A Melancholy Beauty, a Songs of Life Production, had its World Premiere tour last year with performances in Washington DC, Boston and New York City. A Melancholy Beauty is a commissioned oratorio which depicts the rescue of 49,000 Bulgarian Jews from Hitler’s death camps, in 1943.  It was founded by Kalin and Sharon Tchonev; Georgi Andreev is the composer; Scott Cairns is the librettist; Aryeh Finklestein is the contributing author.

The story is one of thanksgiving and honoring those that stood beside them during World War II.

Three hundred musicians from the USA, Bulgaria and Israel performed at the concert which attracted many Bulgarian Jews who survived those terrible times and live today in Israel.

Below is an interview with founders Kalin and Sharon Tchonev. Kalin is a Bulgarian musician and his wife Sharon is an Israeli native and the granddaughter of two Bulgarian Jews who were rescued during WWII.

How did the idea of the Oratorio, A Melancholy Beauty, come to you?

Kalin: I am a Bulgarian by birth, upbringing, and training.  The Songs of Life Festival, which includes A Melancholy Beauty, is an expression of my personal gratitude to the Bulgarian people for rescuing their Jewish brothers and sisters.  It is also a demonstration of my love and gratitude for the Jewish people.

I am deeply connected to the rescue as my wife is a descendant of Bulgarian Jews.  I am forever thankful to God and the Bulgarian people for rescuing all 49,000 Bulgarian Jews during the Holocaust. Had it not been for this amazing rescue, I would not have my wife and son today.

I believe it worth noting that the Songs of Life Festival and the World Premiere concert tour of the Oratorio, A Melancholy Beauty, required complete sacrifice and an availing of all my family’s resources for four consecutive years. This includes our time, energy, staff, and finances, without any financial return to this day.

Commissioning and the Origin of the Songs of Life Festival

Kalin: Songs of Life is a Heavenly Commission. In October 2007, I was in Berlin on a business trip.  One evening, I was sitting in a theater, watching a Broadway show in German, but my mind was not on the show.  I was meditating on the events of WWII and particularly the fate of the Jewish people.  A surge of deep emotion rose within me, as I was reminded of David and Lydia Varsano, Rina Paz, Sharon, my wife, and Eliav, my son—four generations of Bulgarian Jews, and hundreds of thousands of other Bulgarian Jews who are alive today because of the compassionate and heroic acts of the Bulgarian people during WWII.

I was then struck by a profound realization: had it not been for the heroic rescue of the Bulgarian Jews by the Bulgarian people, I would not have my wife and son today!  I was overwhelmed by a deep sense of gratitude to God for blessing me with a wonderful wife and son.  In His sovereignty, He enabled the Bulgarian people act courageously by resisting the evil authorities in 1943. Because of their courage, 49,000 Bulgarian Jews were saved!

By the end of the show, I felt a compelling desire to organize an international music festival of thanksgiving for the rescue of all 49,000 Bulgarian Jews.  I knew that this festival needed to take place in the major centers of the Rescue—Sofia and Plovdiv, as well as in Israel.

That evening in that Berlin theatre, the first Songs of Life Festival was born in my mind. The Festival would be a large-scale choral-orchestral festival of thanksgiving and would take place in four major cities in Bulgaria and Israel: Sofia, Plovdiv, Tel Aviv and Jerusalem.  As I considered an appropriate concert work, I decided to present one of the most beloved Jewish works for choir and orchestra: Ernest Bloch’s Sacred Service.  The work would be performed in a series of four concerts.  During this First Songs of Life Festival in Bulgaria and Israel, we would present 49,000 flowers to the descendants of that worthy generation of Bulgarians who refused to be indifferent; rather, they despised complacency and chose to act bravely!

Kalin and Sharon: The purpose of the festival was clear to us from the very beginning. The following principles describe the fundamental, underlying purpose on which the festival is built, and the force which propels it:

1. To present thanksgiving to God.
2. To acknowledge the worthy generation of Bulgarians who chose to act with courage and compassion.
3. To reach and touch humanity with the message of hope, compassion, and love, and to encourage people to act similarly to the Bulgarian people in a time of intense evil.
4. To relate the lessons we learned from these noble Bulgarians.

After 12 months of unwavering determination, hard work, sacrifice, and commitment to overcome all obstacles and tremendous difficulties, our Songs of Life Festival was birthed during the season of Thanksgiving in November 2008.  The festival was a great success: hundreds of musicians and auditors participated from USA, Canada, Bulgaria, and Israel, and thousands of people were touched through the message of Songs of Life.

