The Commission on Jewish Assets in Sweden at the Time of the Second World War

What happened to unclaimed Jewish assets in Sweden after the war?

Can Jewish property have come to Sweden as part of the trade exchange with Nazi Germany?

Were looted assets, such as art and jewellery, brought to Sweden?

Can Jewish assets have been included in the disposal of German assets in Sweden after the war?

Concluding Reflections

The great tragedy of the Holocaust consists in millions of people having lost their lives. An essential part of European civilisation was shattered. There is also a material aspect. Millions of Jewish homes, as well as thousands of Jewish institutions, were laid waste and their possessions dispersed.

There are a good many histories of the Second World War. Historical accounts of the Holocaust are fewer in number, and the question of its economic dimension has long remained relatively uninvestigated. In more recent years, however, this dimension has attracted considerable international attention, and it is this latter question, with regard to Sweden, that the Commission has had the task of addressing.

National differences of historical experience mean that different topics of inquiry and working approaches are required for different nations. In countries which were occupied by the Germans, the main focus of inquiry during the 1990s has been on the confiscation of Jewish assets. In non-belligerent states, banking and business relations with Nazi Germany are a main issue, like the role which Jewish assets may have played in them. The USA, Britain and France are to a great extent concerned with scrutinising the guidelines which the Allies drew up after the war concerning, among other things, the distribution of looted gold. Despite differences of perspective and method, the search for historical truth is a unifying link in the international inquiry.

All perspectives on the history of the Second World War must start with a knowledge of the extent and consequences of Nazi violence. This applies not only with regard to the Jewish population but also to many other people in Europe. This has been an obvious point of departure for the work of the Commission.

Recently the accepted Swedish view of Sweden’s role during the Second World War has been questioned. The consequences of the policy pursued have been discussed. These questions have also proved to be relevant to the Commission’s task - a delimited one per se - of clarifying as far as possible what may have happened in Sweden to property of Jewish origin which was brought here in connection with the persecutions of the Jews before and during the Second World War. The Commission has therefore opted to devote the introductory chapters of its final report to a general discussion of refugee policy, the policy of neutrality, trade policy and relations between public opinion and the government. One finds that Sweden’s policy towards the belligerent great powers for most of the war was based on considerations of power politics. Moral issues were excessively disregarded and actions were taken with the overriding purpose of keeping Sweden out of the war and maintaining essential supplies. Today, of course, such an attitude can seem deplorable.

The Commission’s research with regard to its actual remit has focused on five points of inquiry.

• Did the Riksbank (Sweden’s central bank) receive any looted gold or gold plundered from individuals?
• What happened to unclaimed Jewish assets in Sweden after the war?
• Can Jewish property have come to Sweden as part of the trade exchange with Nazi Germany?
• Can Jewish assets have been included in the disposal of German assets in Sweden after the war?

What happened to unclaimed Jewish assets in Sweden after the war?

From the very outset, there were two basic questions concerning assets which had been "orphaned" in Sweden as a result of Nazi persecutions of Jews and others before and during the Second World War.

• What ought to be done with heirless property, i.e. the property of persons dying without heirs?
• What should be done with other unclaimed (orphaned) assets whose owners were unidentified?

Heirless property
As regards heirless property in Sweden left by victims of the Holocaust, various solutions were conceivable, the most obvious being to treat them like other heirless property and transfer them to the State Inheritance Fund. But it can also have been argued that there was justification for heirless property of this kind being formed or paid into a special fund for the purpose of helping other Holocaust victims. Similarly, it was arguable that the property ought to be transferred to some Jewish organisation. These latter two solutions, if they were at all possible, would have required special legislation.

In negotiations with the Allies after the war, prior to the so-called Washington agreement, the Swedish Government chose to base its position on a solution whereby the assets in question were formally treated like other heirless property and could therefore be added to the State Inheritance Fund. At the same time the Swedish Government promised to take steps for "the value of such… property" to be placed at the disposal of the Allies for relief purposes. In practice, of course, it was impossible for the State to perform an exact calculation of this value, because, as the Swedish negotiators in Washington must have realised, not all heirless property of Holocaust victims could be identified and valued. Looking back, one finds it doubtful whether Sweden can be said, in a formal sense, to have honoured its commitment under the Washington agreement in the matter of heirless property.

Other unclaimed assets in banks
As regards unclaimed assets in Swedish banks other than heirless property, the guiding principle must be for the depositors or their successors to be provided for in the best possible way. In cases where the depositors died in the Holocaust, the successors (claim-holders) are as a rule their survivors.

Survivors of Holocaust victims can have encountered special difficulties in asserting their rights. Since it can be especially complicated for them to identify and locate the assets in question, they may also have been prevented, for example, from breaking limitation periods or monitoring the appreciation of securities deposited.

These circumstances can be said to indicate that the State or the banks ought to have taken special steps to make it easier for survivors to obtain their rights. This could have been done, for example, by means of exceptions in the Limitations Act, through the relaxation of bank secrecy rules, coupled with the publication of particulars concerning the banking assets not claimed since the end of the war, or through the appointment of guardians ad litem to safeguard the survivors’ interests.

But there were also arguments against measures of the kind which have now been mentioned. It could, for example, be reasoned that there was no real need for a prolongation of limitation periods, since, in practice, banks never invoke limitation against surviving claim-holders. Furthermore, it was arguable that the reasons for preservation of bank secrecy carried more weight than the reasons against, especially in view of the impossibility of segregating unclaimed assets which might conceivably emanate from Holocaust victims, but also because there could be misgiving among Jewish people, for fear of publication having negative consequences. Lastly, the view could be taken that the appointment of guardians ad litem amounted, in practice, to circumscriptions of the claim-holders’ own powers and, moreover, could prove expensive. Guardians ad litem are usually remunerated out of the funds administered.

As far as the Commission has been able to find, the issues of principle discussed here did not receive very much attention from the State until the 1960s, when investigations were mounted under the aegis of the Bank Inspection Board and the Swedish Bankers’ Association. This delay is remarkable, especially considering that representations were already being made by Jewish organisations in the 1940s.

It was perhaps as a result of these questions not being adequately considered and broached in the 1940s that they came up again in the 1960s.

What then happened was that the banks, following representations from Jewish organisations and a certain amount of governmental intervention, set up, on their own initiative, a fund for victims of Nazism. The endowment of the fund was based on the estimated total value of unclaimed assets in Swedish banks which can have belonged to victims of the Holocaust. It was distributed by the Red Cross. The fund did not affect the possibilities of survivors still obtaining payment from the banks. Receivables, deposits, assets in safe custody and bank safe deposits remained as they were. The setting up of the fund, then, was a voluntary contribution to other persons who had been affected by Nazi persecution and did not in itself imply any loss to the next of kin to those Holocaust victims who had assets in Swedish banks.

