaust art, early testimonies, and agency and resistance during and after the Holocaust.
Fallen Monuments and Contested Memorials •

Monuments Cast Shadows: Remembering and Forgetting the ‘Dead Survivors’ of Nazi Persecution in Swedish Cemeteries

Chapter 13 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.
Någonstans i Sverige: En antologi med lokalhistoriska perspektiv på Sverige och Förintelsen •

Uppståndelse i en kyrkby: Hur tusen polacker som överlevt nazisternas förföljelser startade nya liv i Smålands skogar (translated by Ylva Mörk)

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.)
EHRI Document Blog •

Documenting the Documenter: Piecing together the history of Polish Holocaust survivor-historian Luba Melchior

As the only Jewish survivor of Nazi persecution employed as part of the primarily non-Jewish PIZ historical commission and documentation center, Luba Melchior was responsible not only for interviewing other survivors, but also for the Jewish “section” of the institute. In this capacity, she coordinated and met with Dr. Nella Rost at the World Jewish Congress’ Jewish Historical Commission in Stockholm and collaborated with the Conseil des Associations Juives de Belgique (Council of Jewish Associations of Belgium) in Brussels. Although her role at PIZ is well known, she exists in most published research as little more than a footnote.
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