One year later, in August of 2009, we set out to make plans and prepare for the Second Songs of Life Festival, which was to exceed the first one in scope and dimensions.  During the period of preparation, which lasted two years, we underwent immense pressures and tremendous struggles; however, in the end, we found the answers concerning the realization of this enormous commission.  The results are already a history.

The Second Songs of Life Festival featured an oratorio that depicted the story of the rescue. And so, we set out to read books and watch films and interviews of Bulgarian rescuers and Jewish survivors.

We then commissioned librettist, Scott Cairns of Missouri, and Bulgarian composer, Georgi Andreev, to write and compose the oratorio. The oratorio had its World Premiere at the Concert Hall of the Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts in Washington, DC on June 21, 2011.

Do you believe the Bulgarian people are courageous people? What fundamental value do you think motivated the rescuers?

Kalin and Sharon: Yes, it is our opinion that during the time of WWII that worthy generation of Bulgarians showed great courage.  We believe the essential motivation, which moved a great number of Bulgarians from all walks of life to act and protect the Jewish people, was compassion.

We believe there are two main aspects which contributed to the building of character and attitude of the Bulgarian people, which determined their behavior as protectors of their Jewish compatriots during the Holocaust.

1. Bulgarians have a long history of suffering. Since 681 AD when Asparuh established the First Bulgarian Empire, they have experienced deep, intense suffering.
2. Throughout history, Jews and Bulgarians have developed and maintained a deep appreciation for each other and developed true, lasting friendships.  Anti-Judaic attitudes and false theological doctrines never took root in Bulgaria.  Jews and Bulgarians influenced each other, fought wars shoulder to shoulder, appreciated each other’s holidays, and developed relationships that have endured the test of time.  I think the beauty, strength, and wisdom of character—produced as a result of intense suffering of both nations for hundreds of years—taught them to identify with one another and created this special bond of love between them.  Bulgarians lived together with the Jews and saw them as “one” with them, not as separate people.

In order for one to gain complete understanding and appreciation as to the reasons as well as the preparation of the Bulgarian people for this rescue, one must examine the behavior of the Bulgarian people within the context of a brief historical perspective. 

Preparation of the Bulgarian People

For hundreds of years, while suffering under common oppressors—under the Byzantines from 1018–1185, the Ottoman empire from 1296-1878, and then while fighting shoulder to shoulder during the Balkan wars and WWI—Bulgarians and Jews developed love, friendship, and deep appreciation for one another as they bled and wept together.  This bond and unique friendship between Bulgarians and Bulgarian Jews, which was developed during a period of more than millennia, enduring the test of time, could not be broken by the spell and maniacal evil forces of the Nazi racial propaganda and laws which sought to annihilate the entire Jewish population of Europe.

During WWII, Bulgaria was allied with Nazi Germany. However, this allegiance was not an expression of how the Bulgarian people felt about Hitler; rather, it was a political decision that aimed to protect the Bulgarian people from being engaged again in military actions for the causes of the Great Powers.  King Boris did not send any soldiers to fight against the Russian Army, which liberated Bulgaria from the Ottoman Empire dominion in 1878.

The establishment of the First Bulgarian Kingdom was in 681 AD.   In 864 AD, the Bulgarian king, Boris I, accepted Eastern Orthodox Christianity as the religion of the Bulgarian people.  For nearly 1150 years, this has been and continues to be the national religion of the Bulgarian people.

Bulgaria’s history is long, rich and eventful, and provides a unique perspective as to the reasons the Bulgarian people protected the Jewish people.  I believe that the intense suffering Bulgarian people endured throughout history has shaped their character and ultimately prepared and determined their heroic actions as rescuers in 1943.  The tremendous suffering and unjust treatment against the Bulgarian people over hundreds of years has produced resilience and firmness of character on the one hand, but also tenderness of heart and the ability to identify with those who suffer on the other.

We believe the extent to which we experience suffering, the ways we choose to deal with suffering, and the decisions we make while suffering produce this unique ingredient in our character, which will determine our subsequent actions when confronted by choices of how to behave when another human being is under distress or subjected to oppression.

From a social standpoint, history reveals that Bulgarians and Jews were closely knitted together within the Bulgarian fabric of society, and always had close, warm relationships and friendships with one another.