The debate in the 1960s and 1970s came to a great extent to centre round the question of how the fund had been computed. Among other things it was questioned whether interest had been included and whether all assets of the kind in question had really been taken into account. Considering that the fund was set up on a voluntary basis, with no circumscription of the claim-holders’ claims, the Commission cannot see that questions like these should be ascribed any crucial importance. Unfortunately, though, one is bound to say, looking back, that the investigations carried out in the 1960s, with several ministries, the Bank Inspection Board, the Swedish Bankers’ Association and the banks taking part, were a prominent cause of the technicalities surrounding the creation of the fund overshadowing the question of how the claim-holders concerned could be provided for. Instead of discussing how the claim-holders concerned could be provided for, efforts were concentrated on a protracted and unclear processing of the question of conditions applying to the funds set up for the benefit of other victims. Neither the banks nor the governmental agencies, for example, addressed the possibilities of making things easier for the claim-holders by publicising particulars of missing account holders and deposit or safe deposit holders or of appointing guardians ad litem.

As regards the handling by the banks of claims from individual claim-holders, it is first to be remarked that the Commission has found no indications of the banks omitting to honour rightful claims. It has been alleged in the international debate that banks have often made absurdly high demands for evidence of an account holder having died in the Holocaust. The Commission agrees that it is unsuitable for such evidential requirements to be pressed too far, but at the same time it does not know of a single instance where a Swedish bank has been criticised for acting in this way. The banks have now expressly declared their willingness to waive the general principle requiring documentation of the depositor’s decease to be presented.

In March 1998 the Commission published a list of banking assets which had been unclaimed since the end of the war. This has made it possible in several cases, long after the event, for payments to be made to claim-holders who are survivors of Holocaust victims and who were not previously aware of the existence of the assets concerned. With this, the Commission feels that the banks, with the Commission’s assistance, have at last done what can be expected in order to make it easier for the claim-holders to be made aware of their assets. In their contacts with the Commission and with the persons who made themselves known after the announcement, the banks have been accommodating and helpful. In the Commission’s opinion it is safe to assume that the banks will act similarly in the examination of claims which have not yet been presented or dealt with. Summing up, the following can be noted.

• The question of what ought to be done with unclaimed assets in Swedish banks was not taken seriously enough by the Government and banks during the years immediately after the war.
• When the question was raised in the 1960s, its processing was protracted and unclear. This was a cause of great dissatisfaction on the Jewish side.
• The Commission has found no signs of any bank having omitted to honour any rightful claim to previously unclaimed assets.
• In the course of the Commission’s work, the banks have done what can be expected of them to trace the claim-holders.

Insurance claims
The Commission’s inquiries have shown that there is very little likelihood of there being unclaimed insurance assets in Sweden. Only life insurance claims can have become orphaned. At the time in question, Swedish insurance companies probably had no interest whatsoever in entering into life insurance agreements with persons living abroad. Neither the particulars obtained from insurance companies active at the time in question, random checks of surviving records or any other particulars suggest the presence in Sweden of insurance claims which were orphaned as a result of Nazi persecutions. Isolated instances of this kind cannot, however, be ruled out.

Property deposited with diplomatic missions
The work of the Commission has revealed that there were cases of Jews living abroad depositing assets with Swedish diplomatic missions. The possibility cannot be excluded of assets of this kind having been orphaned as a result of Nazi persecutions and in some cases still remaining in Swedish Government hands, at the diplomatic missions concerned or elsewhere. This possibility was unremarked until the Commission arranged for these matters to be investigated.

Time has not, however, permitted the Commission to carry out a complete investigation of the extent to which unclaimed assets of Jewish origin are still in State hands. Any such investigation will have to be conducted in association with representatives of local authorities and can be expected to entail a great deal of work. Unlike the situation with regard to banking assets, there is no previous investigation report to go by. The Commission feels, however, that an investigation must be carried out, in some other connection.

Property possibly in the hands of transport companies, accountants and lawyers
There may of course have been cases of transport companies, accountants or lawyers in Sweden taking charge of property which was orphaned as a result of the owner dying in the Holocaust. The possibilities of investigating whether this was the case were already found to be very limited in the 1960s. Following renewed contacts with business organisations and with families belonging to the Jewish congregations in Sweden, the Commission, regrettably, has to admit that it is now very difficult to get any closer to the truth in this matter.

General conclusion
In a moral perspective it is regrettable that certain claim-holders have been apprised at a late stage of things, or not at all, of assets being orphaned as a result of the Holocaust. No less regrettable is the risk of certain claim-holders having lost all opportunity of presenting claims. The Commission assumes that the Government will initiate such measures as are needed in order to make moral restitution to those concerned.

Can Jewish property have come to Sweden as part of the trade exchange with Nazi Germany?

Germany was Sweden’s most important trading partner both before and during the Second World War. Accordingly, there was a wide interface between Swedish and German business interests.

The frames of business activity
Hitler’s coming to power in Germany was followed by a deliberate "aryanisation" of German business. Jewish entrepreneurs and capitalists were excluded by various methods. Germany’s interventionist currency regulations were deployed against the Jews from an early stage of things. Gradually, from the second half of the 1930s onwards, a succession of special laws were introduced which eventually deprived Jews of all influence in German business and debarred them from property ownership. Conditions evolved on similar lines in the countries occupied by the Nazis. Aryanisation proceeded openly. Detailed information about the process was readily available in Sweden. In these connections, property of Jewish origin could conceivably have come to Sweden for the following reasons, among others. Firstly, an entrepreneur threatened with aryanisation could try to bring his property to safety here. Secondly, a party winding up or taking over a Jewish enterprise in connection with compulsory aryanisation could try to sell or otherwise transfer the firm’s property to Sweden. Lastly, aryanised property could be transferred in the course of ordinary, ongoing trading relations.

The Commission is satisfied that there were certain cases of Jewish businessmen threatened with aryanisation measures trying to secure their assets by selling them to business partners in Sweden. In the cases which have been observed by the Commission, the transfer, for various reasons, never materialised. It is also to be noted that the plans did not entail the actual transfer of property to Sweden but rather the transfer of businesses in Nazi-dominated territories to Swedish ownership.

In cases where aryanisation was carried out by means of compulsory liquidation, most of the indications are that the assets remained in the area where they were located at the time of aryanisation. The Commission has observed that the Swedish Security Police investigated suspicions of another kind against pro-German sympathisers and interests in Sweden. Despite detailed inspections of the archives both of the Security Police and of several large Swedish business concerns, the Commission has been unable to find evidence of transfers from liquidated Jewish businesses to Swedish businessmen. Nor, on the other hand, has it been able to exclude the possibility of this having happened.

