To Sweden : The story that was never told

Bertil Oppenheimer was born in 1950 and grew up with his parents and an elder brother in a suburb of Stockholm. At home, German was spoken, since his parents were German Jewish immigrants. His parents, Elli and Kurt, had immigrated to Sweden in 1943. But they never told their children about what had happened to them during the war. It was not until the early decease of his parents that the questions started to accumulate. This is the story about Elli and Kurt Oppenheimer, how they grew up, were educated, met each other and got married. How life, after Hitler’s takeover of power, gradually changed and eventually forced them to emigrate to the Netherlands, where after the German invasion, they had to go into hiding. You can follow their desperate struggle to get a residence permit in Sweden, what happened to their immediate family and, above all, how in the nick of time they were saved and could be reunited with their relatives in Sweden. The restrictive Swedish refugee policy is illustrated in various ways. There were a few other people who made considerable efforts to save Jews in distress during the war. What happened to the consul Borrero, who from Stockholm, issued Ecuadorian passports to Jews in Poland and the Netherlands? The Swedes very likely knew what was going on in Germany. The information was available – but what did the Germany-friendly Swedes want to believe? During his research the author also found a number of Jewish registers set up in Sweden during the years, which also leads to a concluding observation on the consequences of antisemitic hatred spreading on today’s social media.