Elsa Brändström

Elsa Brändström (26 March 1888 – 4 March 1948) was a Swedish nurse and philanthropist. She was known around the world as the "Angel of Siberia" (German: Engel von Sibirien).

Elsa Brändström was born in 1888 in Saint Petersburg, the daughter of the Military Attaché at the Swedish Embassy, Edvard Brändström, and his wife Anna Wilhelmina Eschelsson. In 1891, when Elsa was three years old, Edvard Brändström and his family returned to Sweden. In 1906, Brändström, now a General, became the Swedish Ambassador at the court of Tsar Nicholas II and returned to St Petersburg.

Elsa spent her childhood in Linköping in Sweden. From 1906 to 1908, she studied at the Anna Sandström Teachers Training College in but returned to St. Petersburg in 1908. Her mother died in 1913. Elsa was in St. Petersburg at the outbreak of World War I and volunteered for a position as a nurse in the Russian army.

In 1915, Elsa Brändström went to Siberia together with her friend and helper Ethel von Heidenstam for the Swedish Red Cross, to introduce basic medical treatment for the German and Austrian POWs, who were treated barbarically by the Russians. Up to 80 percent of the POWs died of cold, hunger and diseases. As Elsa Brändström visited the first camp and witnessed the inhuman situation, she decided to dedicate her life to these Germanic soldiers. The men from Germany and Austria, so many close to death with Typhoid fever, looked upon the tall, blue-eyed, blond-haired nurse and benefactress as an angel. She was known as the "Angel of Siberia" from then on, even to the communist Russians.

Back in St. Petersburg, she began the establishment of a Swedish Aid organization. Her work was severely hindered by the outbreak of the October Revolution in the year 1917. In 1918, the Russian authorities withdrew her work permit but, nevertheless, she did not give up. Between 1919 and 1920, she made several trips to Siberia until she was arrested in Omsk and even condemned to death for spying, later the sentence was revoked and Brändström was interned in 1920. After her release, she returned to Sweden (via Stettin with the ship MS Lisboa, where the German government gave her an official public reception) and organized fund-raising for the former POWs and their families, afterwards she emigrated to Germany.

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