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Holocaust Memory in Sweden: A Re-evaluation

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Early Holocaust Memory in Sweden

Part of the book series: The Holocaust and its Contexts ((HOLC))

Abstract

The first chapter discusses the conditions for Jewish and non-Jewish initiatives to address the Holocaust in the early post-war period in Sweden. The authors argue that the idea of a silence of the Holocaust in the first post-war decades in Sweden is misleading since it disregards individuals and groups that were concerned about the genocide and its significance for Jewish history. In Sweden, the Jewish trauma could be linked to positive rescue actions instead of disturbing politics of collaboration, suggesting that the Holocaust memory following the war was less controversial than in several European nations. The authors also emphasise that the transnational Jewish context played an important role for the developing Holocaust memory in Sweden, as well as for the quest of justice and recognition among Jews.

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Notes

  1. 1.

    Daniel Levy and Natan Sznaider, Holocaust and Memory in the Global Age (Philadelphia: Temple University Press, 2006), 184–188.

  2. 2.

    On the Swedish Prime Minister Göran Persson, the Middle East policy, and Holocaust memory, see Daniel Schatz, Leaders Matter. Foreign Policy Change in Sweden’s Middle East Policy 1999—200 (PhD Diss., Humboldt-Universität, 2017).

  3. 3.

    Laura Jockusch, Collect and Record! Jewish Holocaust Documentation in Early Postwar Europe (New York: Oxford University Press, 2012).

  4. 4.

    David Weinberg, Recovering a Voice. West European Jewish Communities after the Holocaust (Oxford: Littman Library of Jewish Civilization, 2015).

  5. 5.

    Johan Östling, ‘The Rise and Fall of Small-State Realism. Sweden and the Second World War’, in Nordic Narratives of the Second World War. National Historiographies Revisited, eds. Henrik Stenius, Mirja Österberg, and Johan Östling (Lund: Nordic Academic Press, 2011), 127–130.

  6. 6.

    Alf W. Johansson, ‘Neutrality and Modernity. The Second World War and Sweden’s National Identity’, in War Experience, Self Image and National Identity. The Second World War as Myth and History, eds. Stig Ekman and Nils Edling (Stockholm: Gidlunds förlag, 1997), 176. See also Östling, ‘The Rise and Fall’, 128.

  7. 7.

    Orvar Löfgren, ‘Att nationalisera moderniteten’, in Nationella identiteter i Norden. Ett fullbordat projekt? Sjutton nordiska undersökningar, eds. Jan Olof Nilsson and Anders Linde-Laursen (Stockholm: Nordiska rådet 1991), 101–115; Andreas Johansson Heinö, Farväl till folkhemmet. Frihet, jämlikhet och sammanhållning i invandrarlandet Sverige (Falun: Timbro, 2016).

  8. 8.

    See for example, Annette Wieviorka, Déportation et genocide. Entre la mémoire et l’oubli (Paris: Plon, 1992); Tony Kushner, The Holocaust and the Liberal Imagination. A Social and Cultural History (Oxford: Blackwell, 1994); Steven E. Ashheim, Culture and Catastrophe. German and Jewish Confrontations with National Socialism and Other Crises (New York: New York University Press, 1996); David S. Wyman, ed., The World Reacts to the Holocaust (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1996); Peter Novick, The Holocaust in American Life. The American Experience (Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1999); Pieter Lagrou, The Legacy of Nazi Occupation. Patriotic Memory and National Recovery in Western Europe, 1945–1965 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2000); Klas-Göran Karlsson and Ulf Zander, eds., Echoes of the Holocaust. Historical Cultures in Contemporary Europe (Lund: Nordic Academic Press, 2003).

  9. 9.

    Tony Judt, Postwar. A History of Europe Since 1945 (New York: Penguin, [2005] 2010), 829.

  10. 10.

    Stig Dagerman, German Autumn (London: Quartet Book, 1988).

  11. 11.

    Johan Östling, Sweden after Nazism. Politics and Culture in the Wake of the Second World War (New York: Berghahn Books, 2016).

  12. 12.

    See for example, Karin Kvist Geverts and Antero Holmila, ‘On Forgetting and Rediscovering the Holocaust in Scandinavia. Introduction to the Special Issue on the Histories and Memories of the Holocaust’, Scandinavian Journal of History 36, no. 5 (2011), 520–535. See also, Harald Runblom, ‘Sweden and the Holocaust from an International Perspective’, in Sweden’s Relations with Nazism, Nazi Germany and the Holocaust. A Survey of Research, eds. Stig Ekman & Klas Åmark (Stockholm: Swedish Research Council, 2003), 197–249.

