Gains in Swedish vote
man Aron Verständig wrote on Facebook: “It is clear that Jews face threats from both right- and left-wing extremists as well as from violent Islamists…
“Since our community is to a large part made up of Holocaust survivors and their children, grandchildren and great grandchildren, we are naturally horrified at the rise of the Nazi Nordic Resistance Movement (NRM).” Mr Verständig called for Swedish politicians to ban NRM and similar groups.
He also praised the Stockholm’s city council for cancelling a permit for Alternative for Sweden to hold an election event at a square located just around the corner from Stockholm’s Great Synagogue.
Salafism is gaining ground in Sweden, which took in a record number of asylum seekers during the 2015 refugee crisis. Out of the roughly 160,000 people who applied for asylum that year, a majority were from Syria, followed by Afghanistan and Iraq.
A recent report from the Swedish Defence University described Gothenburg, Sweden’s second city, as a Salafist stronghold.
The west-coast city is also, per capita, one of the biggest exporters of jihadists in Europe and in December grabbed international headlines when three people of Syrian and Palestinian origins were arrested for firebombing the local synagogue.
Last month, masked gangs set
Prime Minister Stefan Löfven fire to up to 80 cars in parts of Gothenburg in an act of mass arson that some in Sweden have ascribed to rising community tensions.
It is against this backdrop that the Living History Forum, a government agency, and the Swedish Committee Against Antisemitism launched a free digital learning kit for secondary and upper-secondary schools focusing on “antisemitism then and now” in time for the start of the new school year. The material was developed because studies point to a rise in antisemitism in Sweden and Europe.
Both organisations said they had received requests for study material from teachers, who say it is hard to broach the subjects of antisemitism and the Holocaust in their classrooms because pupils tend to question the information or to disrupt lessons.
With the issue of immigration dominating much of the political debate, Swedish Jewish communities have been caught in the debates among mainstream parties to ban or restrict faith schools in the name of improving integration.