Elsa Brandstrom: A Swedish Heroine 
By Marta Lindquist 
It is not often that a woman is able to gather around her name 
the interest and admiration of her whole country for more than a 
fleeting moment. This, however, has been the good fortune of Elsa 
Brandstrom; when in July of 1920 she returned to Sweden, after 
giving five and a half years of her life to charity work among war 
prisoners in Russia and Siberia, she took the place of a national hero¬ 
ine in the hearts of the entire Swedish people. And this place she 
will keep forever; her name can never be forgotten, but will always 
he mentioned in reverence and love as one among Swedish women 
whom the nation regards with particular and justifiable pride. 
No doubt Elsa Brandstrom’s life would have passed calmly, had 
not the World War interfered and caused this young daughter of 
General Brandstrom, Swedish Minister in Petrograd, to offer her 
services to the unfortunate sufferers. At the time the war broke out, 
Elsa Brandstrom was living in Petrograd, and she immediately placed 
herself at the disposal of the Russian Red Cross; she received com¬ 
plete training as a nurse and later helped caring for the sick prisoners 
in that city. When in 1915 aid was first sent to the prisoners in Siberia, 
Elsa Brandstrom joined that division and entered for the first time 
this land of misery. 
In her book entitled A mong War Prisoners in Russia arid Siberia 
from 1914 to 1920 (Bland Krigsfdngar i Ryssland och Sibirien 
1914-1920) which was published in December, 1921, Elsa Brand¬ 
strom depicts some of the numerous prison camps, and her de¬ 
scriptions in their unadorned truthfulness give a horrible picture of the 
cruelties which she had to witness and combat during several years 
of devoted work in the service of humanity. The houses in general 
were wretched huts unfit for human beings, barracks built about two 
meters below the surface, their tiny windows on a level with the 
ground, and their bare sleeping places void of any sign of bedclothes. 
The miserable food consisted chiefly of moldy buckwheat, frozen pota¬ 
toes, and rancid lard. Often the most primitive toilet and sanitary arti¬ 
cles were lacking, as also light and heat. Besides, the prisoners 
were treated with blunt indifference to their sufferings and with the 
most brutal cruelty in meting out punishment. During the first years 
of the war, epidemics raged in most of the prison camps, and Elsa 
Brandstrom in her book especially dwells upon five of the most af¬ 
flicted: Stretensk, Krasnojarsk, Novo Nikolajevsk, Omsk, and Tot- 
skoje, in which conditions were particularly revolting. Prisoners in¬ 
fected with the plague were left entirely to themselves without any 
care whatsoever; the floor and the bunks were filled with the sick, 
