Jews In Sweden

A global ADL study of antisemitism places Sweden as one of the least antisemitic countries in the world, with only 4% of the population harboring antisemitic attitudes.^[8].

Why?

Early history

In 1680 the Jews of Stockholm petitioned the king that they be permitted to reside there without abandoning their creed, but the application was denied because the local consistory had refused to endorse it. On December 3, 1685, Charles XI ordered the governor-general of the capital to see to it that no Jews were permitted to settle in Stockholm, or in any other part of the country, "on account of the danger of the eventual influence of the Jewish religion on the pure evangelical faith." In case Jews were found in any Swedish community, they were to be notified to leave within fourteen days.^[1]

Permission to settle

Through court patronage Jewish merchants were occasionally appointed royal purveyors. King Charles XII (in Swedish Karl XII) usually had one or more wealthy Jews with him in the field as the paymaster(s) of his army abroad. ^[2] In 1718, Jews obtained permission to settle in the kingdom without need to abjure their religion.

Charles XII spent five years in Bender, Bessarabia, at the time a part of the Ottoman Empire, with his army and incurred substantial debts with Jewish and Muslim merchants, who supplied the army with equipment and provisions. On his return, several Muslim and Jewish creditors arrived in Sweden and the Swedish law was altered to allow them to hold religious services and circumcise their sons.

After the death of Charles XII in 1718, the Swedish government was financially strained and the royal household was often relieved from pecuniary difficulties by the Jewish merchants of Stockholm who insisted, in exchange, for the granting of additional civil rights to themselves and their coreligionists. As a consequence the concession of 1718 was renewed and supplemented by royal edicts of 1727, 1746, and 1748, but permission was restricted to settlement in smaller cities and rural communities. One of the most prominent Jews in Sweden at this time was the convert Lovisa Augusti, who became one of the most popular singers on the stage in Stockholm.

In 1782 an ordinance was issued (judereglementet) - due particularly to efforts of the prominent Liberal Anders Chydenius - by which Jews were restricted to reside in one of three towns: Stockholm, Gothenburg, Norrköping. To these was added the town of Landskrona, as a Jew had established there a factory for the manufacture of sails and naval uniforms. They were not permitted to trade in markets elsewhere or to own property. Jews were ineligible for government positions and election to Parliament. They were forbidden from converting Lutherans to the Jewish religion.

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20th century

An act that granted Jews equality before the law was passed in the Swedish Riksdag in 1910.

Between 1850 and 1920, there was a large wave of Ashkenazic immigration to Sweden from Russia and Poland, and by 1920, the Jewish population of Sweden had grown to 6,500. After the World War I, Jewish immigration was regulated, though small groups of German, Czech, and Austrian origin were allowed to come to Sweden.

Holocaust

During the pre-war years of Hitler's power (1933 to 1939), some 3,000 Jews migrated to Sweden to escape Nazi persecution. Because Sweden was neutral during World War Two, it helped facilitate the rescue of relatively many Jews from Norway and Denmark: in 1942, 900 Norwegian Jews were given asylum from Nazi persecution in their home country, and, most importantly of all, almost the entire Danish Jewish community, some 8,000 people, was transported to Sweden in October 1943 (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 thirty-two buildings, funded by the United States, and declared them Swedish diplomatic facilities, thus bringing them under protection of diplomatic immunity.

On the other hand, German companies were allowed to fire Jewish employees in Sweden.^{[citation needed]} Also, Swedish immigration policy during the 1930s was restrictive against admitting Jewish refugees trying to escape the Nazi terror and mass murder into Sweden, before the deportations of Norwegian Jews began in 1942.^[3] Jewish refugees may have been discriminated against by the immigration authorities compared to other refugees.^[4] At the end of the war and in the post-Holocaust debate Swedish politicians and officials defended their previous restrictive policy toward Jewish immigration by referring to the Jewish minority in the country, claiming that the Stockholm Jewish Community or "certain Jewish circles" had been even more restrictive than the Swedish state.^[5]

The 2011 movie (released in the US in 2012) "Simon and the Oaks" based on a novel, showed some elements of Jewish family life in Sweden in the years 1939-1952.

During the last few weeks of the war and after liberation the Swedish Red Cross undertook a program, known as the White Buses, aimed to rescue Scandinavian concentration camp inmates. After negotiations led by Count Folke Bernadotte some 15,000 inmates were evacuated in the last months of the war. Half of them Scandinavians, including 423 Danish Jews. In addition to the White Busses a train with some 2,000 female inmates, 960 of them Jewish, arrived in Padborg, Denmark, on May 2. and then further transported to Copenhagen and Malmö, Sweden.

In the years after World War II, many Jewish refugees from the Baltic Countries, Romania and Poland moved to Sweden. Following the war, the Jewish population of Stockholm alone was 7,000 including children.^[6] For example, the cartoonist Art Spiegelman was born in Stockholm, where his father Vladek Spiegelman had moved after surviving a concentration camp. In the following decades, more waves of Jewish refugees came from Hungary in 1956 and 1968 who had fled the Communist government. More refugees came then from Poland between 1968-1970. Between 1945 and 1970, the Jewish population of Sweden doubled.

Contemporary Jewish population of Sweden

There is no ethnic registration in Sweden, so the Jewish population can only be roughly estimated. The Official Council of Swedish Jewish Communities estimation is that about 20,000 pass the halakhic criteria. Of those about 7,000 are members of a congregation.^[7] Stockholm has the largest community and boasts a primary school, kindergarten, library, a bi-monthly publication (Judisk Krönika) and a weekly Jewish radio program, but Gothenburg, Malmö, Uppsala, Borås, Helsingborg, and Lund all have Jewish communities as well. Synagogues can be found in Stockholm (which has 2 Orthodox and 1 Conservative synagogue), Göteborg (an Orthodox and a Conservative synagogue), Malmö (an Orthodox synagogue) and in Norrköping (although the Norrköping community is too small to perform regular services).

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