  13. 13.

    Hasia R. Diner, We Remember with Reverence and Love. American Jews and the Myth of Silence after the Holocaust, 1945–1962 (New York: NYU Press, 2009).

  14. 14.

    See, for example: Jockusch, Collect and Record!; Boaz Cohen, Israeli Holocaust Research. Birth and Evolution (New York: Routledge, 2012); David Cesarani and Eric J. Sundquist, eds., After the Holocaust. Challenging the Myth of Silence (Abingdon: Routledge, 2012); Johannes Heuman, Holocaust and French Historical Culture, 1945–65 (Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan, 2015); Regina Fritz, Eva Kovács and Béla Rásky, eds., Als der Holocaust noch keinen Namen hatte (Vienna: New Academic Press, 2012); Judith Lindenberg, Premiers savoirs de la Shoah (Paris: CNRS, 2017); Simon Perego, ‘Introduction’, Archives Juives. Revue d’histoire des Juifs de France 51, no. 2 (2018): 4–17; Jan Schwarz, Survivors and exiles. Yiddish culture after the Holocaust (Detroit, MI: Wayne State University Press, 2015); Norman Erwin, Confronting Hitler’s Legacy. Canadian Jews and Early Holocaust Discourse, 1933–1956 (PhD Diss., University of Waterloo, 2014); Malena Chinski, Memorias olviadadas. Los judíos y la recordación de la Shoá en Buenos Aires, 1942–1956 (PhD Diss., Universidad Nacional de General Sarmiento, 2017).

  15. 15.

    François Azouvi, Le mythe du grand silence. Auschwitz, les Français, la mémoire (Paris: Fayard, 2012).

  16. 16.

    Simon Perego, ‘La mémoire avant la mémoire? Retour sur l’historiographie du souvenir de la Shoah dans la France de l’après-guerre’, 20&21. Revue d’histoire, no. 145 (January-March 2020): 77–90.

  17. 17.

    On the idea of a post-war silence in Sweden, see Ingrid Lomfors, ‘Inledning’, in Judiska minnen. Berättelser från Förintelsen, ed. Britta Johansson (Stockholm: Nordiska museet, 2000). This is also a common among survivors, see for example ‘Förintelsen Del 3/3. Att bryta tystnaden’ (Documentary), Swedish Radio (Jan. 24, 2019). We do not argue that such experiences among survivors are wrong but should be nuanced from the background of what was done among Jews regarding Holocaust memory.

  18. 18.

    Pontus Rudberg, The Swedish Jews and the Holocaust (Abingdon and New York: Routledge 2017).

  19. 19.

    Svante Hansson, Flykt och överlevnad. Flyktingverksamhet i Mosaiska församlingen i Stockholm 1933–1950 (Stockholm: Hillelförlaget, 2004), chapters 14–15.

  20. 20.

    ‘Utrotningskriget mot judarna’, Judisk Krönika 11, no. 7 (1942), 101–102.

  21. 21.

    Rudberg, The Swedish Jews, 202.

  22. 22.

    Malin Thor Tureby, ‘Swedish Jews and the Jewish survivors. The first public narratives about the Survivors in Swedish-Jewish Press’, Reaching a state of hope. Refugees, immigrants and the Swedish welfare state, 1930–2000, eds. Mikael Byström and Pär Frohnert (Lund: Nordic Academic Press, 2013). For an analysis on Judisk Krönika and Israel, see Karin Sjögren, Judar i det svenska folkhemmet. Minne och identitet i Judisk krönika 1948–1958 (Lund: Brutus Östlings förlag Symposion 2001).

  23. 23.

    Tanja Schult, ‘Gestaltningen och etablering av Förintelseminnet i Sverige’, Nordisk judaistik. Scandinavian Jewish Studies, 27, no. 2 (2016): 3–21; Tanja Schult, ‘Frühe Holocausterinnerung in Schweden. Denkmäler für Ermordete und Gerettete’, in eds. Regina Fritz, Eva Kovács and Béla Rásky, Als der Holocaust noch keinen Namen hatte, 263–284.

  24. 24.

