Svenska Röda Korset

The origins of the Swedish Red Cross date back to 1865 as Föreningen för frivillig vård av sårade och sjuka i fält (Association for the Voluntary Care of the Wounded and Sick in the Field) was formed according to the guidelines laid down at a congress in Geneva the previous year and contained in the well-known Geneva Convention of 1864. The association's first president was the Duke of Östergötland, later King Oscar II. 1886, the organization changed its name to the Swedish Red Cross Society.

The activities of the Red Cross in the decades immediately following its foundation were relatively modest in scale and did not require an extensive organizational apparatus. Only at the turn of the century did the activities and the organization take on a more solid form.

In 1906, a major reorganization took place, and the Swedish Red Cross was divided into three different associations: the Red Cross Association for Voluntary Medical Care in War, the Red Cross Women's Association, and the Red Cross Nursing Home. A separate board of directors headed each association, and a supervisory board consisting of board members of the three associations was set up as a superordinate body. In order to achieve cooperation with the Queen Sophia Association for the support of army and navy medical care, which had existed since 1900, the Central Council was created at the same time, which became the highest body of the voluntary medical system. The cooperation that was now established between the country's two medical associations gradually took on increasingly firm forms, especially after the outbreak of the First World War, and in 1915, the two associations merged. The new organization was given its present name, the Swedish Red Cross.

In 1921, a committee was set up to prepare the formation of the Youth Red Cross. However, it was not until 1923 that this new organization became a permanent part of the Red Cross.

The Red Cross's original and for a long time only task was to support the medical care of the armed forces. However, the first association took a lively part in international relief work already at an early stage.

During and after the First World War, aid to the victims of the war reached an unprecedented scale. Solving the new tasks within the framework of the existing organization proved impossible at an early stage. Several temporary bodies were created, including the Prisoner of War Relief Committee, the Prisoner of War Exchange Bureau, the War Children's Bureau, and the Bureau for Relief Activities in Russia. Of these bodies, the Relief Committee had by far the greatest task. Established on June 17, 1915, its first task was distributing gifts to POW's in Russia, Germany, and Austria-Hungary. The work was gradually organized at a head office in Stockholm and branch offices in Petrograd, Moscow, Yekaterinburg, and Rostov. A number of delegates were sent to the various prison camps to take immediate charge of the work. In addition to its gift-giving activities, the Committee's letter-writing and research on POWs were very important.

At the end of the Second World War, the Swedish Red Cross was asked to carry out an operation to evacuate prisoners from Nazi concentration camps. On March 8, 1945, the Red Cross was ready with an expedition of 250 personnel and 75 vehicles, including 36 buses. The buses were painted white with red crosses. Because of this, the action has become known as “The White Buses.”

The journey went via Denmark to northern Germany and at the same time fuel for the vehicles and thousands of food parcels were transported on the ship Lillie Matthiessen.

The journeys included Neuengamme and Sachsenhausen concentration camps, but also Dachau, Schömberg, and Mauthausen. By the end of the expedition on May 1, around 15,500 people had been transported to Sweden. Around 4,000 of them were Jewish Holocaust survivors.