Another reason for the actions the Bulgarians took to protect the Jews was well-summarized, oddly enough, by the German Ambassador to Bulgaria during WWII: “Bulgarians who grew up with Gypsies, Armenians, Jews and Turks do not see any need to take a special action against their Jews.”

Was the Bulgarian Eastern Orthodox Church helpful during the rescue of Bulgarian Jews? How do you explain it due to the fact that there has always been strong anti-Judaic sentiment in the Church?

The role of the Bulgarian Eastern Orthodox Church was critical to the rescue!  The two High Priests of the Bulgarian church, Metropolite Stephen of Sofia and Metropolite Kiril of Plovdiv, were most instrumental in the rescue.  They wrote letters imploring the King of Bulgaria to show mercy to the Jews. In our libretto, we dedicated an entire movement to depict the emotional scene when Metropolite Kiril jumped the fence to the school yard where the Bulgarian Jews were held captive, awaiting to be put on the trains to Poland.

Beginning in the fourth century, false doctrines against the Jewish people infiltrated the Church in Western Europe.  These poisonous teachings have persisted for more than 16 centuries and have been the leading cause of fierce persecutions and beastly atrocities against the Jewish people.  These persecutions found their ultimate fruition and expression in the racial propaganda of Nazi Germany during WWII and the systematic annihilation of six million Jews during the Holocaust.

Even today, some of these false doctrines and attitudes have not been fully eradicated from certain sections of the Christian church.  It is, however, important to note that many Christians worldwide have deep love, appreciation and respect for the Jews and the Land of Israel.

In Bulgaria, however, these doctrines never took root. On the contrary, Bulgarian Eastern Orthodox priests and Jewish rabbis were friends, and Bulgarians and Jews formed long-lasting relationships of mutual respect and friendship.  Bulgarian Priests and Jewish rabbis had appreciation for one another and never felt threatened by each other’s spiritual understanding.  Instead, they shared their wisdom with one another; for example, Bulgarian children were given Jewish names and celebrated the Passover with fellow Jews. Throughout many centuries of coexistence with the Bulgarians, the Jewish people who lived in the Bulgarian lands assimilated and appropriated much of their cultural and ethnic ways, leading them to develop a distinct lifestyle, which, in a unique way, blended features of both cultures.   

The true history of the rescue seemed to have been ignored by historians and the public in the last 65 years. Why?

We have often reflected as to the reasons why the most dramatic rescue story of an entire nation of Jews during the Holocaust has been ignored for so long.  We do not feel qualified to paint a comprehensive picture as the reasons are complex and require in-depth knowledge of the intricate interplay between historical and political facts, agendas, and attitudes which, to a certain degree, have remained obscure throughout history.

More information about the Songs of Life Festival and A Melancholy Beauty can be found here.

Images in this post were provided by, and are property of, Kalin and Sharon Tchonev.

The Yellow Star, an opera by composer/librettist Bradley Detrick, chronicles the rescue of Danish Jews through an ensemble of fictional characters who make difficult choices to act righteously, even as their world crumbled around them in October 1943. This promotional video features both selected performance excerpts and behind the scenes commentary by Thanks To Scandinavia’s former executive director Rebecca Neuwirth, Ambassador Torben Gettermann of Denmark, director David Mold, and cast members.

For more information about The Yellow Star, click here.

Below, Dr. Cami Green Hofstadter describes her own history as well as her experiences speaking to others about the Holocaust in Scandinavia.

By CAMI GREEN HOFSTADTER, Ph.D.

The Swedish Theatre in Helsinki, Finland, gave me, a Finnish baby-boomer, my first awareness of the Holocaust. Our schools didn’t teach about it so I knew nothing more than what I saw in the play about Anne Frank. But then, as they say, life happened, and I ended up living in Miami among friends who were survivors or direct descendants. Everybody started asking me about life in Scandinavia during the war.

Recently I’ve been talking about the Nordic countries at the Holocaust Center in South Florida. There’s a great interest in learning but, perhaps surprisingly, I’m not the only one gaining something from my presentations. I’ve come to believe that comments and questions by members in the audience share a common thread and that our talking about them will shed more light on a historical tragedy that also played out in Scandinavia.

