Anti-Semitism Envoy Meets Swedish Mayor

By JTA April 19, 2012

Hannah Rosenthal, the U.S. envoy to combat anti-Semitism, will meet with the mayor of Malmo, Sweden, who is accused of fomenting anti-Semitism.

“I will be meeting with the mayor, I am aware of his remarks and I will express my concern,” Rosenthal told JTA on Wednesday just before her departure for a tour of Sweden and Latvia.

Ilmar Reepalu last month told a Swedish magazine that the anti-immigrant, anti-Muslim Sweden Democrats Party had “infiltrated” the city’s Jewish community in order to turn it against Muslims. Reepalu later said he had no basis for his remarks and that he “shouldn’t have said it that way.”

He has also said that his city’s tiny Jewish community bears some responsibility for physical attacks against it because the community has not condemned Israel’s treatment of the Palestinians.

Rosenthal had said she was planning to visit Sweden this year in any case to mark the 100th anniversary of the birth of Raoul Wallenberg, the diplomat who saved tens of thousands of Hungarian Jews before disappearing under Soviet occupation. However, she was spurred to go now because of the Malmo controversy.

Rosenthal also will visit Latvia to observe its Holocaust commemorations and tour its Holocaust commemoration sites.

She said she will raise with Latvian leaders the issue of an annual march honoring that nation’s veterans of the Waffen SS, the armed wing of the Nazi party.

A message from our Publisher & CEO Rachel Fishman Feddersen

I hope you appreciated this article. Before you go, I’d like to ask you to please support the Forward’s award-winning, nonprofit journalism during this critical time.

The coming year promises to be filled with more complex and historic developments. We are entering an era where independent, fact-based Jewish journalism will be more important than ever. We need to be ready for whatever 2025 will bring, and with your help, we can be.

We’ve set a goal to raise $260,000 by December 31. That’s an ambitious goal, but one that will give us the resources we need to invest in the high quality news, opinion, analysis and cultural coverage that isn’t available anywhere else.

If you feel inspired to make an impact, now is the time to give something back. Join us as a member at your most generous level.

— Rachel Fishman Feddersen, Publisher and CEO