Goran Rosenberg - A Brief Stop On the Road From Auschwitz

The question is raised: what are we to do with such people? In two articles in Expressen (June 22 and 25, 1945), they’re described as animals. The writer maintains that “most of them survived thanks to those more or less animal qualities that Western society otherwise tries to keep in check: trickery, cunning, lying, obsequiousness, pilfering, and selfishness, combined with a certain brutal will to live.”

She’s consequently concerned about who would eventually want to employ them: “It won’t be easy for them to adapt, and it won’t be easy for their employers. The latter will presumably require more tireless understanding and generous humanity than the average employer can muster.”

The writer doesn’t specifically identify the Jews as the problem here (in fact, quite the opposite); most of the women in the camp she visits (Doverstorp), and on whose conduct she bases her conclusions, are non-Jewish Poles. The vast majority of people living in the archipelago of aliens’ camps in Sweden in the summer and autumn of 1945, it should be noted, are non-Jews.

Sometimes, however, the Jews are specifically identified as a problem, as in an article signed G.B.G. in Göteborgs Handels- och Sjöfarts-Tidning on September 5, 1945:

Swedish employers are not, as many may imagine, particularly accommodating when it comes to taking on Jewish workers. The present writer has considerable experience of the difficulty of finding decent work for such workers. Only textile workers seem to be accepted. With its low wages, the textile industry has taken on many refugees who have not been able to find any other work.… We know from experience that the Jews will not take on just any old work except in cases of extreme necessity. Business is in their blood, and of the other professions, that of tailor is the most attractive to them.…

If these young Jews are now to become Swedish citizens, it should be made clear to them that they must set their sights on careers other than business.…

Assuming these young Jews are now to be trained as, say, workers in manufacturing industries, carpenters, painters, etc., a new problem presents itself, namely how the Swedish trade union movement would react to the prospect of Jewish workmates.… One can occasionally sense a certain unwillingness, even among Swedish workers, to work with Jewish comrades.

I do wonder how many of all these problems with the Jews G.B.G. had already identified before having anything to do with actual Jews, if indeed he ever did. At any rate, none of these problems appears to stop the more or less Jewish Poles in Öreryd from soon being in great demand as forestry workers in the vast forests surrounding the camp, and as agricultural workers on the farms nearby, and as workers in the numerous manufacturing companies in the region. In a letter to the camp administrator at Öreryd dated November 9, 1945, the chairman of the local council in the small town of Norrahammar, some forty kilometers to the north toward Jönköping, pleads for permission for the refugee David Szpiegler to be granted an extended leave of absence from the camp, “so his job is not put in jeopardy,” since he has “shown himself both competent and hardworking, and is liked by the management.” David Szpiegler has found his job at the Norrahammar works, which produces iron ranges, pots, and pans, through the mediation of Mr. Åke Roström, who also arranged board and lodging for him and is said to invite him to his home on a daily basis, “to keep him informed about work and other matters.”

“As I am also there on a daily basis and have learned much about the refugees’ sad situation, I hope that the best possible provisions can be made for him,” the chairman of the Norrahammar council ends his written plea to the camp administrator at Öreryd.

There’s a recurring tendency to stress the sadness of your existence and the occasionally strange way some of you behave. It’s much rarer to see anyone stress the fact that the sadness of your existence has very little to do with conditions in the camp, still less with conditions in Sweden. Rather, you keep pinching yourselves each morning when you find a Swedish breakfast laid out for you in the dining room, followed by a Swedish lunch and a Swedish dinner, and even if there’s too much sugar in the food and a few of you squirrel away a bit of it here and there, Sweden must still seem like paradise to most of you.

I know you had thought of yourself as being in paradise before, but this paradise here will still be standing in the morning. And the morning after that. Admittedly, it’s a paradise that seems at times unfamiliar and hard to understand, and the shadows that follow you all will follow you into this paradise as well, but nowhere in the letters you write to Haluś during this time do I find a word of criticism directed at conditions in the camp or in the country.

If it didn’t sound so trite, I’d say you’re grateful, deeply grateful, and for brief periods happy, too.

Happy and unhappy.

As in the letter your brother Natek sends from Öreryd on December 21, 1945, just before the Polish Jews are to be moved to Tappudden-Furudal. The all-eclipsing shadow in Natek’s life is the uncertainty about what has happened to his wife Andzia (Chana) since they were parted on the ramp at Auschwitz-Birkenau.

The letter is addressed to Sima Staw in Łódź.

There’s a rumor that Sima Staw has survived Auschwitz and gone back to Łódź and might be able to answer the question of whether Andzia is alive or dead. But the rumor’s false. The letter instead reaches the hands of Sima’s sister, the woman who is to be my mother, and it’s through her that I much later find it in my own hands.

In parts, it’s undeniably a desperate letter: “I implore you, tell me everything, no matter what it is. This uncertainty is draining me.” In parts, nevertheless, it’s a letter from paradise:

Sweden’s a country where there is no anti-Semitism. And as if that weren’t enough, there’s no “Jewish question” at all. The standard of living is very high. The ideal of class equality has, quite simply, been achieved. There is no unemployment and no one goes hungry. And anyone who wants to work can do so, and live well from it, and if I had my wife here, my happiness would be complete. Sima! For God’s sake, don’t let your answer tarry!

While so many answers still tarry, some of you cycle the eight kilometers to master bricklayer Manfredsson’s in Hestra to pick potatoes. This is on the morning of September 26, 1945, and the formal request for the delivery of four named individuals from Barrack F arrived two days ago from the aliens’ section of the labor exchange in Öreryd. I suspect the aliens’ section is the only section there is at the labor exchange in Öreryd. The unspoken requirement for the job of potato picking is that you know how to ride a bike, which not all of you do. Nor, it transpires, do you all know how to pick potatoes. Each of you has been promised four kronor for the work, but the plants are not pulled up properly and lots of potatoes get left in the ground and the two-wheeled barrow on which you’ve loaded the potatoes tips over and has to be reloaded. What’s more, you eat like horses and the master bricklayer has to send his children out for more food.

I learn all this much later when the story is told to me by M.Z., who was the one who had to learn to cycle overnight, but who on the other hand knew more Swedish than the rest of you and had to do most of the talking as you sat around the table at Mr. Manfredsson’s house.

It’s a fond memory, I realize, that wobbly, late-summer bike ride through the countryside of Småland to your first job since the slave camps, even if I’m not quite convinced by all the details of these memories. Especially since so much else I ask about, things that seem more important, has been forgotten.