I’m not a historian by training but I’m fortunate that I can read the works of other scholars in the original Scandinavian languages. I use these sources not to rebut or disagree with my audience but to show that history isn’t always what we think we know. Once, at a presentation by a noted Holocaust scholar I noticed that he had spoken about all the Scandinavian countries but not Finland so I asked him. “Very unique situation and difficult to explain,” he said. Since then, I’ve tried to give a feeling of those complexities when I talk about the situation in Scandinavia.

Since we humans like stories, I also try to put a human face on the disturbing statistics that none of us should forget. For instance, when Jewish soldiers fought along the Nazi-German co-belligerents on the Finnish-Soviet front and when they constructed a tent/synagogue, which had its own Torah-scroll, there’s no recorded instance of disrespect or contempt. Curiosity made soldiers of all political and religious backgrounds visit.

My audiences often credit Marshall Mannerheim for saving the Finnish Jews but he, himself, used the passive voice in his memoirs when he wrote that “the government decided” to oppose the demands for deportation of eight stateless refugees. In 1944 in the Helsinki Synagogue he said he had only done what any other decent person would have done. Still, under his leadership, Finland remained unoccupied through the war.

The story about the Danish King Christian X provides great fodder for human-interest stories.  In 2001 Carmen Deedy published a children’s book, the Yellow Star, in which she uses “the legend about King Christian X” to teach children about ethical decisions. By then, the myth had already been perpetuated in Leon Uris’s book Exodus, and the movie.

It seems many people have forgotten that Victor Borge was a Jewish refugee from Denmark (and, of course, a founder of Thanks to Scandinavia) so I like to speak about how he was playing a concert in Sweden on the day of the invasion. From there he managed to get to an open port in Finland, where he boarded the last neutral ship to America. My audiences like to hear how he made it back once during the war. Disguised as a sailor, he then got to see his ailing mother in Denmark for a last time before she died.

At first, I was quite surprised that my listeners immediately associated the English term “quisling” (first used by a British paper in 1940) with the Norwegian traitor but generally they don’t know about the fierce resistance to the Nazi occupation. Foreign Minister Trygve Lie, who later became the first Secretary-General of the U.N. told the WJC that there was a prevailing sense of human duty towards the Jews and no public plea was needed. Just a month before, the bishops in the state-sponsored church had protested against the treatment of the Norwegian Jews and word had also spread to the Swedish media.

Fittingly, the Quisling mansion in Oslo is now the Center for Studies of Holocaust and Religious Minorities. A tour through the museum is a stirring testimony to the valiant civilians who resisted further killings. Still, almost half of the small Jewish population in Norway perished.

Sweden is known for having saved most of the Jews in Denmark but it surprises people to learn that its boarders were closed to Jewish refugees from Finland in 1941 and that it wasn’t until years later that they could again find safe haven in Sweden. It’s up to historians to determine if it could have done more for its fellow Scandinavians than it did as a neutral country. All this puts Sweden squarely in the column of “complexity.”

Generally, my audiences will repeat the familiar stories about Raoul Wallenberg and Count Bernadotte’s white busses. I also like to bring in Himmler’s personal physician, a Finnish therapist who’s often seen in close-ups behind his boss. He’s often credited for getting Himmler to permit the bus-transport of Jews from Germany to Sweden. Stories like that seem to keep the attention of listeners.

Today, visuals are a mandatory part of any presentation. In my case I use them to put a renewed human touch on a very serious subject.  I always welcome questions and never stop being amazed at the directions in which a presentation may go. Lest we forget the memories of the dead, we should do what we can to share the Scandinavian story. In this, Thanks to Scandinavia deserves all of our support.

And the trees in Wienerwald are still standing, Swedish writer and journalist Elizabeth Åsbrink’s third book, is a true story based on over 500 letters sent to Otto Ullman, an young Austrian boy who was sent to Sweden to escape Nazi persecution. The book was published in August 2011. This interview by Liv Grimsby provides some insight into the process of writing the books, as well as the story itself.

How did the idea of this book come to you?

