DIIS Comment
Small and Moral Nations. Why Sweden was a Pioneer with the Stockholm Declaration
10 years after 40 States signed an agreement to keep alive the memory of the Holocaust, the Stockholm Declaration stands today as a sign of the increased impact of the past in present political culture
11 January 2010
Since the late 1990s, Denmark, Sweden and Norway have experienced an increased public and political interest for the Holocaust as a history that should be addressed specifically. Most well-known is the process started in Sweden in January 2000 with the first Stockholm International Forum, where 40 states decided to make it a priority to keep alive the memory of the Holocaust. But also in Denmark and Norway, the Holocaust has been addressed specifically by several politicians, and both countries have officially apologised for their immoral conduct towards Jews - Denmark for denying 21 Jewish refugees entry from Germany in 1941, and Norway for participating in the systematic deportation of its Jews to Nazi Germany and/or to extermination camps.
To some extent this development might seem odd, at least considering the war record of Denmark and Sweden. Why should Sweden - a presumably neutral country during the war – go through such a process? And why should Denmark - a country with a reputation for its heroic rescue of the Danish Jews in October 1943 - engage in such soul-searching? To answer these questions, we need to look at the developments in the Scandinavian countries and relate them to what the French researcher Ariel Colonomos has termed the moralising of international relations during the 1990s.(1) What we see during the 1990s is an increased interest in human rights and international humanitarian law: Sanctions, humanitarian interventions, and demands for ‘clean historical records’. And this interest gives the Holocaust as a specific crime a new position in the political culture developing in Europe after the fall of communism.
With the growing interest in human rights, comes a growing interest for how nations behaved in the past. Addressing crimes of the past and demanding historical justice is a way to get access to the international political scene. The past has become a moral guidepost which aids access to the international community - something of particular importance for small nations.
In Denmark, addressing the Holocaust specifically and investigating Denmark’s share of responsibility happened mainly because of the Stockholm International Forums. Of course, Danish historians had shown an interest in Holocaust history. But, the Holocaust was primarily seen as a German and a Jewish history, and Denmark was generally not included in this history.
As the most dominant theme in Danish historiography, the history of the German occupation has been revised twice, influenced by two generational waves, with each new generation writing its own version of national history. The first wave came during the 1970s, when a new generation of historians started questioning both the supposed heroism of the Resistance and the supposed innocent cooperation with the German occupiers. The second wave came during the 1990s, when journalists and young historians began to examine the Danish industrial and agricultural sectors, and their cooperation - even collaboration - with Nazi Germany.
This new research of the 1990s was the starting point of a public debate on national history and paved the way for the Stockholm process to have an impact on Denmark. Here it is important to note that the new research, which showed other sides of the Occupation and the ‘innocent’ cooperation with Nazi Germany, did not relate to the Holocaust.
Denmark’s Holocaust history remained basically uncontested until the late 1990s and the Stockholm Process. We cannot give Sweden all the credit for the revision of the history of the Danish occupation, but it is doubtful that Denmark, with its highly prized self-image, would have felt obliged, without this process, to officially acknowledge its particular Holocaust guilt.
The Stockholm process had a direct and immediate impact on Denmark. There had been no national commission in Denmark until, in the wake of the Stockholm International Forum in January 2000, the Danish Centre for Holocaust and Genocide Studies was established. The first major task of the Centre was a large research project to investigate Danish policy towards Jewish refugees before and during the war.
In early 2000, just after the first Stockholm International Forum, an article in the daily Berlingske Tidende argued that Danish authorities during the Second World War refused 21 Jewish refugees from Nazi Germany entry into the country and sent them back to an unknown fate - ultimately death in Auschwitz. The story generated considerable controversy, and the political response was a government-financed investigation into official Danish policy towards German-Jewish refugees. After four years of research, Prime Minister Anders Fogh Rasmussen issued an official apology in the National Memorial Park in Copenhagen on 4 May 2005, stating that:
“The remembrance of the dark aspects of the occupation era is unfortunately also a part of the celebration of the sixtieth anniversary of the liberation of Denmark. Thus I would very much like - on this very occasion and in this location - on behalf of the government and thus the Danish state, to express regret and apologize for these acts. An apology cannot alter history. But it can contribute to the recognition of historic mistakes. So that present and future generations will hopefully avoid similar mistakes in the future”.
What happened in Denmark because of the Stockholm Process shows us how important it has become to admit crimes of the past. Some would even claim that Fogh Rasmussen instrumentalised the narrative about the Occupation, when his liberal-conservative government broke the consensus around the course of the Danish foreign policy, by joining the Iraq coalition in 2003 and bringing Denmark into a new role in international activism.
In a speech held during the commemoration of the August rebellion in 1943, when the Danes held a strike for the first time and thereby showed their resistance against the Germans, Fogh stated that the politics of cooperation was “a moral decline”. No minister had ever openly questioned this relatively solid historical consensus. What Denmark did during the Occupation was, up to that point, officially considered a wise policy for a small nation like Denmark. But Fogh did, and he did so just before Denmark entered the Iraqi war, introducing a new activist foreign policy for Denmark.
