Sweden’s World War II Dilemmas. Case Study: Czechoslovakia

Author: Jan Němeček, Ivana Koutníková, Jiří Šitler et al.
Year of publication: 2020
Publisher: Institute of History Prague / Paideia Stockholm
ISBN: 978-80-7286-376-1

The publication illustrate a broader discussion of Sweden's role during and immediately after World War II. The break-up of Czecho-Slovakia and the German occupation of the Czech lands in March 1939 resulted in the handover of the Czechoslovak Legation in Stockholm with all its assets to Germany and the closure of the Swedish Legation in Prague. Circumstances of these events are described in articles of Jan Němeček and Oscar Österberg.
At first, there was little understanding in Sweden of the situation of Jewish refugees, including those from Czechoslovakia, when they were initially considered economic and not political migrants. Czech food-processing industrialist Herbert Felix, married to Kerstin Cruickshank from a wealthy and influential Swedish family, regularly travelled on business trips to Sweden. The story of this couple is described in an article by Ingrid Lomfors. Others were less fortunate and had to rely on help of influential individuals: Lomfors and Eva Strömberg Krantz describe the efforts of K. Cruickshank and Amelia Posse to show a friendlier face of Sweden and their help to refugees from Czechoslovakia in the early years of the war.
Getting asylum was less problematic for political refugees. Oscar Österberg presents the captivating story of a Czechoslovak diplomat Vladimír Vaněk, who took refuge in Sweden after the occupation in March 1939. In 1942, he was sentenced to prison for espionage "on behalf of an enemy power": until the spring of 1943, Swedish security forces focused on fighting Allied activities against Germany.
In 1943, however, Sweden changed its policy not only in the area of anti-espionage priorities, but also reformulated its refugee policy. The first step was the reception of thousands of Jewish refugees from Denmark in October 1943. Judita Matyášová found that among these refugees was a group of young Czechoslovak Jews who had left for Great Britain after arriving in Sweden to join the Czechoslovak foreign army.
The story of "good Sweden" is examined by the contributions of Staffan Ekelund and Ivana Koutníková. They deal with Holocaust survivors originally from Czechoslovakia who were evacuated at the end of the war by the Swedish Red Cross (so-called "White Buses") and immediately after the end of the war in cooperation with UNRRA. S. Ekelund deals with specific stories of Czechoslovak survivors of Nazi concentration camps who found the first refuge after the war in the town of Värnamo in the county of Jönköping. I. Koutníková describes the first attempt to gather large-scale evidence of Nazi crimes by gathering testimonies from victims of Nazi concentration and extermination camps.
The picture is complemented by an outline of Czechoslovak–Swedish relations during the Cold War by Jindřich Dejmek, relations that were influenced by different post-war developments in both countries, where Sweden remained true to its policy of neutrality and strict non-participation in military blocs, together with its activities in international organisations, especially the UN. On the contrary, after the Communists seized power in February 1948, Czechoslovakia became an integral part of the Soviet bloc. At first, this meant a deep decline in official relations between the two countries in the first half of the 1950s. It was only later that mutual contacts gradually warmed, but it was not until the fall of the communist regime in November 1989 that opened up completely new possibilities for the further development of mutual relations between the two states.