It so happened that I met a woman named Eva Ullmann. She was the wife of a friend of my husband. It turns out we had somewhat similar Jewish backgrounds. The Ullmanns were very ambivalent about their own past.  Eva told me that she had been thinking about some letters that her father Otto had left her when he passed away. She had kept these letters in an IKEA box and had been living with the knowledge that these letters existed, but she never read them. She neither read nor spoke German, and since no one had read these letters, she had no sense of what they were about. She knew they had been a source of great pain, and she did not want this pain to be passed on to the next generation, to her children. Yet, she wanted something to happen to the letters that could somehow solve the mystery of this pain. She felt that her father had carried all his life a sense of having been wronged by the Swedish government. She wanted somehow to explore this further. As it happened, she had read a book I wrote 3 years earlier about a famous Swedish playwright, Lars Norén, and his association with long-term criminals. It was a play with three lead characters, two of them were Nazis. One of the Nazi had brutally murdered two policemen. This was a story that no one had covered before. The play provoked a major controversy and prompted a general debate on the issue of Jewish identity. In the book, I had included some discussions that addressed the issue of Jewish identity.

After reading my book, Eva contacted me and told me:  “I have over 500 letters fromVienna. They are written in German. Would you like to take a look at them? Is there anything you can do?”

I was afraid of the content of the letters. At first I refused. It scared me because it would be a huge responsibility to accept. I did not know what I would find. One of my concerns was that what I found might taint their family history. The Ullmann family was very supportive and told me to make public whatever I found. The Shoah, (I don’t like the word Holocaust) is part of my history also. I was afraid of going into that pain. I was also very concerned that after all that had been written and said about the topic, I could not possibly add anything new. People were asking me: Why do we need another book about the Shoah?

It turned out that I actually did find something that had not been told before.

During the occupation and annexation of Austria into Nazi Germany in 1938, the so-called “Anschluss”, Otto Ullmann, Eva’s father who was a young boy at the time, lived with his father in central Vienna. His father was a sports journalist and an opera critic. He loved sports and loved being outdoors. The family ate pork, celebrated Christmas and was assimilated, urban and modern. After the Anschluss, they were doomed because of their Jewishness. And they, of course, suffered the fate of so many Austrian Jews.

Otto’s parents had sent their son to Sweden and were planning on leaving Austria as soon as possible to join their son in Sweden. Very sadly they were arrested and sent to the concentration camp of Theresienstadt.

I chose as title of the book And The Trees in Wienerwald Are Still Standing because the Wienerwald, a beautiful wooden, recreational area aroundVienna, was where the Ullmann family spent their Sunday picnics, played soccer and enjoyed each others’ company. The title of my book refers to the fact that the trees are still there but the people who sat in their shadow are gone, leaving a void empty space.

Otto Ullman and his family

The book begins with Otto’s parents’ daily letters to their son, telling him of their detailed departure plans.

Otto was 13 years old when he was sent to an orphanage in Sweden called Henhult. This had been organized by a Swedish Christian organization that worked in Austria. This was to be his home for a short while – it was meant to be a temporary solution until his parents managed to leave Austria (then part of Nazi Germany) to join him. They had realized early on that the situation in Vienna had become very dangerous, even critical for them.

The orphanage soon became overcrowded and could no longer accommodate that many children.  Therefore, some of the children in the orphanage had to move out. A devout Christian woman made her house available for some of these children and welcomed Otto along with 22 other children. The placement of Jewish orphans into residents’ homes was organized by the Swedish government. It was later discovered that the real objective of many of the Christian families who took in Jewish children was to convert them to Christianity.

When Otto was 14 years of age, he became a manual laborer, working at various farms in southern Sweden. He described some of these years as quite good. He was very fond of the people he worked with. He was not in a financial position to get a higher education. This was a great loss for him.

He was deeply traumatized when he heard the news of the murder of his parents. That trauma stayed with him for the rest of his life.

Ingvar Kamprad, IKEA’s founder, entered into the picture of this story very early. (IKEA stands for I: Ingvar; K: Kampf; E: the town where he grew up; A: the village nearby).  When Otto was 18 years old, he went to Kamprad’s estate, applied for work there and was hired.

While researching secret police files, I found significant evidence that Ingvar Kamprad was a registered member of the Swedish Nazi party in 1943. His membership number was 4014. Kamprad was only 17 years old at the time. Although he was still a young man, it is evident that the Swedish Nazi Party SSS had their eyes on him, which is amazing. Maybe the fact that Ingvar’s grandmother had been a German immigrant played a role in his joining the party.

He clearly admitted that he had been a member of the Swedish Nazi Party, a hardcore anti-Semitic and aggressive party. He also declared that he had already recruited members to the movement and that he had intended to devote all his time to work for the movement.

When the issue of Kamprad’s fascist involvement became public in the 1990s he pleaded for forgiveness, saying it had been an error of youth. “I was only a boy!” It is true that he was only 17 but it was a quite a conscious decision. It is not an error of youth in my view.

