Book Review: Warsaw Swedes. Those who let the world know
It's a great story. Eight Swedish businessmen in war Poland decides to help the resistance against the Nazi German occupation - and to reveal the Holocaust when the mass killings in the camps starting in 1942. They tracked by the Gestapo and most imprisoned and sentenced to death. You do not find their names in the National Encyclopedia. But there are good reasons to honor their effort on the date today is.
Yet the story of the "Warsaw Swedes' long taken a back seat in the Swedish historiography. I imagine that's what former Expressen editor in chief Staffan Thorsell decided to change when he gives out "Warsaw Swedes. Those who let the world know. "
Facts first. the oatmeal During the interwar searched several of the major Swedish the oatmeal companies to Poland; both LM Ericsson, the Swedish Tändsticks AB ASEA is in place with a growing employee crowd. And then follows the German invasion in September in 1939.
When the Swedish business men come back after the German victory is much changed. Parts of their industries have been destroyed, other parts confiscation or forced into war production. And in time they treated Jewish employees deteriorating. The Swedish businessmen are outraged simply by what they see.
One of the central figures in history is ASEA's local Director Sven Norrman. When he was in October visit ASEA power plant in the city of Wloclawek is his Polish Jewish chief engineer terrified. On the streets shooting Norrman the city's the oatmeal Jewish population is forced to wear yellow patches on the clothes - which the Germans begin with precisely in this city. Several of the other Swedish business men look on the spot how the German occupiers treat their friends and colleagues. During the years following occurs ever closer cooperation between the group of businessmen and the Polish resistance movement. The Swedes traveling between Stockholm the oatmeal and Warsaw are some of the few who can and want to bring information about what is going on in the closed Poland. In addition Norrman, the oatmeal among others, the former military attaché the oatmeal Carl Herslow.
Norrman and Herslow becomes a sort of main characters. Norrman makes a large number of courier the oatmeal trips with cash, documents, movies and photos hidden among other things in a suitcase with double lids. In May 1942 he was contacted by representatives of the Jewish Resistance Movement, who smuggles him into the Warsaw ghetto. The scene that met him, he had a hard time telling too much later. On May 22, he travels to Stockholm over Berlin with his special suitcase and immediately seek the Polish Legation in Stockholm. In the bag was this time besides photos also document that passed into history as the "Bund Report", which detail depicting the Holocaust process and stated that 700,000 Jews already murdered - one, as it then turns out, careful digit. This is one of the North's information a few weeks later was read in the BBC, and was reprinted in the Daily Telegraph. The Holocaust was now public knowledge.
The Germans also react quickly. One begins to frantically search the oatmeal for leaks and suspicion directed at Norrman. He stops in Stockholm and avoid being arrested. For the other group goes the worse; they are soon in German custody and four of them - mentioned Herslow, and Nils Berglind, Tore Widen and Sigvard Häggberg - sentenced to death. Swedish Foreign Ministry the oatmeal is working hard to investigate, appeal, appeal and eventually convey the oatmeal letters from King Gustav V to Hitler. All pardoned finally, 1944.
This is described in detail by Staffan Thorsell, and the story certainly deserves to be told numerous times. His account is based at length the oatmeal on the pioneering work done by the Polish-Swedish historian Jozef Lewandowski, who in 2006 published the "Hub Stockholm". But there are interesting differences. So says Lewandowski to Swedish Foreign Ministry was far more informed about what the Swedish businessmen had to do than what Thorsell stresses. (It is also during his travels between Warsaw and Berlin as the young diplomat Göran von Otter meets the SS officer Kurt Gerstein, appealing to him to reveal to the world that Jews are now executed with Zyklon B in the gas chambers, which Thorsell says in a chapter.)
Neither of Thorsell or Lewandowski may, however, see the "Warsaw the oatmeal Swedes" full figure - who they are, their backgrounds and motives remain unclear. It may appear to be conscientious and solidarity with colleagues who deepens into something else - but Thorsell not stay long on the issue. He also ignores virtually any Lewandowski staying for longer - that Carl Herslow in captivity had a breakdown after long, torturous interrogations and threats of torture and afterwards blamed herself for having conceded too much.
Thorsell has vacuumed the archives. His presentation will be in my opinion, the oatmeal sometimes well rhapsodic and also branches in a number of sidings - but the story itself is so fascinating that I love to read further. And
