The Jewish community in Sweden has been prevalent since the 18th century. Today Sweden has a Jewish community of around 20,000,Specktor, Mordecai."Stockholm conference puts spotlight on Sweden's Jews" , The American Jewish World. Retrieved 17 December 2006 from the "Jews of Sweden", The Stockholm International Forum on the Holocaust website (26–28 January 2000). which makes it the 7th largest in the European Union. Antisemitism in historical Sweden primarily manifested as the confiscation of property, restrictions on movement and employment, and forced conversion to Christianity. Antisemitism in present-day Sweden is mainly perpetrated by far-right politicians, neo-Nazis, and Islamists.
History Early history of Jews in Sweden
Jews have been permitted to reside in Sweden since the late 18th century. Prior to this, Jews were sought after as teachers of Hebrew in the universities, but the condition for being appointed to the teaching post was that they convert to Lutheranism.Hugo Valentin Judarnas historia i Sverige Lutheran Protestantism was the state religion (since the 16th century) and the only accepted religion. Opposition was strong against other faiths, especially Catholicism.
Jews required capital of 2000 riksdalers to obtain a letter of protection (skyddsbrev). This included the value of clothes, household gadgets and inventory, regular payments made for upkeep, cash and promissory notes. After the application has been made to the magistrate, the applicant would be given the status of Husbonde and could legally support himself with the trade or business he had chosen.
The status of skyddsjude derived from German schutzjude and the legislation in the 18th century regulating Jews in Sweden was put together after the Parliamentary Constitutional Committee (Konstitutionsuttskottet) had obtained copies of the German laws regulating Jews in Saxony, Prussia and other German kingdoms and duchies. It was discussed in committee whether Jews should wear a distinguishing mark when walking in the street – perhaps a red or yellow hatband, but this idea was rejected.mentioned in Aaron Isaac's autobiography (in Yiddish) and quoted in Hugo Valentin Judarnas Historia i Sverige (The History of the Jews in Sweden) Poor Jews were subject to deportation, pursuant to a law banning Romani people, tight rope dancers and sellers of barometers.
A large number of restrictions were placed on Jews, including restriction to towns: Stockholm, Gothenburg, Norrköping and Landskrona: Jews could not reside or own property in the countryside: this restriction was first removed in 1854.Nordisk familjebok / Uggleupplagan. 13. Johan – Kikare / 229–230 (1910) . Runeberg.org. Retrieved on 1 June 2012. In 1870 Jews received full citizens' rights and the first Jewish members of the Riksdag, Aron Philipson and Moritz Rubenson, were elected in 1872.Svenska judarnas historia (History of Swedish Jewry), Gothenburg Jewish Community. However Swedish non-Protestants, most of which were Catholics and Jews, were still not allowed to teach the subject of Christianity in public schools or to be cabinet ministers (statsråd) (these restrictions were not removed until 1 January 1953).
During the early 1900s, the journalist Mauritz Rydgren planned an antisemitic broadsheet. Barthold Lundén published such a newspaper, named Vidi, between 1919 and 1931. In 1923, Lundén also founded the Swedish Antisemitic Union (Svenska Antisemitiska Föreningen; SAF).Lööw (2004), p. 13.
Fascists, Nazis and the Holocaust
Several Swedish fascist and Nazi parties, formed during the 1920s and 1930s, were generally strongly antisemitic and/or grew out of the milieu of the Antisemitic Union (even though it was formally dissolved in 1931).
On 22 January 1932, the largest of these parties, the Svenska nationalsocialistiska partiet (Swedish National Socialist Party) held its first public rally, when Birger Furugård addressed an audience of 6,000 at the Haymarket in Stockholm. The peak in popularity for Swedish Nazis came in the municipal elections of 1934 when Nazi parties were victorious in over 100 electoral contests.Lööw (2004), p. 244
During 1933–39, some 3,000 Jews migrated to Sweden to escape persecution in Nazi Germany. Because Sweden was neutral during World War II, it became a place of asylum for Jews from occupied Europe: in 1942, 900 Norwegian Jews were given asylum from Nazi persecution and, in October 1943, almost the entire Danish Jewish community, some 8,000 people, was transported to Sweden (see Rescue of the Danish Jews). Swedish diplomat Raoul Wallenberg also saved thousands of Hungarian Jews in Budapest by providing them with "protective passports". He also rented 32 buildings, funded by the United States, and declared them Swedish diplomatic facilities, thus bringing them under protection of diplomatic immunity.
Following the war, Swedish Nazis remained strongly antisemitic; as early as May 1945 became early adopters of Holocaust denial.Lööw (2004), p. 108 During the immediate post-war period, far right parties were relatively inactive politically. The fascist Nysvenska Rörelsen (NSR, New Swedish Movement, formed in 1941 as Svensk Opposition) attempted to distance itself from its own history and Nazi Germany. The NSR cultivated ties to similar organizations in other countries and established an employment office in Malmö for expatriate Danes and Norwegians who had fled to Sweden after collaborating with wartime German occupation forces.
In 1956, a new Swedish Nazi party, the Nordiska Rikspartiet (NRP; "Nordic Reich Party"), was formed. It had a paramilitary faction called the National Action Group (RAG, Riksaktiongruppen), and several of its members were convicted of assaults and threats (in the late 1980s one of the RAG activists was selected as chair of the newly formed Sweden Democrats).
