Sweden and the Holocaust
Before the war, antisemitism did not become a mainstream political issue and Swedes were broadly critical of the violence of Nazi policy. In spite of this, the country continued to tighten its immigration laws and admitted few Jewish refugees from Nazi persecution. As part of the official policy of neutrality, Sweden maintained ties with Nazi Germany throughout the Second World War. Swedish diplomats were aware of the extermination of Jews as early as January 1942 but took no action. In the following months, news of the extermination was reported in detail by Swedish newspapers.
Swedish official attitudes towards the issue began to change in the aftermath of the arrest and deportation of Jews in
Background
Jews and antisemitism in Sweden
The Jewish population in Sweden was small but had grown rapidly in the aftermath of World War I as a result of Jewish emigration from Eastern Europe. A number of small anti-Semitic political groups and parties operated in the country, including the National Socialist Workers' Party (Nationalsocialistiska Arbetarepartiet) which emerged in 1933. John Gilmour writes "in its anti-semitic characteristics Sweden in the 1930s was in step with most other main-stream, democratic European societies".[1] Although discrimination and violence against Jews after the seizure of power by the Nazi Party in Germany in 1933 was widely known in Sweden, he stated that Swedish attitudes towards Jews were bound up with Sweden's own traditions and social history:
As a society, it remained stratified by class, hobbled by deference, rigid with formality and xenophobic, particularly towards Jews. Although in its anti-Semitism Sweden was firmly in the mainstream European tradition, Swedes largely rejected extremist Nazi policies and brutality. Yet, the combination of interest in racial categorisation and narrow nationalism coupled with a tradition of national self-preoccupation meant that most failed to appreciate the urgency of the pre-war plight of Jewish refugees. Many Swedes were only one generation away from grinding poverty, disease and malnutrition, both urban and rural. Not surprisingly, their first concern was for their own economic welfare.[2]
Sweden introduced controls on immigration for the first time in 1927 and subsequently tightened them further in 1938. This was motivated by "fear of large, uncontrolled streams of refugees", particularly Eastern Europeans and Jews.
Neutrality and World War II
Sweden had been
Åmark writes that "neutrality was not only the official policy of the government during the war, it was also the recommended attitude for Swedish citizens. A Swede should sit down in the boat, and not engage himself or herself in public demonstrations for or against any of the states at war."[10] In order to maintain its neutrality, national newspapers was censored and the government "really tried to suppress information on Nazi German brutality in general and on persecution of Jews and the Holocaust".[11] Nonetheless, there was some sympathy for Nazi war aims and anti-communism as well as Nazi racial theories which overlapped with the Nordicism. Several hundred Swedish nationals volunteered to serve in the Waffen-SS and some were reported to have served as guards at Treblinka extermination camp.[12]
The Holocaust
The German invasion of the Soviet Union in June 1941 marked an intensification in Nazi persecution of Jews. Mass killings soon began within occupied territories in the Soviet Union. The decision to begin the rounding up and deportation of Jews from other parts of German-occupied Europe for extermination had been taken by January 1942. In Sweden, the Ministry for Foreign Affairs received news about the policy of extermination. In a chance discussion in a train, the Swedish diplomat Göran von Otter was told of the extermination of Jews at Belzec extermination camp by an SS officer in August 1942. He reported the information to the Ministry in the hope that it would publicly condemn the atrocities, although no action was taken.[13] Even so, Paul A. Levine writes that "Swedish officials, and in fact much of the newspaper-reading public, had as much or more information about many details of the 'Final Solution' than their counterparts in other neutral or Allied countries".[9]
Although Swedish newspapers had reported on Nazi concentration camps since 1933, their coverage on the escalating persecution of Jews was uneven. Provincial conservative newspapers, in particular, published little on the subject until the Allied liberation of the camps in 1945. In spite of this, the Swedish press began to publish detailed accounts of the extermination of Jews in German-occupied Europe as early as the autumn of 1942 and Jewish newspapers such as Judisk Krönika and Judisk Tidskrif published regular reports on the subject.[14]
The authorities in German-occupied Norway began
Although Sweden became increasingly conscious of the Holocaust and involved in officially-sanctioned rescue attempts in the later years of the war, Paul A. Levine notes that "Sweden's government and people responded with a distressing lack of generosity towards those few Jews who needed help and were in a situation where Swedish help - both in the 1930s and early 1940s - might have made a difference".[9] However, he noted that "some Swedish officials, in contrast to their counterparts in other liberal democracies, chose increasingly often to engage in direct efforts to save Jews. Where they had earlier stood indifferent to the plight of some few Jews, they came to understand that their previous response had been inadequate. Crucially, these mostly mid-level officials were supported by their political superiors."[16]
In total, 10 Swedes have been recognised as Righteous Among the Nations by the Israeli institute Yad Vashem.
State-backed rescue efforts
Denmark, September–November 1943
Denmark had been invaded by Germany in April 1940 but had subsequently been able to retain a higher degree of internal autonomy than many other parts of German-occupied Europe until
Hungary, July–December 1944
Wallenberg arrived in July 1944. He was authorised to issue various forms of protective passes to Jews as the legation had already been doing on a small-scale on its own initiative.
White Buses
It was widely seen as inevitable that the Allies would win the war by early 1945.