    Antero Holmila, Reporting the Holocaust in the British, Swedish and Finnish Press, 1945–50 (Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan, 2011); Ulf Zander, ‘To Rescue or be Rescued. The Liberation of Bergen-Belsen and White Buses in British and Swedish Historical Culture’, in eds. Klas-Göran Karlsson and Ulf Zander, The Holocaust on Post-War Battlefields. Genocide as Historical Culture (Malmö: Sekel, 2006), 343–83; Malin Thor Tureby, ‘Svenska änglar och hyenor möter tacksamma flyktingar. Mottagningen av befriade koncentrationslägerfångar i skånsk press under året 1945’, Historisk tidskrift, 135, no. 2 (2015), 266–300. For visual representations of the Holocaust (and the Second World War), see Ulf Zander, ‘World War II at 24 Frames a Second. Scandinavian Examples’, in Historicizing the Uses of the Past. Scandinavian Perspectives on History Culture, Historical Consciousness and Didactics of History related to World War II, eds. Helle Bjerg, Claudia Lenz, and Erik Thorstensen (Bielefeld: Transcript, 2011), 207–225; Max Liljefors, Bilder av Förintelsen. Mening, minne, kompromettering (Lund: Argos/Palmkrons Förlag, 2002).

  25. 25.

    On the shifting memory of these activities, see Ulf Zander, ‘Swedish Rescue Operations during the Second World War. Accomplishments and Aftermath’, in The Holocaust as Active Memory. The Past in the Present, eds. Marie Louise Seeberg, Irene Levin and Claudia Lenz (London and Burlington: Ashgate, 2013), 165–185; Ulf Zander, Förintelsens Röda nejlika. Raoul Wallenberg som historiekulturell symbol (Stockholm: Forum för levande historia, 2012); Tanja A Schult, Hero’s many faces. Raoul Wallenberg in contemporary monuments (Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan, 2012); Kristian Gerner, ‘The Holocaust and Memory Culture. The Case of Sweden’, in Historicizing the Uses of the Past, eds. Bjerg, Lenz, & Thorstensen (Bielefeld: Transcript, 2011), 91–106.

  26. 26.

    Synne Corell, ‘The Solidity of a National Narrative. The German Occupation in Norwegian History Culture’, in eds. Henrik Stenius, Mirja Österberg and Johan Östling, Nordic Narratives of the Second World War. National Historiographies Revisited (Lund: Nordic Academic Press, 2011), 101–125.

  27. 27.

    Gerald Reitlinger, The final solution. The attempt to exterminate the Jews of Europe, 1939–1945 (London: Vallentine Mitchell, 1953), 349–351 and 332; Raul Hilberg, The destruction of the European Jews (New York: Holmes & Meier, 1985), 556–568 and 850–851; Léon Poliakov, Bréviaire de la haine. Le IIIe Reich et les Juifs (Paris: Calomann-Lévy, 1951), 207; Leni Yahil, The rescue of Danish Jewry. Test of a democracy (Philadelphia, 1969), chapter 9. See also Hasia R. Diner’s chapter in this volume.

  28. 28.

    Maria-Pia Boëthius, Heder och samvete. Sverige och andra världskriget (Stockholm: Norstedt, 1991); Steven Koblik, The Stones Cry Out. Sweden’s Response to the Persecution of the Jews 1933–1945 (New York: Holocaust Library, 1988); Paul A. Levine, From Indifference to Activism. Swedish Diplomacy and the Holocaust, 1938–1944 (Uppsala: Uppsala University, 1996).

  29. 29.

    See for example, Lars M. Andersson and Mattias Tydén (eds.), Sverige och Nazityskland. Skuldfrågor och moraldebatt (Dialogos, Stockholm, 2007); Klas Åmark, Att bo granne med ondskan. Sveriges förhållande till nazismen, Nazityskland och Förintelsen (Stockholm: Albert Bonniers förlag, 2011); Stig Ekman, Klas Åmark and John Toler (eds.), Sweden’s relations with Nazism, Nazi Germany and the Holocaust. A survey of research (Stockholm: Swedish Research Council, 2003); John Gilmour, Sweden, the Swastika and Stalin. The Swedish experience in the Second World War (Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press, 2011). See also Östling, ‘The Rise and Fall’, 141–142.

  30. 30.

    David Andersson, Med skuldkänslan som drivkraft. Om svenska Israelvänner och västfiender (Stockholm: Timbro 2017).

  31. 31.

    See Karin Kvist Geverts’ chapter in this volume.