There was a so-called "Swastika epidemic" in 1960, when the painting of swastikas spread rapidly in many countries. US rabbi Max Nussbaum alleged that the swastika-painting campaign was led from Malmö by Per Engdahl. Engdahl denied this and claimed that the NSR was the victim of a conspiracy by the World Jewish Congress and that Jews themselves were behind the swastikas.Lööw (2004), p. 57 From the middle of the 1960s, the NSR membership and contributions dropped, and the party languished (with the exception of a few high-profile events).
Neo-Nazis, white supremacists and white nationalists
From the late 1980s, new far right groups espousing antisemitic belief emerged in Sweden. These groups are linked largely by the NRP. In its magazine, Storm, the party stated an ambition to collect all the "race-conscious whites". These groups included White Aryan Resistance (1991–93), National Socialist Front (dissolved in 2008) and Legion Wasa (inactive since around 2010).
Sweden remains home to active neo-Nazi or white supremacist organizations espousing antisemitic beliefs, including Nordic Resistance Movement.
Developments since 2000
Many commentators regard contemporary antisemitism in Sweden as largely a product of mass migration of Muslims who have brought anti-Jewish attitudes from their countries of origin to Sweden. Sweden has the third highest rate of antisemitic incidents in Europe, following Germany and Austria, although the Netherlands came third in some years.The 2005 U.S. State Department Report on Global Antisemitism. A government study in 2006 estimated that 15% of Swedes agree with the statement: "The Jews have too much influence in the world today."Henrik Bachner and Jonas Ring. . levandehistoria.se 5% of the total adult population and 39% of adult Muslims "harbour systematic antisemitic views". The former prime minister Göran Persson described these results as "surprising and terrifying". However, the rabbi of Stockholm's Orthodox Jewish community, Meir Horden, said that "It's not true to say that the Swedes are anti-Semitic. Some of them are hostile to Israel because they support the weak side, which they perceive the Palestinians to be."Anti-Semitism, in Sweden? Depends who you're asking , Haaretz, 9 November 2007.
In 2010, alleged antisemitism among Muslims in Malmö received media attention after a controversial interview with the then city's mayor, Ilmar Reepalu. In March of the same year, Fredrik Sieradzk of the Jewish community of Malmö told Die Presse, an Austrian newspaper, that Jews are being "harassed and physically attacked" by "people from the Middle East", although he added that only a small number of Malmö's 90,000 Muslims "exhibit hatred of Jews".
The population of Malmö began to decrease in the 1970s due to decline of the once-dominant shipbuilding and textile industries. This also led to a decrease in the Jewish population. Sieradzk has stated that approximately 30 Jewish families have emigrated from Malmö to Israel in the past year, specifically to escape from harassment estimating that the already small Jewish population is shrinking by 5% a year. "Malmö is a place to move away from, right now many Jews in Malmö are really concerned about the situation and don’t believe they have a future here", he said, citing antisemitism as the primary reason. The Malmö Synagogue suffered arson attacks in 2010 and 2012.
The Swedish newspaper Skånska Dagbladet reported that attacks on Jews in Malmö totaled 79 in 2009, about twice as many as the previous year, according to police statistics.Report: Anti-Semitic attacks rising in Scandinavia , Jewish Telegraphic Agency (JTA), 22 March 2010. In December 2010, the Jewish human rights organization Simon Wiesenthal Center issued a travel advisory concerning Sweden, advising Jews to express "extreme caution" when visiting the southern parts of the country due to an increase in verbal and physical harassment of Jewish citizens in the city of Malmö. However, the leader of the Jewish congregation would have liked the center to consult them before issuing the warning. Fred Khan, the congregation's chairman told Sydvenska Dagbladet suggested that the rise in the crime statistics might not reflect an actual increase in crimes endured by the community over the proceeding year. Members of the congregation do face harassment, but a substantial degree of the incidents remain unreported to the police. In the last year members of the community had been more strongly advised to report all abuse to the police. On 8 June 2012, antisemitic graffiti was spray-painted on the external wall of the old Jewish cemetery in Malmö. The graffiti reads "A PIG" in Swedish (en gris) and a swastika. On 28 September, same year, an explosion occurred at a Malmö Jewish community building.
Since 2014, several members of the Sweden Democrats, a political party represented in the Swedish Riksdag, have been accused of expressing antisemitic views. While the party (founded in 1988) describes itself as social conservative and nationalist, it initially had ties to fascist, white supremacist and other far right groups.Rydgren, 2006, pp. 108–109.
Contemporary acts of antisemitism According to CFCA (the Coordination Forum for Countering Antisemitism), antisemitism in Sweden nowadays focuses on the Israeli–Palestinian conflict. A survey conducted by the EU Agency for Fundamental Rights found out that in 2012, 40–50% of Swedish Jews had frequently heard the accusation that "Israelis behave to the Palestinians like the Nazis to the Jews". Moreover, a series of proposed measures in Sweden banning kosher slaughter, ritual circumcision, and possibly even the importation of kosher meat, had caused a Swedish Jewish activist to file for asylum in her own country.
Also In 2012, the President of the European Jewish Congress, Moshe Kantor condemned the behavior of the Swedish Government which according to him is "the only European country that is refusing to discuss the problem of Anti-Semitism prevailing within its borders".