Why Sweden Is the Exception on Refugees -- For Now

STOCKHOLM -- In the summer of 1938, at the initiative of U.S. President Franklin D. Roosevelt, 32 nations convened in the beautiful French resort of Evian to agree on a common refugee program to save the desperate Jews of Germany and Austria. After nine days of deliberation they agreed on nothing of the sort. Instead, they all went home and for all practical purposes closed their borders. One of the nations doing so was Sweden, even begging Nazi Germany to stamp the passports of Jews with a large "J" in red, to facilitate the process of weeding them out.

Even as war broke out and Germany sealed its borders and the number of Jews knocking on the doors of Sweden trickled down to a few hundred, the doors largely remained closed. Only in October of 1943, when the winds of war had turned, and 7,000 Danish Jews were shipped across the straits of Öresund to knock on the doors of their neutral Swedish neighbors, were they to open. And this time generously so.

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