F4 Evacuated: Sofia Taikon

Sofia Taikon, a Polish Romni, was deported to Auschwitz with her family in 1943. In the summer of 1944 she and other prisoners were moved to Ravensbrück. In 1945, during the last months of the war, the Swedish Red Cross, under its president, Count Folke Bernadotte, launched an evacuation programme for Scandinavians in German concentration camps. White buses marked with the symbol of the Red Cross ferried some 15,000 prisoners to safety, including many other nationalities. Sofia Taikon was one of them. After the war she became one of the most respected representatives of the Swedish Roma. She died in 2005.