Sweden

Sweden was neutral throughout the Second World War and became, by the end of the war, the principal northern European refuge for Jews fleeing the German killing programme. Around 18,000 Jews reached safety in Sweden during the war, including the entire Danish Jewish community of around 7,200 people ferried across the Oresund in October 1943, several thousand Norwegian Jews who escaped across the Swedish border in 1942 and 1943, and several thousand Hungarian Jews protected in Budapest by the Swedish diplomat Raoul Wallenberg in 1944. The Swedish wartime record is, on balance, the most positive of any European country, but it requires honest examination. Swedish neutrality also meant that Sweden continued to trade with Germany throughout the war, including the export of iron ore that fed the German steel industry. The two facts have to sit together.

The Swedish position

Sweden in 1939 was a constitutional monarchy with a Social Democratic government under Per Albin Hansson. The country had stayed out of the First World War and intended to stay out of the Second. The intention was tested repeatedly. Sweden allowed German troop transports across Swedish territory to occupied Norway in 1940 and 1941. Sweden continued to export iron ore, ball bearings and other strategic materials to Germany throughout most of the war. The Swedish position was a combination of cautious neutrality, economic pragmatism, and a steadily growing willingness to act on behalf of war victims as the conflict progressed and the German position deteriorated.

The Norwegian Jewish escape

From late 1942, Norwegian Jews fleeing the Quisling regime’s deportations crossed the forested Norwegian-Swedish border in the cold and snow. The Swedish border authorities, who had previously turned back many refugees, now admitted them. The change of policy was partly due to public opinion in Sweden, which was hardening against Germany as the news of the killings spread. Around 900 Norwegian Jews reached Sweden by this route. They were given temporary refuge and were eventually able to settle in Sweden or to emigrate to the United States or Israel after the war.

The Danish Jewish rescue, October 1943

The single most-celebrated Swedish wartime act was the announcement on 2 October 1943 that Sweden would accept all Danish Jewish refugees. The announcement followed direct negotiations between Swedish diplomats and Danish resistance representatives, and was made by the Swedish Foreign Minister Christian Gunther. The announcement gave the Danish rescue operation a destination. Over the next three weeks, around 7,200 Danish Jews were ferried across the Oresund in fishing boats and were received in Swedish coastal towns. They were housed in Sweden for the rest of the war and returned to Denmark in May 1945 to find their homes mostly intact. The Danish operation is covered in detail on the Denmark page.

Raoul Wallenberg and the Hungarian operation

In June 1944, with the Hungarian deportations underway, the Swedish government sent the young businessman Raoul Wallenberg to Budapest as a special envoy. Wallenberg had been recruited by the American War Refugee Board and was attached to the Swedish legation in Budapest with explicit authority to do whatever was necessary to save Hungarian Jewish lives. Over the following six months he issued protective Swedish passports (the Schutzpass) to thousands of Hungarian Jews, rented buildings as Swedish protected houses where they could shelter, intervened personally at the Budapest deportation sites to remove people from the trains, and sustained an operation that, with the parallel work of the Swiss diplomat Carl Lutz and the Spanish operation under Sanz Briz and Perlasca, saved tens of thousands of Budapest Jews from murder.

Wallenberg himself was arrested by Soviet forces in January 1945 and disappeared into the Soviet system. The Soviet authorities at various times claimed he had died in 1947, in 1958, and on other dates. The full circumstances of his death remain unclear. He was officially recognised as a Hero of the Soviet Union after Russia’s admission of involvement in the 1990s and is honoured today by Yad Vashem, by the Swedish state, and by the United States Congress, among others.

Refugees from elsewhere

Sweden also received smaller numbers of Jewish refugees from Estonia, Latvia, Finland, Germany and other countries, mostly via secondary routes through Denmark or Finland. Some came on the white buses, the rescue operation organised by Count Folke Bernadotte of the Swedish Red Cross in spring 1945, which evacuated around 15,000 prisoners from German concentration camps to Sweden in the closing weeks of the war. The white buses operation included around 7,000 Jewish prisoners, primarily from Bergen-Belsen and Ravensbruck. The buses were the first organised civilian evacuation of Holocaust survivors and were the precursor of the wider post-war refugee operations.

The economic question

The other side of the Swedish record is the economic relationship with Germany. Sweden was the largest single supplier of iron ore to the German war industry, accounting for around 40 per cent of German iron ore imports for most of the war. Swedish ball bearing exports were also significant. The Swedish government took the view that the alternative was German invasion of Sweden, and that maintaining trade was the price of preserving Swedish neutrality. The view was probably correct in 1940 and 1941. By 1943, when German forces were no longer in a position to invade Sweden, the trade continued for economic reasons. The post-war Swedish reckoning with this part of the record has been slower than the celebration of the rescue operations.

The post-war record

Sweden has since been formally honoured for its wartime rescue operations and Wallenberg in particular has been the subject of multiple memorials and biographies. The Swedish state has acknowledged the wartime trade with Germany. The Swedish Living History project, established in 1998 by the Persson government and now the Swedish Forum for Living History, has been a major Swedish state initiative in Holocaust education and commemoration. The Stockholm International Forum on the Holocaust of 2000 produced the Stockholm Declaration on Holocaust education and remembrance, which became the founding document of the International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance. Sweden has, through this work, become one of the international leaders in Holocaust commemoration.

The point

Sweden saved more Jewish lives than any other European country whose territory the Holocaust did not directly reach. The number is small against the six million who were murdered, but is large against most other comparators. The contribution rested partly on Swedish geography, partly on Swedish neutrality, and partly on the willingness of Swedish diplomats and government officials to act when the moment required. The economic relationship with Germany is part of the record. So is Wallenberg.

See also

Sources

  • Steven Koblik, The Stones Cry Out: Sweden’s Response to the Persecution of the Jews 1933-1945, Holocaust Library, 1988
  • Paul Levine, From Indifference to Activism: Swedish Diplomacy and the Holocaust 1938-1944, Uppsala University, 1996
  • Ingrid Carlberg, Raoul Wallenberg: The Heroic Life and Mysterious Disappearance of the Man Who Saved Thousands of Hungarian Jews from the Holocaust, MacLehose Press, 2015
  • USHMM: Sweden