If aryanisation meant a firm exporting to Sweden being taken over by somebody who carried on the business, there may have been cases of the Swedish importer paying the new proprietor for goods produced in the Jewish owner’s time.

After the outbreak of war, collection and compulsory purchase of securities and gold, among other things, was organised by the state in Nazi-dominated territories, simultaneously with aryanisation. Measures of this kind were directed against the populations as a whole. Here again, however, the Jews were singled out for special treatment. Special rules and heavier coercion applied to them. The Jews in the Netherlands, for example, were ordered, in August 1941, to deposit their securities etc. immediately with the so-called LIRO Bank.

During the Second World War, the Swedish Government assumed progressively stronger control of foreign trade. Payment routines for commodity trade with Germany were already co-ordinated in the mid-1930s, in that payments between the country were continuously offset through the agency of the State. Soon after the outbreak of war, Sweden introduced licensing requirements for imports and exports of various commodities. Soon after that, detailed bilateral trade agreements were signed both with Germany and with Britain. In the framing of these agreements, the Swedish negotiators tried above all to secure essential supplies, so that Sweden could remain independent and neutral. Import and export licences were adapted to the content of the agreements concluded. In this way the State also came to control the volume and emphasis of trade with Nazi Germany. This powerful state control did not directly impede the transfer to Sweden of property of Jewish origin, but it did have the effect of circumscribing the options available to individual Swedish businessmen. Their possibilities of exploiting occasional opportunities of profit were circumscribed accordingly. Entrepreneurs acted on the Government’s behalf in a system which amounted to a planned economy.

Balance of payments redressed with gold
All the time, Swedish imports from Germany exceeded Swedish exports to that country. The balance of payments between the two countries, however, was not only affected by commodity trade. Swedish exports of transport services and financial relations were also very important. Large German loans had been partly negotiated with Swedish banks and enterprises since the 1920s. Sweden had increasing difficulty in getting these loans serviced by Nazi Germany. Special agreements on the payment of these and other German loans were therefore concluded between the two countries, simultaneously with the introduction of the clearing system for payments for goods and services. These economic relations were also discussed in the course of trade agreement negotiations between Sweden and Nazi Germany. In spite of Sweden’s import surplus, Germany became increasingly indebted to Sweden.

Part of Germany’s Kreuger loan was paid off in the autumn of 1940. The Germans paid partly in dollars and partly in gold. On the Swedish side, the Riksbank received the payment in gold and then reimbursed the Swedish creditors by other means. The Commission finds nothing essentially remarkable in gold being received as payment in this connection. Gold has traditionally been used as a means of payment between central banks. The purpose of this transaction on Sweden’s part was to reduce a credit to Nazi Germany. There could still be grounds for criticism by the Commission if there were reason to believe that the gold in question emanated from Jews. In the light of present knowledge concerning the gold held and acquired by the German Reichsbank, the gold received by the Riksbank in 1940 is unlikely to have included gold confiscated or looted from Jews and other specifically persecuted persons.

With the balance of payments in relation to Nazi Germany showing an increasing deficit on the German side, Swedish exporters found themselves having to wait for payment. In terms of fact, Germany can be said to have enjoyed a respite, which Sweden did not consider desirable. Accepting payment in German Reichsmarks was out of the question, and the Germans did not have access to free currencies - dollars, for example - with which to effect payment. Furthermore, it became increasingly clear that the Germans were in no position to redress the balance by delivering additional goods. At this point the idea arose of the Reichsbank selling gold to the Riksbank as a means of obtaining currencies with which to effect payment. Between the summer of 1942, after an agreement to this effect had been signed, and the summer of 1944, the Riksbank received a total of 20.3 tonnes of gold bars and 1.5 tonnes of gold coins. Most of this gold never came to Sweden but was stored abroad until the end of the war. In its interim report the Commission has pointed out that, prior to the final transaction, involving the gold coins now mentioned, the Governor of the Riksbank initially suspected that there could be coins involved which had belonged to Jews. That suspicion was dropped after the question had been raised verbally. In its interim report, the Commission also mentions that the gold transactions from 1942 onwards were directly connected with the Swedish-German trade agreement, which in turn had been a pivotal instrument of Sweden’s policy of neutrality. This overarching policy involved a number of balancing acts. Seen through present-day eyes, however, in the Commission’s opinion, there is reason to question whether the special gold agreement attached to the trade agreement was really necessary all through the war. The Commission adheres to its previous criticism at the moral aspects of Sweden’s attitude to gold confiscated and plundered from individuals were not openly, broadly and seriously considered in connection, at the latest, with the purchase of gold coins in the summer of 1944. Similarly, the Commission maintains that, so far, there is no clear indication of the Riksbank’s acquisitions having included gold from the death camps, while on the other hand the possibility cannot be excluded of certain shipments of gold - more specifically, 16.4 tonnes - having contained a minor proportion of gold which had been confiscated or plundered from Jews in other connections.

Dealings in securities
Following the invasion and occupation of the Netherlands in the spring of 1940, Sweden’s trade with that country became a subject of Swedish-German trade negotiations. The Swedes wanted to be able to sell timber goods to the Netherlands. As payment they could consider accepting Swedish securities belonging to private persons in the Netherlands. In August 1941, for this purpose, the Dutch central bank requisitioned from the general public Swedish securities, which were then transferred to the Riksbank. These were mostly government bonds which were then transferred, in August and September 1941, to the Riksbank. The latter paid 97 per cent of face value, and payment for the transfers totalled some MSEK 9. Isolated transactions involving other securities occurred both then and later. In February 1944 the Dutch government in exile lodged an official protest against the transactions, because in its view the securities had been sold unlawfully. The Swedish Government pleaded among other things that it had assumed that the private bond holders would receive full compensation. The investigation conducted by the Commission suggests that the securities in question had been requisitioned from the Dutch people generally and not specifically from the Jews.

During the war years the Riksbank also purchased small batches of Swedish securities from other countries besides the Netherlands, e.g. Switzerland, the USA and certain occupied countries. Nothing has emerged to suggest that these securities had been confiscated or plundered from Jews.

Stockholms Enskilda Bank, headed by the Wallenberg brothers, also acquired securities from abroad during the war. All the transactions of this kind observed by the Commission were brokered by the German firm of Otto Wolff. Rebholz Bank also figured in this connection. For the most part these transactions involved Stockholms Enskilda Bank exchanging German promissory notes for American dollar bonds which had been in Dutch hands. There were also purchases of Swedish securities which had been owned abroad. In connection with these barter transactions, detailed negotiations took place on the framing of the title transfer deeds by which, as the bank saw it, the bonds should be accompanied. After the war a dispute arose between Stockholms Enskilda Bank and the Dutch central bank, which considered itself entitled to buy the securities back. This dispute, which was settled in 1951, mainly concerned the buy-back price. All things considered, the Commission has come to the conclusion that the possibility of securities, purchased by Stockholms Enskilda Bank through Otto Wolff and Rebholz Bank, being of Jewish origin cannot be discounted.