Postwar representations
In the post-war years, the Swedish government placed emphasis on its humanitarian actions to save Jews as a means of deflecting criticism of its economic and political relations with Nazi Germany. Historian Ingrid Lomfors states that this "sowed the seed of the image of Sweden as a 'humanitarian superpower'" in post-war Europe and its prominent involvement in the United Nations.[13] In its portrayal of the policy of neutrality and wartime humanitarian assistance, Levine argued that, in the post-war years:
Swedish students have been taught that rather than assist "one side" or the other in pursuing their sordid nationalistic goals (and in fact the vast majority of Swedes wished for an Allied victory), their leaders 'fought' for peace - higher, more noble ideals than the ones motivating the belligerents. As a result of this interpretation, Swedish memory of the war is suffused with a sometimes rather smug sense of moral superiority, yet crucially, one shadowed by a lingering sense of guilt at not having participated in the struggle against Nazism.[22]
Since the 1990s, the issue of praise or blame to attach to the country's response to the Holocaust has become a contentious political subject in Sweden.[24] Substantial public discussion about the degree of Swedish awareness of the Holocaust took place in the aftermath of the publication of the novel Not Wanting To See (Att inte vilja se, 2014) by the author Jan Guillou which argued that few Swedes had been aware of the Holocaust before the Swedish press published accounts of the Allied liberation of Nazi concentration camps in 1945.[4]
Göran Persson, a former Swedish Prime Minister, founded the International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance in 1998. In 2018, the Swedish government announced its intention to build a Holocaust museum intended to "focus on surviving Swedes and collect items, interviews and documents about their experiences". It also announced its intention to establish a "centre" devoted to Wallenberg.[25] Although delayed, it was decided that the Swedish Holocaust Museum would be located in Stockholm rather than Malmö in which a high number of antisemitic incidents had recently been reported. It is intended to open in 2022.[26]
See also
References
- ^ Gilmour 2010, p. 18.
- ^ Gilmour 2010, p. 20.
- ^ a b c Åmark 2015, p. 310.
- ^ a b Zander 2015, p. 285.
- ^ Gilmour 2010, pp. 18–19.
- ^ "'Cashing Out' Review: The Spoils of 'Neutrality'". Wall Street Journal.
- ^ Åmark 2015, p. 300.
- ^ Åmark 2015, pp. 300–1.
- ^ a b c Levine 2005, p. 81.
- ^ Åmark 2015, p. 312.
- ^ Åmark 2015, p. 301.
- ^ Wiklund, Mats (17 September 2011). "Murky truth of how a neutral Sweden covered up its collaboration with Nazis". The Independent. Archived from the original on 2022-05-26. Retrieved 22 January 2021.
- ^ Times of Israel. Retrieved 27 February 2021.
- ^ Zander 2015, p. 287.
- ^ Gilmour 2010, p. 192.
- ^ Levine 2005, p. 82.
- ^ a b Åmark 2015, p. 311.
- ^ Matz 2012, pp. 110–114.
- ^ Matz 2012, pp. 138.
- ^ Aderet, Ofer (7 August 2016). "Is the Mystery of Raoul Wallenberg's Death Finally Solved?". Haaretz. Retrieved 20 January 2024.
- ^ Braham 2004, p. 183-4.
- ^ a b Levine 2005, p. 84.
- ^ Levine 2005, p. 86.
- ^ Zander 2015, p. 290.
- ^ "Sweden launches museum for Scandinavian Holocaust survivors". The Jerusalem Post. Jewish Telegraphic Agency. 8 September 2018. Retrieved 27 February 2021.
- ^ Dolsten, Josefin (30 September 2020). "Sweden allocates $1.1 million to start work on its first Holocaust museum". Times of Israel. Retrieved 6 March 2021.
Citations
- Åmark, Klas (2015). "Swedish anti-Nazism and resistance against Nazi Germany during the Second World War". Kirchliche Zeitgeschichte. 28 (2): 300–312. JSTOR 24713121.
- Braham, Randolph L. (2004). "Rescue Operations in Hungary: Myths and Realities". East European Quarterly. 34 (2): 173–203.
- Gilmour, John (2010). Sweden, the Swastika and Stalin: The Swedish Experience in the Second World War. Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press. ISBN 9780748627462.
- .
- Matz, Johan (2012). "Sweden, the United States, and Raoul Wallenberg's Mission to Hungary in 1944". Journal of Cold War Studies. 14 (3): 97–148. JSTOR 26924084.
- Zander, Ulf (2015). "Dans l'œil de la tempête : la Suède et la Shoah". Revue d'Histoire de la Shoah (203): 277–290. .
Further reading
- Heuman, Johannes; Rudberg, Pontus, eds. (2021). Early Holocaust Memory in Sweden: Archives, Testimonies and Reflections. Cham: Palgrave-Macmillan. ISBN 9783030555313.
- Kvist, Karin (2002). "A Study of Antisemitic Attitudes within Sweden's Wartime Utlänningsbyrån". In Cesarani, David; Levine, Paul A. (eds.). Bystanders to the Holocaust: A Re-Evaluation. London: Frank Cass. pp. 199–211. ISBN 978-0714682433.
- ISBN 978-9155437992.
- Nordlund, Sven (2002). "'The War is Over - Now You Can Go Home!' Jewish Refugees and the Swedish Labour Market in the Shadow of the Holocaust". In Cesarani, David; Levine, Paul A. (eds.). Bystanders to the Holocaust : a re-evaluation. London: Frank Cass. pp. 171–198. ISBN 978-0714682433.
- Rudberg, Pontus (2019). The Swedish Jews and the Holocaust. London: Routledge. ISBN 9780367348748.
- Wallerman, Anna (2018). "A Day in the Life: Aryanization Before the Swedish Supreme Court 1941–42". Law and History Review. 36 (3): 593–617. .