  32. 32.

    Astrid Erll, Memory in culture (Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan, 2011), 7.

  33. 33.

    Alon Confino, Germany as a Culture of Remembrance. Promises and Limits of Writing History (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2006), 32.

  34. 34.

    Halbwachs, Maurice, Les cadres sociaux de la mémoire (New York: Arno P., 1975[1952]). See also, Michael Rothberg, Multidirectional Memory. Remembering the Holocaust in the Age of Decolonization (Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 2009), 15.

  35. 35.

    See for example, Klas-Göran Karlsson, ‘The Uses of History and the Third Way of Europeanization’, in A European Memory? Contested Histories and Politics of Remembrance, eds. Małgorzata Pakier and Bo Stråth (New York: Berghahn, 2010).

  36. 36.

    Les Juifs en Europe (1939–1945). Rapports présentés à la première conférence européenne des commissions historiques et des centres de documentations juifs (Paris: Éditions du Centre, 1949).

  37. 37.

    Heuman, Holocaust and French Historical Culture, chap. 4.

  38. 38.

    Levy and Sznaider, Holocaust and Memory in the Global Age, 7.

  39. 39.

    Tom Lawson, Debates on the Holocaust (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 2010), 21.

  40. 40.

    Samuel Moyn, A Holocaust Controversy. The Treblinka Affair in Postwar France (Waltham, MA: Brandeis University Press, 2005), 2; David Rousset, L’univers concentrationnaire (Paris: Éditions du Pavois, 1946).

  41. 41.

    Rothberg, Multidirectional memory, 6.

  42. 42.

    Confino, Germany as a culture of remembrance, 32.

  43. 43.

    Jacques Derrida, Archive fever. A Freudian impression (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1996); Joan M. Schwartz and Terry Cook, ‘Archives, Records, and Power. The Making of Modern Memory’, Archival Science 2, no. 1–2 (2002): 1–19.

  44. 44.

    Einar Tegen and Gunhild Tegen, De dödsdömda vittna. Enquêtesvar och intervjuer (Stockholm: Wahlström & Widstrand, 1945).

  45. 45.

    Henrik Bachner, ‘Judefrågan’. Debatt om antisemitism i 1930-talets Sverige (Stockholm: Atlantis, 2009); Sven Nordlund, Affärer som vanligt. Ariseringen i Sverige 1933–1945 (Stockholm: Sekel, 2009); Rudberg, The Swedish Jews and the Holocaust; Berndt Hermele, När de kommer så skjuter jag oss. Om svenska judars liv i skuggan av Förintelsen (Stockholm: Lind & Co, 2018).

  46. 46.

    Rune Bokholm, Tisdagsklubben. Om glömda antinazistiska sanningssägare i svenskt -30 och -40-tal (Stockholm: Atlantis 2001); Hugo Valentin, Judarna i Sverige (Stockholm: Bonnier, 1964), 178–186. Bagge is quoted in Valentin, Judarna i Sverige, 178.

  47. 47.

    Hans Lindberg, Svensk flyktingpolitik under internationellt tryck 1936–1941 (Stockholm: Allmänna förlaget, 1973); Karin Kvist Geverts, Ett främmande element i nationen. Svensk flyktingpolitik och de judiska flyktingarna 1938–1944 (Uppsala: Uppsala University, 2008); Hansson, Flykt och överlevnad; Rudberg, The Swedish Jews, 36–42; Gunnar Josephson, ‘Our Work for the Refugees’, Församlingsblad för Mosaiska Församlingen i Stockholm, August 1947 (English ed.); Wilhelm Michaeli, ‘P. M. über die jüdische Einwanderung nach Schweden der Jahre 1933–1945’ [1945], O. 74: 29, Yad Vashem Archives. For a study of the Swedish branch of the Hechaluz movement, see, Malin Thor Tureby, Hechaluz. En rörelse i tid och rum. Tysk-judiska ungdomars exil i Sverige 1933–1943 (Växjö: Växjö Universitet, 2005).

  48. 48.

    Rudberg, The Swedish Jews, 111–112, 159–160, 173.

  49. 49.

    Richard Breitman and Walter Laqueur, Breaking the Silence. The Secret Mission of Eduard Schulte, Who Brought the World News of the Final Solution (London: Bodley Head, 1986); Richard Breitman, Official Secrets. What the Nazis Planned, What the British and Americans Knew (London: Allen Lane, 1999); Walter Laqueur, The Terrible Secret. An Investigation into the Suppression of Information about Hitler’s ‘Final Solution’ (London: Weidenfeld and Nicolson, 1980).

