Arbetarrörelsens flyktinghjälp
- Fackliga och politiska emigranters hjälpkommitté
- Labour Movement Refugee Relief
Extent and Medium
55 volumes of textual material
Biographical History
The Labour Movement Refugee Relief was formed on 15 May under the name Fackliga och politiska emigranters hjälpkommitté (Trade Union and Political Emigrants' Aid Committee) by the Swedish Trade Union Confederation (LO), the Social Democratic Party (SAP), the Stockholm FCO, the Stockholm Workers' Commune and the Swedish Social Democratic Youth League (SSU). The committee's activities ran from 1933 to 1950. The idea was to provide material and legal support to German-speaking social democratic and trade union refugees.
It required extensive correspondence to determine whether individual refugees were eligible for support. As the number of refugees increased, the organization formed subcommittees in Gothenburg, Malmö, and Eskilstuna, as well as a refugee camp in Klockarsvedja.
In 1938, the committee changed its name to Arbetarrörelsens flyktinghjälp (Labour Movement Refugee Relief).
Scope and Content
The series E/1/12 contains correspondence with the Matteotti Committee in Copenhagen, the refugee committees in Oslo and Helsinki regarding the entry and support of German and Sudeten German refugees 1938-1944, and with Social Democratic refugee aid committees and other organizations in France, Great Britain, Switzerland, Hungary, Austria, Belgium, and Poland 1938-1939. Some of the refugees that the organization corresponded with and about were Jews. The archive also contains personal files from the period 1933–1961, some of which contain documents about Jewish refugees in Sweden.
Sources
Frohnert, Pär, ”Swedish Refugee Relief NGOs in the Shadow of Nazi Germany: Possibilities and Restraints in ‘the People’s Home’”, Journal of Migration History 5: 2: 277–303.
Frohnert, Pär, "Social-democratic solidarity: The Labour Movement Refugee Relief, refugees and the Swedish state, 1933–45." In Reaching a state of hope: Refugees, immigrants and the Swedish welfare state, 1930–2000. Edited by Mikael Byström and Pär Frohnert. Lund: Nordic Academic Press, 2013, 102–115.
Rules and Conventions
EHRI Guidelines for Description v.1.0