Goran Rosenberg - A Brief Stop On the Road From Auschwitz

Perhaps I’m exaggerating the role of the Place in the Project, I know that you too dream of the road onward, although for various reasons your road doesn’t lead onward. And after all, the Place seems to offer a world in which every dream is feasible, since it’s a world where no dreams have been shattered, including the dreams that were shattered in the world you come from, which is a world the Project will help put behind you. In that sense, the Place is an ideal one because so few people here remember what you have to put behind you. That is to say, there’s no lack of information about what you have to put behind you, the local paper does actually report a thing or two, but it’s not something anyone here has experienced or had any direct part in and is therefore easier to forget. There are those who have to forget because they don’t want to remember (and therefore remember all too well), and there are those who forget because they have nothing particular to remember. The past doesn’t have a very strong position in this place, and oblivion is the foundation of the Project. Oblivion and optimism. As far as optimism is concerned, the Place has a competitive edge against practically the whole world, since optimism has never been challenged here. While the outside world collapses, and with it most people’s futures, here nothing’s collapsing. Here the best of all worlds is in full swing and needs only to take a short break before beginning again where it left off.

The best of all worlds is called Folkhemmet , “the home of the people,” otherwise known as the welfare state or the social democracy, and it’s an exceptional invention that knits together the individual’s need for security and a sense of belonging with her yearning for freedom and self-fulfillment, all of which seems even more feasible after the break than before. In the best of all worlds, no one will ever be without a job and a livelihood and a roof overhead, and all schoolchildren will get a free meal a day, and everybody will be entitled to free medical care and a guaranteed pension at retirement and able to afford the stream of ever-new appliances with which ever-new personal freedoms will be attained. In the best of all worlds, a pipe fitter can become a mechanical engineer or a punch-card operator, or at least a home owner and car owner, and the son of a pipe fitter can become practically anything. By November 25, 1950, the local paper is able to announce that Sweden “is well on the way to being a model of the social state.”

The two of you are still categorized as foreigners and have to renew your work and residence permits every six months, and you’re not permitted to settle in the big city across the bridge, but conditions for beginning a new life in a new world must nevertheless seem favorable, since a new world is in fact being realized here. “From cradle to grave we will provide care for our citizens to an extent that the pioneers of the labor movement surely could never have dreamed of,” writes the local paper, and much later I envision people pinching themselves in the arm as they read on:

At the foundation is maternal care: free medical support for mothers during pregnancy and childbirth, supplemented with maternity benefits in cash. For families with children up to the age of 16, the load of providing for them will be alleviated by annual cash allowances. In addition, there will be free care for infants. A higher living standard for families with children will be achieved through housing subsidies for large sections of the population. This will continue at school with free school meals, free dental care, and, during vacations, with free outings and country sojourns. At the appropriate age, talented students with limited financial means will be eligible for financial support. And when the next generations enter the labor market, they will be secured against loss of earnings resulting from illness, accidents, or unemployment.… On top of all this comes social assistance for times of particular need, doing away with the old poor relief.

I don’t think the two of you can yet imagine such a world, still less dream about it, but before long the Child is planted in one of the newly established kindergartens of the model social state. State-supported kindergartens are a newfangled addition to social welfare, and the official term for them is daycare centers, but kindergartens live on in the language. Kindergartens and crèches. A linguistic affirmation that daycare centers too are expected to provide both care and love.

The Child instantly takes root, he has no problems with being left in the morning and no longing to be picked up, and one evening when the picking up is taking a long time and he’s left alone with Miss Naima and it’s getting dark outside, it still takes a while for him to get anxious. Miss Naima lives in Vagnhärad, which is one railroad stop to the south, and if Mom’s too late the Child will go to Vagnhärad with Miss Naima on the train. Mom’s late, and it’s dark outside, and anxiety has grown into fear, and all that remains of being picked up so late is the sensation of a soft fur collar against a cold coat in the doorway.

The Child’s two years old when he starts being left and picked up at the new daycare center on the bottom floor of one of the apartment blocks below the railroad station. Before the center opens, the local paper informs its readers that “those wishing to avail themselves of the option of having their children cared for during the day should register their interest at the Child Welfare Office in the old town hall.” The daycare center comprises two rooms and an office, which is to be used as an isolation room “in the event of a child falling ill during the day and it not being possible to contact the parents.” It’s a small daycare center, taking fifteen children at most, which according to child welfare assistant Kerstin Malmkvist is a drop in the ocean because there are all too many children in the apartment blocks along the rowanberry avenue, and there are bound to be far more applications than there is capacity, so means-testing will be needed, and it will be “primarily single mothers who can count on getting a place for their children here.” Anyone interested in a place at the daycare center is however encouraged to apply, “even by telephone if necessary,” and by one means or another you apply to the Child Welfare Office in the old town hall, and one of the fifteen places is given to me, which means that your Haluś can again cycle off in the mornings to sew clothes at piecework rates to the accompaniment of music in Tornvall’s garment factory.

Otherwise, most mothers stay at home with their children during the day and are referred to as housewives or homemakers, and for them ever-new machines or products are invented to make housework easier and more enjoyable. “A brighter living for Mother,” notes the local paper, which is nevertheless somewhat concerned that housewives “are weighed down by the bad habits of previous generations” and therefore don’t yet fully understand how to use the new machines. In the advertisements in the local paper, a housewife is always a well-dressed woman, smiling as the machines do her work.

The new machines are also supposed to make life easier for the increasing number of women who nevertheless must go off to a factory in the mornings, and who may sometimes be late picking up their children in the afternoons, but who are still expected to fit all the housework into what’s left of the day. “Many have a working day of up to 16 hours, sometimes even more,” declares the head of the Domestic Research Institute in the local paper. She doesn’t see machines in the home as the solution to the problem. The solution to the problem is to shift housework out of the home and allow the model social state to supply not only daycare centers but also the tidying, cleaning, sewing, baking, and cooking. A few machines at home may still be a good idea, a pressure cooker and a vacuum cleaner, for instance. The vacuum cleaner can encourage children to help with the housework because they like pressing buttons and changing the nozzles, so they feel like “proper mechanics.”