Cordelia Edvardson(1929-2012)

Cordelia Maria Edvardson, born on January 1, 1929 in Munich, Bavaria, Germany, was a Swedish journalist, writer and Holocaust survivor. She was raised Catholic. However, since her father, Hermann Heller, was Jewish, Cordelia Edvardson was arrested by the Nazis and deported to the Theresienstadt and Auschwitz (prisoner A3709) concentration camps during the Holocaust. Her maternal grandfather had also been Jewish, and converted to Catholicism. After immigrating to Sweden in 1945 she began her career in journalism. Between 1977 and 2006 she was the Swedish newspaper Svenska Dagbladet's Middle East correspondent, stationed in Jerusalem. Cordelia Edvardson has written five books of prose and poetry dealing with her years in the Nazi concentration camps, immigration and Jerusalem. In 2004, filmmaker Stefan Jarl, made a documentary about Cordelia and her life, called "Flickan från Auschwitz / The Girl from Auschwitz". A so-called Stolperstein (Stumbling stone) with Cordelia Edvardson's name was placed at her childhood street in Berlin on November 2, 2008. A Stolperstein is a small plaque commemorating victims of Nazi persecution who was laid in the pavement on the sidewalk in front of the house where the victim lived or worked. Cordelia Edvardson passed away on October 29, 2012, in Stockholm, Sweden.