The commercial banks and Nazi gold
The Swedish commercial banks and other Swedish business interests during the war were not prevented by law from dealing in gold. True, export permits were needed from 1940 and import permits from the autumn of 1944, but there was never any formal impediment to transactions taking place entirely within Sweden or abroad. The Commission has been able to establish that Swedish trading in gold at the time of the Second World War was nevertheless strongly centralised within the Riksbank, which appears to have maintained a species of monopoly within Sweden’s boundaries. Thus it was the Riksbank that received gold when, in 1940, Germany bought back Kreuger bonds from Skandinaviska Banken and L.M. Ericsson. A similar deal took place in 1943, with the sale of Danzig bonds by STAB (Swedish Match). The Riksbank received a consignment of gold in part payment. That gold has been found to have come from the Belgian central bank. For reasons given in the Commission’s interim report, the gold, therefore, was presumably not of Jewish origin.

The Commission’s researches in the archives of the commercial banks and the national authorities concerned have revealed only one instance of a Swedish businessman performing a transaction with gold as the means of payment without the direct involvement of the Riksbank. Stockholms Enskilda Bank received, as commission, approximately 0.15 tonne gold from the German Reichsbank after a company closely linked to the bank and located in Panama had bought up German promissory notes in the USA on Otto Wolff’s behalf at the end of 1940 and beginning of 1941. The gold was delivered to Schweizerischer Bankverein in Basle. About 0.05 tonne of this gold was of Swedish origin. The Commission has not been able to exclude the possibility of the remaining 0.10 tonne including a certain amount of gold which had been confiscated or plundered from individuals.

The commercial banks sent monthly reports on their gold holdings to the Swedish Bank and Stock Exchange Inspection Board. The fluctuations were very marginal throughout the war years, which corroborates the assumption that the private banks had a low level of activity where dealings in gold were concerned. Combined monthly holdings during the war years, according to the statistics, averaged no more than about 0.10 tonne.

Refining of gold
Scrap gold and suchlike is refined in re-melting plants for re-use in the making of jewellery, dental fillings etc. There were several re-melting plants during the war years. They received scrap gold, for example, from customers in Denmark and Norway. Import permits were conditional on the corresponding amount of upgraded gold being returned. At least one of these re-melting plants used a German company for part of the re-melting process. Partially re-melted scrap was sent from the Swedish company to the German company. A corresponding amount of further upgraded gold was sent back for further processing. The possibility cannot be excluded of gold confiscated or looted from individuals having figured in these dealings.

Swedish subsidiaries in Nazi territories
Several large Swedish companies had subsidiaries in Nazi-dominated territories. The general investigations which the Commission has been able to carry out have revealed nothing to suggest that these subsidiaries assisted in the transfer to Sweden of assets of Jewish origin. But there may have been cases of one or more of these subsidiaries taking over real estate which Jews were forced to surrender. Prisoners of war were employed by at least one of the subsidiaries, namely at SKF’s Schweinfurt plant. It is not known how many of these prisoners of war were Jews. Nor has it been possible to entirely exclude the possibility of concentration camp prisoners having been used as slave labour in any Swedish enterprise in Germany or in the occupied territories.

Lack of consideration for Jewish origin
The National Trade Commission which, as a consequence of its central role as licensing authority, commanded a comprehensive view of Sweden’s foreign trade, returned statements among other things in matters of Swedish citizenship and concerning work permits for aliens. In its statements the Trade Commission did not make any special allowance for possible Jewish origin. Although this, in itself, agreed with the principle, both then and now, of the neutral exercise of public authority, retrospectively it seems remarkable that this order of things was still maintained towards the end of the war, when the implications of the growing persecutions of Jews were becoming more and more obvious.

Nothing to suggest transfers on a large scale
Certain conclusions have now been presented concerning gold and securities. Otherwise the Commission finds that the following observations can be made concerning property of Jewish origin. It is perfectly possible that property which was or had been Jewish came in various ways to Sweden within the scope of the broad but, ultimately, shrinking interface of Swedish-German business relations at the time of the Second World War. The possibility of certain transfers having occurred cannot be excluded. There is, however, nothing to suggest any extensive precautionary transfers of property to Sweden by Jewish entrepreneurs when threatened with aryanisation. Nor is there any evidence of property from liquidated Jewish enterprises having entered Sweden. The Commission has found nothing to suggest that Swedish businessmen deliberately tried to profit by aryanisation.

The attitude to aryanisation
Even so, there is cause for a closer analysis of the attitude taken to aryanisation. Although the Commission has not been directly instructed to deal with this overarching question, the following can be said.

Every Swedish businessman who, at the close of the 1930s, learned of his business partner in a Nazi-dominated territory being affected by aryanisation had to choose whether or not this would affect his actions in any way. In the concrete instance, the first, acute question might be who was to receive payment for goods delivered: the managing commissary or the former Jewish owner. This question was discussed on a general plane within the Swedish Bankers’ Association and resolved in 1941 by the Supreme Court drawing a legal line of demarcation. Perhaps the next question confronting the Swedish entrepreneur, in the case of an ongoing business relationship, was whether this ought to be continued, limited or broken off completely. In terms of principle, of course, it was possible to refuse to have dealings with companies that had been aryanised, to refuse to have dealings with any German enterprise or to let the commodity exchange or the credit relationship continue as before. The Commission does not know to what extent individual Swedish businessmen actually severed their relations with German companies on account of the current persecutions of Jews. Shortly after Hitler’s assumption of power in 1933, the International Confederation of Free Trade Unions had called for a boycott of German goods. Swedish Government spokesmen had criticised the appeal, arguing that opinions of the political system in a state should not be allowed to stand in the way of peaceful co-existence with the state in question. One general impression gained, however - to the Commission’s surprise - is that this question, when it was most acute just before the outbreak of war, did not prompt any general debate or political discussion of principles. The Commission has not found documentation for any statement of opinion to the effect that aryanised companies should have been boycotted. Nor at the time do any standpoints of this kind appear to have been taken, for example by Jewish organisations in Sweden. Nor does the question of boycotting aryanised businesses appear to have been raised in business or politically in Britain or the USA. Looking back, the Commission finds it profoundly regrettable that the question was not made a subject of general discussion, for example by the larger banks and corporations, in business organisations, in the press or in the Riksdag. This is not to say that there was an obvious answer to the question of what course of action would have been most appropriate.

