Read more
Opposition became the Bund's condition of existence, but not opposition
for its own sake. The Bund was founded on the conviction that the
"Jewish question" could only be resolved through the liberation of the
international working class from all forms of oppression on its way to
establishing a world of equality, welfare and democracy without borders
- a socialist social order. There, the broad strata of the population would
rule, rather than capitalist elites or communist party apparatchiks.
The Bund was one of the losers of history. The once deeply-rooted movement
was crushed during terror and genocide, dispersed into exile, driven
into its shell by overpowering political forces and undermined by assimilation
as time wore on and the world changed. The following story is about
that process at the micro-level, in a place on the edge of the world.
In this unique account Håkan Blomqvist relates a largely unknown
chapter in both the historiography of the Swedish labor movement and
in Swedish-Jewish history, that of the non-Zionist Jewish Arbeter Bund
among refugees in Sweden during and after World War II.
About the author
Håkan Blomqvist is associate professor in history at Södertörn University and author of several respected books on the Swedish labor movement, nationalism and antisemitism.
