The Emigration Department

The unit consists in documents relating to help for Jewish refugees in Sweden after the end of WWII. The help was provided by the refugee sections of the state body and Jewish and American sheltering organisations. It includes information on migrant societies about the return of refugees to their home countries through collective repatriation transports. Among the Jewish rescuers were mainly those whose homelands were in Western Europe. The number of people who received financial assistance for their emigration from Sweden through the refugee section amounted to over 6,000 people for the period 1945–1950. The emigration department’s archive includes the archive about handling migration issues from the Autumn of 1945 until 1966, i.e. from before and after the department’s formal existence (1946–1956). The oldest documents in the archive are from around 1940. Women refugees are also mentioned in the documents