Skip To Content
JEWISH. INDEPENDENT. NONPROFIT.
Make a Passover gift and support Jewish journalism. DONATE NOW
Fast Forward

Swedish Teens Organize After Neo-Nazi Intrusion

Members of a Swedish youth movement launched an anti-Fascist campaign at a high school where neo-Nazis interrupted a lecture by a Holocaust survivor.

The campaign began last week at the Peders Skrivares high school in the western province of Halland, where on April 22 a group of skinheads demonstratively walked in on a talk given to students by Mietek Grocher, 89, Sveriges Radio reported.

The campaign had members of the SSU youth movement of the center-left Swedish Social Democratic Party set up a booth in the school, located in the city of Varberg, and holding signs reading “Sieg Heil – Hell No.”

At least six neo-Nazis in their 20s entered the room where Grocher was speaking and began taking pictures of the listeners. They did not behave violently.

Grocher said he was used to such disturbances during his public lectures on the Holocaust.

Earlier this month, a leader of the far-right Sweden Democrats party, Richard Jomshof, told the Expressen daily that he does “not consider the Jewish minority as a problem because the Jewish community is so small.”

He also condemned anti-Semitism as rooted in envy of Jews and expressed support for Israel.

Sweden Democrats, accused by opponents of promoting Islamophobia and anti-Semitism, more than doubled its gains in the 2014 parliamentary elections, which left the party with 49 seats out of 349 in the Riksdag, the kingdom’s parliament.

This is a moment of great uncertainty. Here’s what you can do about it.

We hope you appreciated this article. Before you go, we’d like to ask you to please support the Forward’s independent Jewish news this Passover. All donations are being matched by the Forward Board - up to $100,000.

This is a moment of great uncertainty for the news media, for the Jewish people, and for our sacred democracy. It is a time of confusion and declining trust in public institutions. An era in which we need humans to report facts, conduct investigations that hold power to account, tell stories that matter and share honest discourse on all that divides us.

With no paywall or subscriptions, the Forward is entirely supported by readers like you. Every dollar you give this Passover is invested in the future of the Forward — and telling the American Jewish story fully and fairly.

The Forward doesn’t rely on funding from institutions like governments or your local Jewish federation. There are thousands of readers like you who give us $18 or $36 or $100 each month or year.

Support our mission to tell the Jewish story fully and fairly.

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.

We don't support Internet Explorer

Please use Chrome, Safari, Firefox, or Edge to view this site.