The Teddy Bear
More than half of the Norwegian Jews became refugees, mainly in Sweden. The refugees were settled in different cities such as Norrköping, Stockholm, and Uppsala where they found work and housing. They tried to live as normal a life as possible, with children born and couples married. Frida Leimann was one of the refugees who got married in Sweden. “I remember her crying while ironing her wedding dress,” her sister later said. Their thoughts were always with family and friends who had been deported. “Isn’t it cruel treating innocent people this way, putting them on a boat, sending them to the darkest hole of Europe - death’s antechamber,” Ethel Mesner wrote to her sister in Chicago shortly after her escape.
This teddy bear was given to the newborn Renée Meieran in Norrköping, Sweden, in July 1944.