Knowledge of the Holocaust did not affect trade policy
Once the war had broken out, the Swedish Government assumed responsibility for the direction and volume of foreign trade. From now on it was the Government that decided the extent to which commodity exchange with entrepreneurs in the Nazi-dominated territories should be continued. In today’s perspective, the matter can be said to have come to a head some time during 1943, when the meaning of what we now call the Holocaust could be seen. At that time it was also increasingly clear that Germany was probably going to lose the war. The Government then chose to continue trade relations but, following an agreement on the subject with the western powers in September 1943, made sure that exports and, to a lesser extent, imports were reduced from 1944 onwards. There was at the time no body of opinion in favour of the option of drastically reducing trade, which is what happened later, in the autumn of 1944. Everything suggests that the main reasons for the reduction then effected were the anticipated outcome of the war and the pressure exerted by the Allies. The moral question of the attitude to be taken to business relations with Nazi Germany, in view of the ongoing persecutions of the Jews, was never asked in parliamentary or governmental discussions of Swedish-German trade. Nor, as far as the Commission has been able to find, was this aspect touched on by the Allies in their trade talks with Sweden in 1943. The Commission has noted that there are today various schools of thought on the question of how knowledge of the persecutions of the Jews ought to have affected Swedish trade policy towards Germany at this time. Retrospectively, the Commission finds it deplorable that the question was not raised at the time.

Were looted assets, such as art and jewellery, brought to Sweden?

Recently the economic dimension of the Holocaust has attracted serious attention and created involvement, not least among representatives of the survivors. The questions to which answers are being looked for internationally are the extent of the confiscation and plundering of private property by the Nazis, and ways in which the victims can be compensated for their losses. Hundreds of thousands of shops, institutions and Jewish homes were emptied of their possessions. What became of those possessions? In the course of its inquiries the Commission has tried to ascertain whether public authorities, organisations, businesses and private persons in Sweden may have come into contact with such assets and, if so, how much of this property may have ended up in Sweden.

The plundering activities of the Nazi régime and, not least, ways in which the property was removed, are a subject which, ever since the collapse of the Nazi régime, have been surrounded by myths and, not infrequently, a subject of rumours. International efforts to clarify the plundering of, among other things, individual persons’ private assets such as gold, art and other valuables by the Nazis are still in their infancy.

The disposal of looted assets by the Nazi régime during the war was observed by the Allied intelligence services. In the summer of 1942 the Americans compiled a survey of confiscations and plundering in the occupied countries by the Nazis. The total value of all private property seized by the Germans in the countries concerned was then estimated at several billion US dollars. The so-called safe haven programme was developed, under mainly American direction, in a bid to thwart German efforts, above all in neutral countries, to find a safe haven for German capital and plundered property, among other things.

A large number of reports were compiled by the Allies during the war. One important source is the investigation material compiled for the Nuremberg War Trials. It should be noted, however, that the evaluations prepared during and immediately after the war are not completely dependable. Apart from often being based on rumours, they are characterised by evidential trails not being followed "all the way home". In the Nuremberg trials, the handling of property plundered from private individuals was a subordinate issue.

Little was published on this subject between the end of the war and the 1990s. Consequently the Commission has been faced with the task of investigating and trying to clarify partly unexplored territory. Needless to say, the difficulties of elucidating any handling of looted assets in Sweden is compounded by more than fifty years having passed before the question of the plundering of Holocaust victims came in for serious attention. In the meantime, for example, archives have been weeded. Added to this, most of the dealers and enterprises mentioned in the reports of the Allies are no longer active, with the result that archives have been lost. In these cases, consequently, the work of the Commission has resulted in a return to the point of departure for the inquiries, i.e. mere rumour or incomplete accusations.

Confiscation and plundering of personal assets by Nazi Germany
Not long after Hitler’s assumption of power, anti-Jewish discriminatory decrees and laws were promulgated to provide legal foundations for the confiscation of Jewish property. In 1939 the Jews were obliged to surrender gold, silver and precious stones in return for a certain payment, most of which was deposited in blocked accounts. The property was surrendered to special pawnbroking firms which, throughout the war, served as purveyors of Jewish property to a not very scrupulous market. Special firms, such as Diamant-Kontor for example, were formed to handle the diamonds and precious stones confiscated from the Jews.

These confiscations developed into outright plundering as the persecutions became more and more brutal. With the commencement of eastward deportations and the escalation of the persecutions into systematic mass murder, an immense number of dwellings were made vacant, complete with their furniture and other contents which the deportees were unable to take with them. In November 1941 an addition was made to the Reich Citizenship Law, to the effect that Jews "settling" abroad could not be citizens of the Reich and their property should accrue to it. Jewish property (Judengut) began to be put up for auction in several places in Germany.

The economic plundering of the Jews by the Nazi régime achieved its ghastly culmination in the death camps. When the Nazi régime collapsed, the Allies found evidence of jewellery, wedding rings and dental gold having been plundered, through the agency of the Nazi German apparatus of state, in connection with deportations to and activities in the death camps. In its earlier report, Nazi Gold and the Riksbank, the Commission has given a more detailed account of this traffic. Jewels and suchlike valuables (Judenschmuck) were, for example, transferred by way of the German Reichsbank to the Berlin City Pawnshop, and from there sold partly abroad.

The confiscation and plundering of art carried high priority with the Nazis. This assignment occupied hundreds of officials in various capacities within various national authorities, as well as specially formed institutions such as Kunstschutz, which was directly accountable to the German military leadership and had the task of recording and taking charge of art confiscated from occupied countries. After the outbreak of war, Reichsmarschall Goering took charge of Einsatzstab Reichsleiter Rosenberg für die Besetzten Gebiete (ERR), whose activities were then intensified through the confiscation and plundering of private art collections.

Between 1939 and 1944, the Nazis systematically confiscated and plundered art from the collections of various museums and works of art deposited there, as well as art from both Jewish and non-Jewish collectors all over Occupied Europe. France was the country worst affected by Nazi looting of art. It has been estimated that one-third of all privately owned art in France fell into Nazi hands. Some of it was intended for an art museum which Hitler was planning in Linz, Austria. Other pictures and objects went to decorate offices and premises of the Nazi administration. Certain works of art were ordered and reserved for Hitler, Goering and Ribbentrop, while several works were earmarked for sale on the international art market.

Following the collapse of Nazi Germany, the Allies found a large number of stolen works of art stored, for example, in the mines at Merkers in Germany.

Many works of art stolen by the Nazis before and during the Second World War are still missing. To improve the prospects of tracing the rightful owners of possibly stolen art, several countries have recently set up databases which can be used for matching various particulars, such as title, artist and owner.