Kamprad’s political involvement in the Nazi Party was one of the few pieces of information I had when I started writing this book. I knew that Otto and Ingvar had become friends as young men. I needed to know what that relationship meant. How was it possible that Ingvar became friends with the Jewish boy Otto while he at the same time was involved with the Nazi Youth movement? When Ingvar and Otto met, Otto’s parents had already died in Theresiendtadt. From the beginning I wanted this relationship to be the focus of the book.

What was the role of the Swedish Church?

The Swedish Church at the time had some strong humanist views. Priests offered assistance to the refugees and pleaded in their favor during their Sunday sermons. There were also priests who believed in the Nazism. It is therefore difficult to define where the Church stood at the time.

For instance, the Swedish Archbishop Erling Eidem was a great lover of German culture and of the German language. He was also a Pietist, a movement within Lutheranism, which believed that faith should be separated from the rest of the world. He had no interest in taking part in politics. As early as in 1942, he was probably one of the first to learn of what happened in the death camps in Germany. He received detailed information and yet never passed it on. He simply never took a stand.

Some priests within the Swedish Church were missionaries to the Jewish people. They had a very particular point of view. The mission was based on their belief that Jews had made a terrible mistake by not recognizing Jesus as Messiah and that everything that had happened to them was actually God’s judgment. They believed that as true Christians they had to show Jews the way to Christianity. Very surprisingly it was later revealed that the Archbishop was very close to this movement. He too may have felt that these children refugees had to be “saved.”

How do you see Sweden’s role during WWII?

Sweden and Germany were very close ideologically. It was a symbiotic relationship. Those of the upper classes who studied at universities would also be studying the German language, poetry, music, wrote in German and were in tune with German ideas. This was true for the upper classes. These were also the people who believed in Hitler, and were most afraid of Soviet power. They believed that only Germany could stop the communists. Sweden had always been afraid of Russia and then of Soviets. This explains in part the solidarity that existed between Sweden and the Nazi regime.

We also have a long tradition of not liking foreigners, and that included gypsies and also Jews, particularly Jew from the East. German Jews were easily accepted but Jews from the East had difficulty entering the country. This was the case ever since the 19^th century.

When I studied the Foreign Ministry’s archives concerning Austria and the Anschluss period, it became apparent that the Foreign Ministry was afraid of a Jewish invasion or a Jewish “import”. The authorities feared that German intellectuals, physicians and students would come and take over their jobs. It was a combination of economic worries and a certain fear of foreigners. Sweden, comparatively was actually very restrictive in its immigration policies, more so than other neighboring countries.

In November of 1942, the Nazis invaded Norway and started the deportation of the Norwegian Jews. This was a complete shock to Sweden. Somehow the Norwegian Jews one could identify with much easier than with the German or Polish Jews. The Norwegian Jews were ‘almost’ Norwegian. This is evident when we read the press clips and the debate going on at that time. I believe that 524 Norwegian Jews were deported and most of them were murdered in 1942. This was alarming according Swedish newspapers. This was a wake-up call for Sweden.

For instance, when the public was asked in a survey published by one of our largest newspaper on New Years Eve as to what was the most significant event of 1942 the unanimous answer was: The deportation of the Norwegian Jews.  Someone says for instance: “I saw the Jewish deportation with my own eyes; I never want to see something similar. I am no friend of Jews, but these things should not happen.”

A year after Danish Jews had been deported from Denmark, Sweden, knowing what was happening opened its borders. Because of these past events, the Swedish people were better prepared to receive Jewish refugees. Some historians say that when Hitler began to lose power in 1943 (he had won every major battles until then) people in Sweden came to think that maybe he wouldn’t win the war after all.

Were you always aware of your Jewish roots?

I think I must always have been. I grew up with a mother who said hush-hush to me, don’t tell anyone, and don’t let anyone know that you are of Jewish heritage. My father is Jewish Hungarian, born in Budapest. When he was 5 years old, someone had shouted ‘bloody Jew’ at him. He went to his mother and asked: “What is a Jew?” Shortly after, the Hungarian Nazis took power and my grandfather was sent to labor camp and was murdered with several other relatives. His family had been assimilated, just like Otto and his parents. They shared a similar background. They were condemned to their Jewishness and therefore condemned to death. My father has never said that I should hide my Jewish heritage, but he has said that he would be happy with a non-Jewish son-in-law because that makes the Jewish blood disappear from our lineage. I grew up with this sort of shame and denial. This book has been a sort of coming out for me.