Looking back at Fogh’s statement, it is doubtful whether such a break would have been possible at all without the process started by the first Stockholm International Forum and the Stockholm Declaration. The Stockholm Declaration was not only a sign of the globalization of Holocaust memory. The Stockholm Declaration could also be seen as an international response to the growing impact of the past in our present political culture where the Holocaust has a unique and paradigmatic place.
__________________________
1: Ariel Colonomos, Moralizing of international Relations: Called to Account, New York: Palgrave MacMillan, 2008
To some extent this development might seem odd, at least considering the war record of Denmark and Sweden. Why should Sweden - a presumably neutral country during the war – go through such a process? And why should Denmark - a country with a reputation for its heroic rescue of the Danish Jews in October 1943 - engage in such soul-searching? To answer these questions, we need to look at the developments in the Scandinavian countries and relate them to what the French researcher Ariel Colonomos has termed the moralising of international relations during the 1990s.(1) What we see during the 1990s is an increased interest in human rights and international humanitarian law: Sanctions, humanitarian interventions, and demands for ‘clean historical records’. And this interest gives the Holocaust as a specific crime a new position in the political culture developing in Europe after the fall of communism.
With the growing interest in human rights, comes a growing interest for how nations behaved in the past. Addressing crimes of the past and demanding historical justice is a way to get access to the international political scene. The past has become a moral guidepost which aids access to the international community - something of particular importance for small nations.
In Denmark, addressing the Holocaust specifically and investigating Denmark’s share of responsibility happened mainly because of the Stockholm International Forums. Of course, Danish historians had shown an interest in Holocaust history. But, the Holocaust was primarily seen as a German and a Jewish history, and Denmark was generally not included in this history.
As the most dominant theme in Danish historiography, the history of the German occupation has been revised twice, influenced by two generational waves, with each new generation writing its own version of national history. The first wave came during the 1970s, when a new generation of historians started questioning both the supposed heroism of the Resistance and the supposed innocent cooperation with the German occupiers. The second wave came during the 1990s, when journalists and young historians began to examine the Danish industrial and agricultural sectors, and their cooperation - even collaboration - with Nazi Germany.
This new research of the 1990s was the starting point of a public debate on national history and paved the way for the Stockholm process to have an impact on Denmark. Here it is important to note that the new research, which showed other sides of the Occupation and the ‘innocent’ cooperation with Nazi Germany, did not relate to the Holocaust.
Denmark’s Holocaust history remained basically uncontested until the late 1990s and the Stockholm Process. We cannot give Sweden all the credit for the revision of the history of the Danish occupation, but it is doubtful that Denmark, with its highly prized self-image, would have felt obliged, without this process, to officially acknowledge its particular Holocaust guilt.
The Stockholm process had a direct and immediate impact on Denmark. There had been no national commission in Denmark until, in the wake of the Stockholm International Forum in January 2000, the Danish Centre for Holocaust and Genocide Studies was established. The first major task of the Centre was a large research project to investigate Danish policy towards Jewish refugees before and during the war.
In early 2000, just after the first Stockholm International Forum, an article in the daily Berlingske Tidende argued that Danish authorities during the Second World War refused 21 Jewish refugees from Nazi Germany entry into the country and sent them back to an unknown fate - ultimately death in Auschwitz. The story generated considerable controversy, and the political response was a government-financed investigation into official Danish policy towards German-Jewish refugees. After four years of research, Prime Minister Anders Fogh Rasmussen issued an official apology in the National Memorial Park in Copenhagen on 4 May 2005, stating that:
“The remembrance of the dark aspects of the occupation era is unfortunately also a part of the celebration of the sixtieth anniversary of the liberation of Denmark. Thus I would very much like - on this very occasion and in this location - on behalf of the government and thus the Danish state, to express regret and apologize for these acts. An apology cannot alter history. But it can contribute to the recognition of historic mistakes. So that present and future generations will hopefully avoid similar mistakes in the future”.
What happened in Denmark because of the Stockholm Process shows us how important it has become to admit crimes of the past. Some would even claim that Fogh Rasmussen instrumentalised the narrative about the Occupation, when his liberal-conservative government broke the consensus around the course of the Danish foreign policy, by joining the Iraq coalition in 2003 and bringing Denmark into a new role in international activism.
In a speech held during the commemoration of the August rebellion in 1943, when the Danes held a strike for the first time and thereby showed their resistance against the Germans, Fogh stated that the politics of cooperation was “a moral decline”. No minister had ever openly questioned this relatively solid historical consensus. What Denmark did during the Occupation was, up to that point, officially considered a wise policy for a small nation like Denmark. But Fogh did, and he did so just before Denmark entered the Iraqi war, introducing a new activist foreign policy for Denmark.
Looking back at Fogh’s statement, it is doubtful whether such a break would have been possible at all without the process started by the first Stockholm International Forum and the Stockholm Declaration. The Stockholm Declaration was not only a sign of the globalization of Holocaust memory. The Stockholm Declaration could also be seen as an international response to the growing impact of the past in our present political culture where the Holocaust has a unique and paradigmatic place.
__________________________
1: Ariel Colonomos, Moralizing of international Relations: Called to Account, New York: Palgrave MacMillan, 2008
Topics
DIIS Experts
Photo/illustration by Lynggaardhansenfoto.dk
Foreign policy and diplomacy
Head of unit, Senior researcher
+45 3269 8938
Small and moral nations
why Sweden was a pioneer with the Stockholm Declaration