Possible escape routes to Sweden
At the end of the war, Sweden, among other countries, was denounced by the intelligence services of the Allies as a receiving country for looted assets. During the war the American legation in Stockholm had among other things been tasked with reporting on stolen property that cropped up in the Swedish market. Already in February 1943, the legation reported that certain members of the Nazi party had begun shipping their valuables to Sweden.

As regards the question of whether confiscated and plundered Jewish property, e.g. art, jewellery and antiquities, was transferred to Sweden during the persecution of the Jews or shortly thereafter, the Commission has mainly concentrated on the following possible routes for such transfers.

• The German legation in Stockholm and German institutions in Sweden may have acquired, or forwarded, valuables as well as currency and securities.
• Hermann Goering, in view of his Swedish contacts, may have transferred assets, such as stolen art, to Sweden.
• Art dealers, jewellers, antique dealers and suchlike persons may have purchased looted goods.
• Smugglers, above all in connection with refugee movements in the closing stages of the war, may have helped to bring valuables of the above mentioned kinds into Sweden.

The German legation etc.
Several Allied reports refer to the German legation in Sweden as a purveyor of stolen precious stones. A junior official at the German foreign ministry was said to be the ringleader for the sale by the Nazi régime of stolen Dutch diamonds which were allegedly conveyed to the German legation by diplomatic bag. Certain documents indicate that the head of Diamant-Kontor paid several visits to Sweden.

The Commission’s researches in the Säpo archives have shown that in the late summer of 1944 the German legation was thought of as a purveyor of jewels "belonging to the murdered German and European Jews". Through the agency of the German businessman Volckerts, about 160 brilliant-cut diamonds with a total value of more than SEK 187,000 were to be dispatched from Sponholz & Co in Berlin to the German legation in Stockholm. As far as can be told from the documents in the Säpo archives, it is uncertain whether these brilliant-cut diamonds left Berlin for shipment to Stockholm. The Commission wishes to take this opportunity of pointing out that further researches could shed additional light on this particular transaction. It has been observed, for example, that litigation concerning the brilliant-cut diamonds in question was in progress in Hamburg in 1949 between Volckerts on the one hand and the jewellers Wilm and Goldemann on the other. There has not been time, however, for the Commission to undertake a search of the German court records.

Summing up, the Commission finds that there are so many particulars pointing in the same direction as regards the German legation’s purveyance of stolen precious stones that there is no cause to impugn their veracity. In addition, the Commission has observed that gold bars were sent to the legation by diplomatic bag in 1944.

Hermann Goering
As a young man, Hermann Goering was a civilian pilot in Sweden, and in Munich in 1923 he married a Swedish woman, Carin von Kantzow, née Fock. Some time after the abortive Nazi putsch that year, the couple returned to Sweden. Carin Goering died in 1931, a few years after they had returned to Germany. While in Sweden, Goering belonged to the Anti-Semitic League. Subsequently he had numerous contacts with Swedish national socialists, above all within the National Socialist Bloc, in which organisation Count Eric von Rosen was a leading party official. Eric von Rosen’s wife Mary was the sister of Goering’s Swedish wife Carin, and his brother Clarence von Rosen was a personal friend of Hitler and Goering.

In the course of its work, the Commission has made a special effort to ascertain whether Hermann Goering transferred looted property to Sweden through his Swedish contacts.

A report from the American legation in Stockholm in May 1945 states among other things that Eric von Rosen’s son, C.G. von Rosen, had very probably assisted Goering in smuggling looted works of art and jewels to Sweden. The Commission has made certain inquiries, e.g. by searching the surviving papers of Eric von Rosen, but those papers contained nothing to confirm that looted assets, jewels or other valuables which Goering had come by, had found their way to Sweden. The Commission does not, however, wish to discount the possibility of further research, e.g. in foreign archives and any surviving private archives of other persons among Goering’s circle of friends in Sweden, leading to a different conclusion.

One name occurring in several American documents is that of the then President of the German Chamber of Commerce, Henry Koux. According to an American report compiled in February 1945, there were a number of crates in the Stockholm Free Port destined for Koux and containing stolen art. The question of the crates in Stockholm Free Port also came up during questioning in connection with the Nuremberg War Trials. Interrogated in December 1945, Goering denied knowing who Koux was. According to the interrogating officer, there was a crate in Koux’s name in Stockholm Free Port containing pictures. It was understood that these pictures were to be kept for Goering. During the interrogation Goering denied all involvement in the matter. In its investigations the Commission has not found any data in Swedish archives about the alleged crates in the Free Port in Koux’s name. Certain particulars about the shipment of art and "refugee property" stored after the war in Stockholm Free Port and at Packhuskajen in Göteborg (Gothenburg) suggest that Sweden was a transit country. Art experts interviewed have among other things mentioned that before 1946 the Rapp art shop in Stockholm had "bundles of art" in Stockholm Free Port for buyers to choose from.

Efforts to trace particulars of Goering’s contacts in Sweden and their possible dealings in looted art have been fruitless.

References have been found to a person by the name of Lars Herman Rasch who in 1941 contacted Goering through Dr Finke of the German legation with a view to purchasing a painting by Raphael. Rasch had a large art collection, already mentioned in 1933, containing works by Italian, French and Dutch artists. It is not impossible that Rasch owned a painting attributed to Raphael. No purchase took place, because the painting could not be reliably attributed to the Italian artist.

Jewellers etc.
The leading goldsmithing enterprise in Sweden during the 1930s and 1940s was Guldsmedsaktiebolaget, which produced gold and silver goods and had its own chain of retail outlets, including C.G. Hallbergs Guldsmeds AB. The company’s owner, and managing director at the time of the Second World War was Otto Decker, a German-born Swedish citizen. Hallbergs has changed hands several times since then. Decker was a Nazi and on social terms with several persons at the German legation.

References found in the Säpo archives show Decker to have been involved in some handling of gold from the German legation. As far as the Commission has been able to ascertain, that gold was of British origin. Several Allied reports also state that Decker was a contact for the smuggling of gold, jewels and diamonds from Germany to Sweden and that he had contacts with the head of Diamant-Kontor. Representatives of Hallbergs have stated to the Commission that no source material is extant from the time of the Second World War.

Other firms were also referred to by the Allied intelligence services as dealing in looted property, but relevant inquiries have been impossible to make because those firms no longer exist.

Smuggling in connection with refugee movements during the final stages of the war
The categories of refugee which the Commission has specially selected for closer investigation are suspected war criminals and collaborators. It is impossible to say how many such people fled to Sweden during the closing stages of the war. Reportedly, about 150 Baltic nationals, 300 Norwegians and Danes and an unknown number of German citizens and Swedes were a subject of special investigation by the Swedish authorities. The main suspect categories involved were probably as follows:

• Collaborators from countries occupied by the Germans - above all the Baltic states, Norway and Denmark.
• Germans belonging to the SS, the SD or the Gestapo.
• Swedish citizens who had served in the SS, the SD or the Gestapo and returned to Sweden during the closing stages of the war or immediately after Germany surrendered.