How long did it take you to write this book?

I worked 6 days, sometimes 7 days a week for one year. I was never available to do simple things like taking a walk. My husband objected to my obsessive behavior or relentless efforts in getting the book competed.

Knowing what you knew about Kamprad, was it difficult for you to interview him?

The meeting wasn’t difficult. We met at IKEAs headquarters in Sweden. When I asked him about Otto, he immediately replied: “Of course I want to talk about Otto!” He really loved Otto. However, I don’t think he was prepared for my question about his Nazi background. He did his best to answer my other questions, but when it came to that subject, he suddenly did not remember much. It was after I kept pushing him about his Nazi past that he said he still maintained the view that the Fascist leader Per Engdahl was a great human being. In view of the available information about him, this is quite a shocking statement. Engdahl was first of all a fascist leader during the war leading a party which was small, but active. It was anti-Bolshevik, anti-democratic and anti-Semitic. These three ideas were very strong within his party. Engdahl’s biggest achievement came after the war. Immediately after the war, he helped Nazi prisoners who had been captured to escape to South America to avoid being held accountable.

Engdahl and Kamprad were at this point close friends. I don’t know what Kamprad knew about Engdahl. No one can give me the answer to that question.  Kamprad was also close to other people in Engdal‘s movement. Kamprad wrote Engdal a letter in which he wrote that he was proud to be a part of the movement. When Kamprad , in 2010, said that Engdahl he was a great human being, one has to remember that Engdahl at that time was at his greatest politically, working for the European fascist and Nazi revival. I can’t claim that Kemprad knew, about but he definitely did not distance himself from him.

What happened to Otto after the war? 

According to his children, Otto got tired of living in the countryside and decided in 1949 to move toIsrael. He decided years later to return to Sweden, where he eventually reunited with Kamprad. He settled in Stockholm and proceeded to make a living. He married a girl who he met at the Kamprad’s estate and they had 3 children. He owned and managed a restaurant. He was never a failure, nor a huge success.

Otto Ullman

When I first portrayed Otto, I let his children read the text. “You have made Otto too nice, too humble, too kind” was their response. “Otto was an angry man.” Their conclusion was that he had been traumatized and that this trauma had made him such an angry man. He was not an easy person to live with, nor was he a happy person.

More information about And the trees in Wienerwald are still standing and Elizabeth Åsbrink, click here.

By Aske Denning, 

Participant, January 2012 TTS Trip to Israel

Graduate student of journalism, Aarhus University

Fifteen seconds. That is how long citizens of the Israeli city of Sderot have to find a bomb shelter when the sirens sound. Here is why Israeli self-perception to a large extent is defined by the feeling of being under threat in a region of hostility

“The citizens of Sderot don’t suffer from post-traumatic stress. ‘Cause the trauma never ends here.”

These words of gloomy sarcasm come from Kobi Harush, the officer in charge of the security in the city of Sderot one kilometer from the Gaza Strip. From the top of a barren hill, Kobi Harush looks through his dark aviator shades over to the fenced-in neighbor.

“It’s painful to look at Gaza now, knowing that earlier, people could get along. I have a friend over there, a Palestinian contractor. We met in 2008 after twenty years with no contact. Back in the eighties, friends and families would go to the coast of Gaza to barbecue.”

Israel should never become an island of concrete«

Since the three-week long Gaza War in December 2008-January 2009, the situation in Sderot, and Israel in general, has been “relatively quiet”. Although ‘relatively quiet’ in Israeli terms means that from time to time, rockets are still hitting Israeli soil.

The rockets are launched by Hamas, the Palestinian Sunni Islamic political party that governs the Gaza Strip. Sometimes the attacks are followed by an Israeli retaliatory strike, sometimes not. Both sides have suffered, and are still suffering, civilian casualties.

The ceasefire, or rather the calming, that followed the Gaza War is very fragile, and the sirens of Sderot might sound anytime. When they do, the citizens of Sderot know that they have to seek shelter immediately. The wailing sound warns that death comes in fifteen seconds.

All bomb shelters within a seven kilometer-range from the fence around Gaza are fully subsidized by the local authorities. But despite the fact that Hamas’ artillery is becoming increasingly long-range, Kobi Harush does not believe that fear should dictate Israeli life:

“We can’t keep expanding the security zone. Although it’s just a matter of time before the next cycle of violence comes, Israel should not become an isolated chunk of concrete.”