  50. 50.

    Rudberg, The Swedish Jews, 50–52; 162–164.

  51. 51.

    Levine, From Indifference to Activism, 116–119; Rudberg, The Swedish Jews, 188–189.

  52. 52.

    Ingvar Svanberg and Mattias Tydén, Sverige och Förintelsen. Debatt och dokument om Europas judar (Stockholm: Dialogos, 2005), 205–206; Åmark, Att bo granne med ondskan, 259; Rudberg, The Swedish Jews, 188–199.

  53. 53.

    Levine, From Indifference to Activism, 116–119.

  54. 54.

    Arthur Koestler, ‘The Nightmare That is a Reality’, New York Times Magazine, January 1944, 5, 8.

  55. 55.

    Nordlund, Affärer som vanligt, 119; Koestler, ‘On Disbelieving Atrocities’; Rudberg The Swedish Jews, 162–164; 189–199.

  56. 56.

    Levine, From indifference to activism, 103, 280, 282; Åmark, Att bo granne med ondskan, 259–261.

  57. 57.

    Levine, From indifference to activism. See also Mikael Byström, En broder, gäst och parasit. Uppfattningar och föreställningar om flyktingar och flyktingpolitik i svensk offentlig debatt 1942–1947 (Stockholm: Stockholm University, 2006).

  58. 58.

    ‘Utrotningskriget mot judarna’, Svensk Tidskrift, 31 December 1943, 16–19.

  59. 59.

    Sune Persson, Escape from the Third Reich. The Harrowing True Story of the Largest Rescue Effort inside Nazi Germany (New York: Skyhorse Publishing, 2009); Ingrid Lomfors, Blind fläck. Minne och glömska kring svenska Röda korsets hjälpinsats i Nazityskland 1945 (Stockholm: Atlantis, 2005). See also Lena Einhorn, Handelsresande i liv. Om vilja och vankelmod i krigets skugga (Stockholm: Prisma, 1999).

  60. 60.

    Ivar Philipson, Församlingsblad för Mosaiska församlingen i Stockholm, August 1947, English ed. For a survey of the numbers of Jewish survivors that came to Sweden, see Hansson, Flykt och överlevnad, 278–284.

  61. 61.

    Richard Breitman has stressed Sweden’s need of a better image in the eyes of the Allies as one of the major motivations to the country’s involvement in rescue activities for Jews during the last war year; see Richard Breitman, ‘American Rescue Activities in Sweden’, Holocaust and Genocide Studies 7, no. 2 (1993): 202–215.

  62. 62.

    Protocol of the Executive Board meeting of the Jewish Community of Stockholm, 8 October 1945, Huvudarkivet, A1 a: 114, Judiska församlingen i Stockholms arkiv (Archive of the Jewish Community of Stockholm), Riksarkivet ([Swedish] National Archives).

  63. 63.

    Wilhelm Michaeli, Ersättning åt offer för nationalsocialistisk förföljelse (Bundesentschädigungsgesetz) och därmed sammanhängande spörsmål (Stockholm: Nordiska bokhandeln, 1957), 77–78.

  64. 64.

    Hansson, Flykt och överlevnad; Rudberg, The Swedish Jews.

  65. 65.

    Pontus Rudberg is currently working on a major research project, funded by the Swedish Research Council, about the rehabilitation and integration of Holocaust survivors in Sweden.

  66. 66.

    Pontus Rudberg, ‘A Record of Infamy.’ The Use and Abuse of the Image of the Swedish Jewish Response to the Holocaust’, Scandinavian Journal of History 36, no. 5 (2011): 536–554.

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  1. Jönköping University, Jönköping, Sweden

    Johannes Heuman

  2. Uppsala University, Uppsala, Sweden

    Pontus Rudberg

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Editors and Affiliations

  1. Jönköping University, Jönköping, Sweden

    Johannes Heuman

  2. Uppsala University, Uppsala, Sweden

    Pontus Rudberg

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Heuman, J., Rudberg, P. (2021). Holocaust Memory in Sweden: A Re-evaluation. In: Heuman, J., Rudberg, P. (eds) Early Holocaust Memory in Sweden. The Holocaust and its Contexts. Palgrave Macmillan, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-55532-0_1

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