Many of those coming to Sweden entered the country by their own devices, mainly from Norway and Denmark. In the case of the Baltic countries, however, the Commission has chosen to concentrate on the various "lifelines" which, in the closing stages of the war, transferred large numbers of refugees to Sweden, in view of the accusations which in various connections have been levelled at the persons who conducted these transport operations. Among other things it has been alleged that Jews were unfavourably treated or excluded from the transport operations whereas suspected war criminals and collaborators entered Sweden by this means. The Commission has found examples indicating that Jewish property may have entered Sweden during the closing stages of the war, e.g. from the Baltic countries. The question of the so-called Baltic refugees is extremely complicated and cannot be clarified without extensive researches. These examples show that it is essential for further research to be initiated in order to resolve all the questions relating to collaborators who fled to Sweden from the neighbouring territories occupied by the Germans during the war.

Art dealings
Nothing has emerged to suggest that art looted by the Nazis was a subject of very extensive dealings in Sweden during or soon after the Second World War. Nor is there anything to suggest that any very important works of art passed through Sweden.

The Commission’s inquiries, on the basis of the accessible archives, have not furnished any evidence of looted art appearing on the open market or being acquired for museums. It has not been possible to establish, however, whether such art may nonetheless have found its way into public collections, since in a number of cases the ownership aspect is unclear. It has been quite apparent, however, that there was great awareness of these problems, at least in museums.

If provenance documentation is relatively well developed for painting, sculpture and other pictorial art, it is far more difficult to say whether furniture and other antiquities looted by the Nazis ended up in Sweden, because objects of these kinds are far more anonymous.

There are signs that certain references in American documents from 1945 concerning Sweden may be correct. This applies, for example, to the reference to large quantities of art in Stockholm Free Port, which is corroborated by mention of the Rapp firm of art dealers having bundles of paintings in the Free Port. Large stores of art like this occurred on the Continent, as is shown, for example, by literature on the art trade, and need not have anything to do with looted art. American references to Galleri St Lucas in Stockholm having an exhibition, in 1945, of Flemish and Dutch art of uncertain provenance is also confirmed by the Commission’s inquiries. It seems likely that certain works of art on sale at the gallery in 1944 and 1945 may have bee directly or indirectly connected with looted art. Galleri St Lucas has ceased trading, and so it has not been possible to make more extensive inquiries about its activities during the time in question.

The American documents also refer to certain crates of art at Bukowski’s at the beginning of 1943. No sale of important international art took place that year, nor is any reference made to the matter in the correspondence which has been examined.

As stated above, nothing has emerged to suggest any extensive dealings with Sweden during or soon after the Second World War in art looted by the Nazis. On the other hand the possibility cannot be excluded of certain works of art which were on sale in 1944-45 at the above mentioned exhibitions having been looted. But there is nothing to suggest that any very important works of art passed through Sweden. Signs have been observed of a peripheral trade in international art whose origin cannot be documented. Nor can the possibility be excluded of art having been brought to Sweden illegally, without import licences, and stored here during the war years.

Generally speaking, the institutions have no particulars and the persons interviewed in the art trade, at museums or among collectors have all declared themselves to have no knowledge of illegal dealings in art from Nazi Germany. The interviews suggest that trading in illegal art was not so very widespread. All the same, activity of this kind may possibly have occurred on a minor scale and in very limited circles, perhaps mainly apart from art connoisseurs and art dealers. The question of looted art is a delicate one, and so one cannot ignore the fact that the information given by the Commission’s informants is not always correct. Great discretion concerning sellers and buyers is one of the rules of the art trade.

All in all, the Commission’s inquiries have conveyed the impression that dealings in looted art in Sweden during the Second World War were relatively modest, viewed in an international perspective.

Can Jewish assets have been included in the disposal of German assets in Sweden after the war?

Even before the German collapse, the Allies called upon the neutral countries to take steps to obtain a conspectus and control of "enemy property" within their respective territories. In the summer of 1945 Sweden set up a special authority, the Foreign Capital Control Office, to take charge of German property in Sweden. Following negotiations in Washington in 1946 with the western allies and the approval by the Riksdag of the agreement thus reached, the Control Office, which was active between 1945 and 1956, was given the task of liquidating the German property.

One of the Commission’s tasks under its terms of reference is to investigate whether Jewish property came to be included in the Control Office’s activities.

The Washington agreement
Even though the Foreign Capital Control Office was set up on Sweden’s initiative in the summer of 1945, the framework by which its activities were ultimately guided resulted from the Washington negotiations between Sweden and the western allies in the summer of 1946, which led to the so-called Washington agreement. Briefly and very simply, in that agreement Sweden pledged itself to liquidate the German property on its territory, while the Allies undertook to compensate the German claim-holders.

The Washington agreement was cancelled by an agreement between West Germany and Sweden in 1956. Thus the period which the Commission, in the present connection, has been charged with investigating spans about ten years.

Since the Washington agreement was the very framework of the Control Office’s activities, the Commission found it natural to begin by investigating the extent to which that agreement regulated the question of how property which belonged to, or had originally belonged to, victims of Nazi persecution was to be dealt with. The Commission has been able to establish that this question, as far as is shown by the text of the agreement and other material studies, was not a subject of any more detailed discussion. Thus no direct exception or special provision was made for property which had belonged to victims of Nazi persecution. In a supplementary letter, No. 9, to the actual agreement, however, it was among other things laid down that the interests of non-German foreign citizens were to be protected to the same extent as those of Swedish citizens in all sales and liquidations, and that exceptions could be made "for persons whose cases merit special treatment".

Activities of the Foreign Capital Control Office and other authorities
The Commission’s review of the precedents laid down by the authorities, and above all by the Foreign Capital Control Office and the Restitution Board, has initially shown that the absence of special provisions directly referring to victims of Nazism led, at least during the early years, to the creation of precedents which can be characterised on the whole as bureaucratically correct and based on strictly legal assessments. At the same time, these precedents appear in many cases to be conspicuously "four-square" and, not infrequently, they also display a rather surprising lack of sensitivity. An observation which can be made on the more general plane is, for example, that in their stipulations of corroboration or evidence for particulars furnished, the authorities appear to have underrated the purely practical difficulties or obstacles which could very well be encountered by a person seeking remedy. There are also examples to suggest that the "valuation of evidence" in matters concerning victims of Nazi persecution, or cases where other powerful humanitarian considerations were invoked, was by no means more benevolent than, say, in cases involving alleged Nazi sympathisers. The Commission has also noted that there only seem to have been one or two isolated cases in which the authorities supported parties who were in a position to claim and obtain compensation in Germany, by informing them of this possibility. The decisions handed down, like other information supplied to parties, were as a rule strikingly terse and standardised. Finally, we may note that the Control Office’s own initiatives and inquiries mainly concentrated on cases involving business enterprises and commercial assets and only to a minor extent on cases involving private property.

