The white buses.

In the spring of 1945 at the end of World War II Germany was losing the war. Britain was bombing the country day and night.

That was when the Swedish Red Cross implemented a major rescue operation to fetch prisoners out from the German concentration camps.

When the British heard about the rescue operation they demanded that all the buses must be painted white with the Swedish flag on the sides and the red cross on the roof. That would make the buses easier to detect from the air. That is how the rescue operation came to be called the White Buses.

The rescue operation concluded on 1 May 1945 before the war ended. In total, the White Buses rescued about 15,500 people from the Nazi camps.

When the released prisoners arrived to Malmö it was hard to find room for all the men, women and children. All the available facilities in schools, sports halls and even entertainment halls were already in use.

Ernst Fischer, then the director of Malmö Museum, took a brave decision to turn the museum into a centre for refugees. During the spring and summer of 1945 about 2,000 refugees were temporarily housed in the museum.