Sweden and the Jews

As Inger Collingridge writes (Letters, 14 October), in 1938 Sweden (together with Switzerland) did ask Nazi Germany to stamp the passports of Jews with a J, so that Jewish refugees could be refused admission. But there was a later change of policy. In 1943 Sweden admitted nearly 8,000 Jewish refugees, mainly from German-occupied Norway and Denmark; Count Bernadotte, of the Swedish Red Cross, near the end of the war secured the release of 31,000 inmates from German concentration camps, several thousand Jews among them, who were brought to Sweden; and Raoul Wallenberg, the Swedish consul in Budapest, from 1944 onwards issued Swedish passports to thousands of Hungarian Jews, saving them from the death camps and enabling many to go to Sweden. Some 10,000 Jews were brought to Sweden after the war by the Red Cross and the UN.

Ralph Blumenau

London

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