On the strength of these remarks and other observations, the Commission has come to the conclusion that the risk of Jewish property being liquidated may have depended to no small extent on whether the authorities were supplied from outside, by a party or his or her legal representative, with copious and "acceptable" supportive documentation concerning citizenship and domicile among other things.

As regards application of the criteria of "German property", there is reason to assume that a large proportion of the German Jews who survived the war were stateless and living outside Germany. The eastward deportations had deprived the Holocaust victims of their former nationality. Consequently, in the event of such persons having assets in Sweden, the definition of German property would in itself exclude them from the prohibition of dispersal and from liquidation.

Given the conclusion already presented concerning the need for activity by the party concerned, the Commission in the course of its investigations has among other things taken a special interest in cases where liquidation took place, in spite of no communication being received in the matter, and where it did not seem unlikely, for other reasons, that the property involved was Jewish. This group came to comprise about forty persons. There are several possible reasons for no communication being received from a notified party. One realistic reason is that of the claim-holder being numbered among the victims of the Holocaust. With this in mind, the Commission has endeavoured, through its own searches of German archives and through various inquiries addressed to German authorities, to obtain further information about the group in question. Unfortunately, however, the results of these efforts have been of very little help.

Turning to consider the application of the faculty under the Washington agreement for making an exception for property owned, directly or indirectly, by a person "whose case merits special treatment", the Commission has made the following observations.

The Foreign Capital Control Office and other authorities appear, initially at least, to have made very sparing use of this exceptional faculty. The only case found by the Commission in which direct reference was made to the faculty of exception is the release by the King in Council, in 1952, of a sum of money in favour of the heirs of the former proprietor of an aryanised business. In another case a year earlier, in 1951, the King in Council had taken into account that the owner of the property in question had been subjected to Nazi persecution. Thus the Commission has observed a certain relaxation of decision-making practice in about 1951 and 1952 as regards property currently or formerly belonging to persons who had suffered from Nazi persecution.

The Control Office’s attitude to and treatment of claims arising out of various aryanisation measures was, as stated earlier, based on deliberations of private law which, in themselves, cannot really be challenged. In these very cases, however, it is regrettable that the authorities extensively omitted to assist the people concerned by informing them of other ways of asserting their rights.

Summing up, there is reliable evidence of Jewish property having been liquidated by the Foreign Capital Control Office. The number of cases involved is not large. In the Commission’s opinion, however, there is reason to suppose that the same thing can have happened in other cases too, for example in the group of about forty persons already referred to and in other cases where the available material has been and remains incomplete. Even though the searches of the archives concerned have been made as extensive and systematic as possible, the Commission is bound to assume that some important material may still have been overlooked.

In some of the "certain" cases, remedy was subsequently provided by the balance following the liquidation being partly or wholly released by special resolution of the King in Council. The restitution, thereby, at best, effected did not, however, include liquidation costs. As a rule, moreover, payments were made several years after the war ended and without any compensation for interest on the amount liquidated. The inconvenience involved in payments or the release of property taking place after a relatively long time have also affected the quite considerable number of claim-holders who have only obtained cancellation of a dispersal prohibition or an attachment order after varying amounts of correspondence with the authorities.

Lastly, the Commission notes that, since, as has already been shown, its conclusions on this subject cannot be presented in terms of individual persons and sums of money, this in itself has indicated that there is no point in even trying to find out whether any compensation has been paid abroad.

Concluding reflections

Soon after the Commission began work, it became clear that the field which it was appointed to investigate was unexplored, i.e. that previous investigation reports and research were to a great extent lacking. Matters have been further complicated by the fact of 54 years now having passed since the Second World War ended and 66 years having passed since the first confiscations of Jewish property. Most of the people affected by Nazi persecution are now dead, as are most of the decision-makers and other agents involved at the time. Archives have been weeded out several times during the 54 years that have elapsed since the war ended. Research into certain questions is limited or precluded by these circumstances. At the same time, the fact is that the Commission’s remit touches on a number of questions for which a highly comprehensive body of source material is extant. Research is complicated because the relevant archive materials have not been classified with reference to Jews and Jewish property, which of course in general terms is gratifying. Then again, as a result of ongoing research and investigation in other countries, new knowledge is imparting new perspectives to the questions investigated by the Commission.

These circumstances, coupled with the great pressure of time under which the Commission has had to work, have made it impossible to investigate in detail every conceivable route whereby assets can have been conveyed to Sweden. Nor has the Commission been able to follow up all leads in the way which is customary in scientific inquiries. It is important to stress that the Commission’s report does not furnish any conclusive answers to the complicated and intractable historical issues raised. Instead this report is to be viewed as a platform for continuing work in a field which, previously, has been practically unexplored. Complete knowledge has not been achieved through the Commission’s work, but things have been made a great deal clearer.

It is necessary that this work should continue on the basis of all the historical documentation which has now been uncovered. A number of important questions have been raised in the course of the Commission’s work. Some of these have been answered completely, others only partly and others again not at all.

The Commission has now presented several areas which are connected with the remit and in which it has indicated that further research is desirable.

In addition, the Commission wishes to draw attention to a number of general fields which deserve to be researched in greater depth.

• The importance of Sweden’s trade with Nazi Germany as regards the ability of the latter to continue its persecution of Jews and others until as late as 1945. This research field is made relevant not least by the latter-day debate on whether Sweden’s trade with Germany prolonged the war and with it the sufferings of the Jewish people.
• The relation of Swedish business enterprise to Jews and Jewish businesses at the time of the Nazi persecutions.
• Persecutions in Europe at the same time of Romanies, homosexuals, Jehovah Witnesses and others.

The more serious and deeper question which still remains unanswered but which requires international efforts and cannot be resolved by Swedish research alone is how the Holocaust could happen in the first place. What was it that motivated a large part of the population of Europe to participate in murder, torture and plundering? Many researchers point to anti-Semitism as the prime motive, but this kind of conclusion - and it is a difficult one to prove - is not accepted by all Holocaust researchers.

Only with the establishment and deepening of research into the extent and conduct of the policy of the Holocaust has it become natural to extend research into the material aspect of the genocide. Even so, the main focus of attention must be, not on the question of economic compensation for stolen assets but rather on justice and moral vindication.

(3 March 1999)

Copyright (c)1997 The Swedish Ministry for Foreign Affairs