During the Nazi era, Sweden accepted numerous refugees from Germany. Today, the lives of refugees from the global south count for little. And yet there is also compassion, as here for an asylum seeker who died under “mysterious circumstances.”
Foto: picture alliance/dpa/PA Wire | Andrew Matthews
Hardly anyone associates anything with the name Emigraternas Självhälp anymore. This was the name of a self-help organization of German-Jewish emigrants founded in Stockholm in 1938. Helmut Müssener from the Hugo Valentin Center at Uppsala University and his colleague Michael F. Scholz from the Institute for Russian and Eurasia Studies there are presenting these for the first time using documents such as annual reports, circulars, programs, professional lists and correspondence as well as the CVs and achievements of some of their protagonists before.
Numerous people from Nazi Germany found refuge in Sweden. Scholz emphasizes in the introduction that they also lived in legal and financial insecurity there, whereupon voices became louder in the media and private circles calling for a humanitarian solution at the political level. One of these voices was Friedrich Salomon “Fritz” Hollander (1915–2004), who had already emigrated to Sweden in 1933. The industrialist was one of the co-founders and board members of Emigraternas Självhälp. He was in contact with German communists such as Karl Mewis and Josef “Willi” Wagner and also supported them financially. Scholz outlines the politics of the KPD section leadership in Sweden, the formation of various anti-fascist platforms and the discussions within them. After the pogrom night of 9/10. November 1938 in Germany, 19 emigrants and Swedish citizens called for the formation of an aid organization. One of the signatories of the call to found a Jewish self-help organization was the linguist and communist Wolfgang Steinitz (1905-1967).
In the second chapter, Müssener, whose dissertation “Exile in Sweden” published in 1974 is still considered a standard work today, describes the diverse actions of emigrant self-help that continued long after the liberation from fascism. The last written document of the Jewish Emigrant Self-Help comes from 1973. Emigraternas Självhälp succeeded in forming an efficient migrant network, giving courage to continue living, strengthening the emigrants’ identity and self-confidence and in many cases making them largely forget the problems of everyday life in exile. Music and film evenings, concerts, lectures, language lessons and gymnastics courses were part of it. Scholz then devotes himself to the surveillance of leading figures in emigrant self-help by the Swedish police and security services. A subchapter is dedicated to the exciting question of informers and informers in the environment and within the organization. For example, the Swedish Secret State Police managed to recruit the KPD official Hugo Willsch (1904-1973) from Hamburg.
Finally, Scholz reflects on the self-image of emigrant self-help in the memories of some of its officials. Jan Peters (1932–2011) is also remembered, the son of the physicist Hans-Jürgen Cohn-Peters and his wife Ruth and nephew of Wolfgang Steinitz, who spent almost ten years in Swedish emigration as a child and teenager and became a historian and had felt committed to this chapter of exile history throughout his life. The effects of the Stalinist party purges in the Soviet Zone/GDR and the difficulties faced by returned emigrants in writing their memoirs are mentioned. In the appendix you will find, among other things, a list from May 1945 that names members and supporters of the Emigraternas Självhälp, including communists who were later particularly active in politics, culture and science in the GDR.
Helmut Müssener/Michael F. Scholz: Jewish emigrant self-help in Stockholm (1938–1973). Help through self-help. De Gruyter, 344 pages, hardcover, €79.95.
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