Security first

But security measures are already very evident in the Israeli landscape: checkpoints, heavy-armed defense forces in public space, and the walls (or fences – the conflicting parties label the structures differently) around the Palestinian territories of the Gaza Strip and the West Bank. They are all elements that might seem out of place in a modern, Western-oriented democracy. 

However, many Israelis feel that life under threat from regional neighbors who cannot accept the existence of a Jewish state in the Middle East is not fully understood by the Western world.

“There’s a huge gap between the world’s perception of Israel and Israelis’ perception of themselves,” says Miri Eisen, retired colonel from the Israel Defense Forces and international media advisor to Prime Minister at the time Ehud Olmert. Miri explains the gap of perceptions between Israel and the West as a matter of whether or not you are directly involved in the conflict:

“The West sees the Israel-Palestine conflict through a human rights perspective, whereas Israelis feel that they have no choice but to consider the security perspective first.”

The emphasis on security is reflected in the Israeli spending on defense. Military expenditure accounts for one fifth of the budget for 2012, and is the second largest item on the budget exceeded only by social services. In other terms, this corresponds to roughly 5.5% of the nation’s GDP, a higher proportion than that of American military spending.

Made in Iran

The stated motive of Hamas’ strikes is to force mass migration in Israel, as retaliation for what Hamas perceives as Israeli occupation.

Some of the rockets launched by Hamas are produced in the equally Israel-hostile Iran. They reach Gaza through mafia-like Arab tribes who operate in the risky, but very profitable, business of arms smuggling. Israelis perceive the regular calls for the ‘destruction of the Israeli State’ by Iranian President Ahmedinejad as a very real threat.

Middle East analyst Dr. Jonathan Spyer explains why the Iranian crosshair is aimed at Israel:

“Iran tries to bid for the Palestinian cause in order to become a contester for Middle Eastern hegemony, as an alternative to the United States. This of course includes securing control of the energy sources of the Persian Gulf.”

One of the ways Iran is gaining influence in the region is to fund Hamas in Gaza. Jonathan Spyer, who labels the Arab Spring the “Islamic Tsunami”, and who calls the violent, Saudi-backed repression of Shia protesters in Bahrain in February 2011 “a miracle”, explains what drives the regional ambitions of the ruling elite in Iran:

“They are disillusioned survivors of the Iranian Revolution. Through their foreign policy ambitions, they hope to revitalize the optimism of 1979, the ‘fire of the revolution’.”

The children are the future

The children of Sderot see and hear the outspoken threats by an Iranian president with nuclear ambitions on television, and they are taught early why their school and even their playground are missile proof structures. To prevent future divide and antagonism between future generations in the Middle East, education is essential, believes Kobi Harush.

“Israeli Jews are taught Arabic in school. Unfortunately, the kids of Gaza are taught how to wear Hamas uniforms,” says the officer, as he glances over the field where Israeli forces invaded the Gaza Strip just three years ago as response to Hamas’ rocket fire. It is as if, he is looking for a future that will never come or is reminiscing an idealized past.

“But people here are optimistic. We have to be. Because we remember how things could be. We remember that we used to be able to live together.«

January, 2012

askedenning@gmail.dk 

The Legend — Written by Victor Borge

Performed by Ditte Hofman and Heide Marie Geortzen

This film, created in part by UJA, speaks about the Displaced Persons camps that were set up in Norway after World War II for Jewish survivors who would not or in most cases, could not, return to their homes.

A little-known but fascinating and moving part of 20th century war-time history.”

This video is a documentary/reenactment of the rescue of Jews during World War II from the coastal town of Gilleleje in Denmark.

The message “we have to fight to be human” resonates for the Danish students who travel the path of Jews fleeing Nazi capture to get to the safe shores of Sweden.

The film was directred by Arthur Ornitz and produced and co-written by Elaine Attias.

Victor Borge, the Danish musician and entertainer, was one of the founders of Thanks To Scandinavia, a scholarship fund in gratitude of the rescue of Jews during World War II.

This short video goes through Borge’s extraordinary life — born in Denmark, fleeing via Sweden to the United States during the War, and then “making it big.”

Borge also speaks about starting Thanks To Scandinavia and what the organization has meant to him.

The video is told in Borge’s own words through original interview footage.