Historical documents related to the capture of seven Swedes by the Gestapo in Poland in 1942 puts Sweden’s subsequent ball bearing deliveries to Nazi Germany in a new light, argue historians Susanne Bergerand Ingela Magner. Sweden’s Queen Silvia to probe family Nazi links…
…Der »Gefangene Nr. 7« Aus Kreisen des heutigen russischen Geheimdienstes FSB hieß es, dass der Schwede mit größter Wahrscheinlichkeit irgendwann im Jahr 1947 zum »Gefangenen Nr. 7« im Lubjanka-Gefängnis in Moskau geworden war. Und dass »Nr. 7« dort am 22.…
My mother, Elizabeth Thaler née Roth was living in Budapest in 1944, with her father, Eugene Roth, her mother Martha Roth, her sister Susan and her grandmother whose name I don’t know. My mother did not like to talk about…
The investigation conducted by a joint Swedish-Russian Working Group about Swedish ships lost during the Cold War leaves many important questions unanswered.
The Swedish Foreign Ministry has not disclosed the information publicly because the official Swedish-Russian Working Group formed in 1993 to investigate the disappearance of Swedish ships during the Cold War never produced a final report. Surprisingly, Swedish officals did not seek independent verification of the find, explore the cause of the sinking or ask Polish authorities about the fate of the crew. The newly discovered information also raises questions about other Swedish vessels that vanished off the coast of Poland from 1946-1955.
In August 1993 the Polish Foreign Ministry informed an official Swedish-Russian Working Group examining the cases of about seventeen Swedish vessels that had disappeared during the Cold War that the wreck of a ship that matches the description of the “DAN” had been discovered already in 1957 in Polish territorial waters. [Document 1] According to internal UD documents, the “Wreckbook” of the Polish Navyshows that the boat was found 3.5 km north of Jastrzębia Góra and was partially lifted already in 1964. The memo further states that since the debris was discovered at the bottom of the sea, it was assumed that the crew had gone down with the ship and that there were no survivors (UD Arbetspapper, 2001-9-27.) The suspected cause of the sinking was a mine. The “Dan” had originally been believed to have gone missing with a seven person crew somewhere outside of Latvia.
Den svenska eftergiftspolitiken mot Nazityskland gick för långt. Det hävdar historieprofessorn Klas Åmark i boken ”Att bo granne med ondskan” som utkommer i februari. Boken har tillkommet på ett regeringsuppdrag. I dag 27 januari är det förintelsens minnesdag. Och trots…
The Swedish policy of appeasement towards Nazi Germany went too far, history professor Klas Åmark argues in the book Living Next Door To Evil, which comes out in February. The book has come at a government commission. Today, 27 January,…
Det är nu tio år sedan en gemensam rysk-svensk arbetsgrupp lade fram sin rapport om Raoul Wallenbergs öde i Sovjetunionen efter att han arresterats av ryska trupper i Budapest i januari 1945. Trots arbetsgruppens ansträngningar förblir hela sanningen om Wallenbergs…
Den 4 augusti fyller Raoul Wallenberg 99 år och nästa år är det således 100 år sedan han föddes. Detta kommer att uppmärksammas både i Sverige och i andra länder. Samtidigt kommer efter en viss paus åter ett flertal böcker om denne man, som med fog kan kallas en av Sveriges få hjältar. Vissa av de nyare böckerna försöker nyansera bilden av Wallenberg och ibland till och med påstå att han inte var så betydelsefull som myten gjort gällande och sysslade även med privata affärer. Därmed finns möjlighetens till historisk debatt kring en person som fortfarande omges av en viss mystik. De allra senaste årens forskning i arkiv i Ungern har dock pekat åt ett annat håll- att han förvisso hade andra uppdrag än det humanitära, men att det knappast var privata affärer utan kontakter med den anti-nazistiska motståndsrörelsen och troligen också allierad underrättelsetjänst!
It has now been ten years since a joint Swedish-Russian Working Group presented its report on the fate of Raoul Wallenberg in the Soviet Union following his arrest by Russian troops in Budapest in January 1945, a few months before the end of World War II. In spite of the Working Group’s efforts, the full facts of Wallenberg’s fate remain unknown.
Not surprisingly, relatively little progress has been made since the case moved from an official investigation to a subject of historical inquiry. Although researchers have produced quite a few new insights, without strong official Swedish support there is no way to effectively pressure Russian authorities to present the key files necessary to answer the remaining questions. In other words, we know crucial documentation is available, but we are not allowed to see it, nor do we get adequate help to obtain access to it.
Nevertheless, there have been some important breakthroughs since 2001. We do know now without a shadow of a doubt that Russian officials intentionally withheld information from documentation presented to the Working Group as early a 1991, when the group began its work. The documents were censored not primarily out of concern for Russian secrecy and privacy laws (that issue could have been easily circumvented), but clearly to prevent Swedish officials from learning information that would have led them to question the longtime Soviet version of Raoul Wallenberg’s fate, namely that he died of a heart attack on July 17, 1947 in Lubyanka prison. The censored material – which remains secret to this day – would have shown that with great likelihood Wallenberg was interrogated by Soviet Security officials six days later, on July 23, 1947. If such information had been received in 1991, it might have set the whole inquiry of the Working Group on a different path.
The actions of the Swedish side also leave a few question marks. For example, in 1997 Russian officials informed the Working Group that Russian Foreign Ministry archives contain a number of secret coded telegrams which make direct reference to Raoul Wallenberg, although the Russians claim they include no information about his fate. For that reason, Swedish officials agreed not to insist on a review of the documentation, even though the material may have proved valuable for our inquiries in other ways. Fourteen years later, the cables still have not been released. The same is true for a wide range of investigative files and other documentation from Russian intelligence archives that have remained completely inaccessible to researchers.
Sixty-six years after his disappearance, Israel has a moral obligation to find out why the Swedish diplomat was detained and what really happened to him. January 17, 2011 marks 66 years since a historic injustice was done to Swedish diplomat…