President Barack Obama Visits Raoul Wallenberg Memorial in Sweden

President Obama examined artifacts from the life of Raoul Wallenberg and wished Jews worldwide a “shanah tovah” during a tour of Stockholm’s Great Synagogue.
Wallenberg’s half sister, Nina Lagergren, 92, escorted Obama on Wednesday as he examined the belongings of the Swedish diplomat who saved thousands of Hungarian Jews during the Holocaust and later disappeared into Soviet custody.
At a Holocaust memorial outside the synagogue, Obama delivered a short Rosh Hashanah greeting.
“To all our Jewish friends here in Sweden, in the United States and around the world — especially in Israel — I want to wish you and your families a sweet and happy new year,” he said. “L’shanah tovah.”
Obama met with Swedish leaders and toured presentations of the country’s innovations in environmentally friendly technologies on a stopover before he headed to St. Petersburg for a G20 industrial nations summit.
The White House on Wednesday also released Obama’s video message for the Jewish New Year. The message recalled a speech delivered 50 years ago by Rabbi Joachim Prinz at the Lincoln Memorial, just prior to the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr.’s historic speech at the March on Washington.
“Representing the thousands of Jews there that day, [Prinz] told the marchers, ‘When God created man, he created him as everybody’s neighbor. Neighbor is not a geographic term. It is a moral concept,’ ” Obama said.
“As the High Holidays begin, it’s a chance not just to celebrate with friends and family, but to ask some of life’s most piercing questions: Am I treating strangers with kindness? Am I living not just for myself but for others? Am I doing my part to repair the world?”
Obama also recalled his visit to Israel earlier this year to “renew the unbreakable bond between our two countries.”
The Forward is free to read, but it isn’t free to produce

I hope you appreciated this article. Before you go, I’d like to ask you to please support the Forward.
Now more than ever, American Jews need independent news they can trust, with reporting driven by truth, not ideology. We serve you, not any ideological agenda.
At a time when other newsrooms are closing or cutting back, the Forward has removed its paywall and invested additional resources to report on the ground from Israel and around the U.S. on the impact of the war, rising antisemitism and polarized discourse.
This is a great time to support independent Jewish journalism you rely on. Make a gift today!
— Rachel Fishman Feddersen, Publisher and CEO
Support our mission to tell the Jewish story fully and fairly.
Most Popular
- 1
News Student protesters being deported are not ‘martyrs and heroes,’ says former antisemitism envoy
- 2
News Who is Alan Garber, the Jewish Harvard president who stood up to Trump over antisemitism?
- 3
Opinion The dangerous Nazi legend behind Trump’s ruthless grab for power
- 4
Opinion What Jewish university presidents say: Trump is exploiting campus antisemitism, not fighting it
In Case You Missed It
-
Yiddish איבערזעצערין קאַרעד אָברײַען שרײַבט בוך וועגן די שטערן סימאָר רעכטצײַט און מרים קרעסיןTranslator Caraid O’Brien writing book on Yiddish stars Seymour Rexite and Miriam Kressyn
זי שטעלט אויך צונויף אַ פּאָדקאַסט מיטן בראָדװײ־אַקטיאָר האַל ראָבינסאָן אין דער ראָלע פֿון רעכטצײַט.
-
BINTEL BRIEF How do you deal with invitations from someone whose behavior drives you nuts?
-
Fast Forward An Israeli think tank used AI to analyze 4,400 American synagogue sermons. Here’s what it found.
-
Film & TV Our preeminent historian of the Jews is finally ready to confront Auschwitz
-
Shop the Forward Store
100% of profits support our journalism
Republish This Story
Please read before republishing
We’re happy to make this story available to republish for free, unless it originated with JTA, Haaretz or another publication (as indicated on the article) and as long as you follow our guidelines.
You must comply with the following:
- Credit the Forward
- Retain our pixel
- Preserve our canonical link in Google search
- Add a noindex tag in Google search
See our full guidelines for more information, and this guide for detail about canonical URLs.
To republish, copy the HTML by clicking on the yellow button to the right; it includes our tracking pixel, all paragraph styles and hyperlinks, the author byline and credit to the Forward. It does not include images; to avoid copyright violations, you must add them manually, following our guidelines. Please email us at [email protected], subject line “republish,” with any questions or to let us know what stories you’re picking up.