“Sweden also provided sanctuary after the war to many Nazis.”
- Please give one example of a Nazi German being successful in Swedish academic life or the Swedish business community after the year of 1945.
Sweden's Refusal to Prosecute Nazi War Criminals: 1986-2002., Efraim Zuroff, Jewish Political Studies Review 14:3-4 (Fall 2002).
(Abstract) "Toward the end of World War II, an unspecified number of Latvian and Estonian Nazi war criminals escaped to Sweden among a wave of Baltic refugees fleeing the advancing Soviet Army. Although the Swedish government established a special commission to investigate their wartime activities, no legal action was ever taken against any of these escaped Holocaust perpetrators.
"In 1986, the Simon Wiesenthal Center exposed the presence in Sweden of several Baltic Nazi war criminals and asked the Swedish government to investigate the entry of Nazi collaborators into the country and to take legal action against those who could be brought to trial. The Swedish authorities refused to investigate, let alone prosecute these cases, citing the existing statute of limitations which prohibited the prosecution of any crimes more than 25 years after they were committed.
"This has remained the position of the Swedish government even after it was revealed in 2000 that those who had participated in Nazi atrocities were alive and living in Sweden. All the efforts to induce a change in Swedish policy on this issue have hereto failed. Sweden is currently weighing the abolition of the statute of limitations on genocide, crimes against humanity, and war crimes but will not do so retroactively, so there is no chance that any Nazi war criminal will ever be prosecuted in Sweden."
The text of the article includes the following names and details as to Nazis who found safe refuge in Sweden:
"During the fall of 1986, the [Wissenthal] Center obtained information on twenty-one Latvian and Estonian suspected Nazi war criminals who had escaped to Sweden after World War II and were thought to still be residing in that country. The individuals in question ranged from national leaders who actively collaborated with the Nazis on a variety of key issues including security affairs and/or the murder of the Jews, to local officials who assisted the Nazi regime and participated in measures against the Jewish population in a specific geographic area, to journalists who worked for collaborationist newspapers. Among the most prominent Latvian collaborators were: Aleksanders Plesners who headed the Latvian SS-Legion; Karlis Lobe who organized the Latvian police battalions in Riga and later served as chief of police in Ventspils; Arvids Ose who was actively involved in the persecution of Jews in Riga and Alfreds Vadzemnieks who headed the Latvian Security Service (SD) in the Ventspils district and was alleged to have participated in the murder of civilians. Among the Estonians the most important suspects were Oskar Angelus, who headed the Estonian Department of Internal Affairs and organized the Estonian Political Police which carried out the murder of Estonian Jewry, Hugo Okasmaa and Leonid Laid who both served as officers in the Political Police in the Tallinn-Harju Prefecture and Vladimir Tiit and Arkadi Visnapuu who served as officers of the Estonian Security Police."
Eventually, a Swedish investigative reporter picked up the issue:
" . . . new revelations regarding Nazi war criminals in Sweden finally forced the Swedish government to reexamine its position. The man behind the expose was a Swedish journalist named Bosse Schon who revealed that at least 260 Swedes had served in the Waffen SS, among them several who, late in the war, guarded Hitler in his bunker in Berlin and at least one (Harald Sundin), who served in Treblinka, participated in executions and was still alive and living in Sweden. The information which Schoen published in a book entitled Svenskarna Som Stred For Hitler (Swedes Who Fought for Hitler) also served as the basis for a three-part documentary film by the same name (produced by Rolf Wrangnert) which was broadcast on Sweden's TV4 in late December 1999 and led to a serious political furor."
In the end, the Swedish government did nothing and, in the sole company of Syria, was rated F by the Wiesenthal Center for its failure to take any action against Nazi fugitives.