Goran Rosenberg - A Brief Stop On the Road From Auschwitz

So it’s a fair guess that there’s an element of relief behind that phrase “only four people of Jewish descent.” Particularly since the local paper, as far as this very issue is concerned, has a past. For a few years in the 1920s, when the Stockholms Läns & Södertälje Tidning is still two competing newspapers with the separate titles of Stockholms Läns Tidning and Södertälje Tidning , the editor of the Södertälje Tidning recurrently expresses strong opinions about “the Jews.” His name is Elof Eriksson, and he’s firmly convinced that “the Jews” run the world. And Södertälje too, presumably, even though at that juncture it would be difficult to find a single person “of Jewish origin” in the little town, and even though concern for Södertälje is hardly Elof Eriksson’s most apparent interest. Eriksson’s strongest opinions are reserved for “the intolerable party tyranny” and “all the dark and irresponsible forces working to break our nation apart for personal gain.” In an editorial manifesto for the new year of 1923, the paper pins its hopes on Italy, “where a strong, popular nationalist movement — fascism — has enabled the land to cast off the heavy yoke laid on the people’s shoulders by party bigwigs.”

On the morning of November 22, 1922, the residents of Södertälje are able to read in their local newspaper that “there is a secret force in existence, a global government that leads and directs the political and economic development of the world over the people and governments.”

On September 15, 1924, Södertälje Tidning pronounces it “an incontrovertible fact that the fate of today’s world lies largely in the hands of the Jewish people, which directs and controls all capital and financial activity, whilst at the same time invisibly leading political and social, even purely revolutionary and ‘anti-capitalist’ movements among the people.”

Elof Eriksson has a palpable respect for the power of “the Jews,” pointing out that “those peoples who answered Jewish domination with desperate measures such as pogroms and racial persecution have suffered dire consequences … while … those nations that treated the Jews ‘well’ have been spared the graver misfortunes visited on the anti-Semitic peoples.” The anti-Semitic peoples thus afflicted are the Russians, Germans, Hungarians, and Poles. Readers of Södertälje Tidning are informed on the morning of St. Lucia’s day in December 1922 that the Poles for some reason have elected a “Jew president,” against whom, however, the anti-Semitic masses have boldly risen up “in the battle for the racial purity of the Polish republic.” Gabriel Narutowicz is admittedly not a Jew, but he’s an atheist and a liberal and has been elected as the first president of a free Poland with the support of “Jews, Germans, and Ukrainians,” which explains why he’s murdered by an upright fascist five days after coming to power. This “eruption of the anti-Semitic, nationalist movement” is reported in Södertälje Tidning on December 18, 1922, when readers are also reminded that it’s time to renew their annual subscriptions, at a cost of a mere six kronor for “a free and independent newspaper, freely speaking the truth in all directions.”

I follow the newspaper’s truths into the new year. On November 9, 1923, the paper reports with satisfaction that Adolf Hitler has proclaimed a national dictatorship from a beer hall in Munich, and three days later, with irritation, that Hitler’s revolution has been betrayed by a brazen “Judas kiss.” Over the summer months, the front page features a list of “announced spa guests,” complete with their titles and hometowns. On July 14, the list includes among others deputy manager Carl Gullberg and his wife from Gävle, stockbroker W. Doysk from Stockholm, Miss Margaret Setréus from Södertälje, and Mrs. Beda Våhlin from Lidingö.

I try to understand what is meant by “announced spa guests” and why their names are published on the front page, just as I try to understand what Elof Eriksson is doing in Södertälje. Does he live in the town? If so, where? Does he take walks in the park by the public spa in the summertime, raising his hat to the announced spa guests as they stroll by in their linen suits and summer dresses? Does he ever cycle out to Havsbadet on a summer Sunday to sit under a parasol and see the boats passing by out in Hallfjärden Bay on their way to and from the world? Is he at all interested in the reopened canal, which is twenty-four meters wide and six meters deep, and which passes beneath the newly opened, double-track railroad bridge, which is twenty-six meters high to allow for navigation and has a thirty-three-meter-long drawbridge span that can be opened for ships of a size never before seen in Södertälje?

Is he, in short, interested in the Place? As far as I can see, he writes very little about it. Admittedly, it’s impossible to tell who writes what in the Södertälje Tidning because the articles are unsigned, but it’s reasonable to assume that Elof Eriksson’s fixation with forces far beyond the horizons of Havsbadet, the canal, and the railroad bridge increasingly monopolizes his pen. In September 1925 he leaves the Södertälje Tidning and presumably Södertälje too, if he ever lived there. He now launches the Nationen (The Nation), which comes out in Stockholm and establishes itself as Sweden’s most crudely anti-Jewish publication. During the war, Eriksson goes to Nazi Germany to deliver lectures on Jewish world domination and publishes books in German about the powerful position of the Jews in Sweden, and should the Germans decide to invade Sweden, Elof Eriksson can put into their hands a detailed list of each and every Jew.

But not many of them in Södertälje, as we have seen.

On the other hand, Södertälje has nothing to do with Elof Eriksson’s crusade.

Södertälje just happens to lie in his way.

Just as in August 1947 it happens to lie in David Rosenberg’s way.

Maybe something should be said about this: the town’s tendency to lie in people’s way. It’s a long story, stretching back to the Viking age, so it’s not really true that the Place has no history. The new cityscape below the railroad station is perhaps established in a historic backwoods, but not in a historic void. The new cityscape is located here because of the new railroad station, and the new railroad station is located here because ever since the Viking age, Södertälje has been a thoroughfare, situated on people’s way to somewhere else.

It’s not such a bad thing really, to be a place people have to pass through on their way to somewhere else. The Vikings, or whatever we like to call the people who passed through here a thousand years ago, were on their way from Constantinople to Birka, or from Sigtuna to Novgorod, or more generally on their way between the Baltic Sea and Lake Mälaren. Initially, this just happened to be where there was a shallow channel linking the two, and even when the land rose, turning Mälaren into an inland lake and the channel into an isthmus, the Vikings still gained time by dragging their keelless ships on rolling logs across the place first mentioned by name, Telge, in the travel writings of Adam of Bremen, a canon who passed through around 1070 on his way between the sees of Skara and Sigtuna. Perhaps he and his people made camp for the night, and perhaps he got the chance to observe the few people who lived here, and perhaps they contributed to Adam of Bremen’s positive memories of Swedish hospitality: “They count it as the most shameful of all things to refuse hospitality to travelers, indeed they engage in an eager race as to who is the most worthy to receive the guest. Then he is shown all possible kindness, and for as long as he wishes to stay his host will take him to the homes of one friend after another. This gracious trait is one of their customs.”