From a Large Minority to a Small Community
Jews had always been a minority wherever they had lived, but in Eastern Europe they were a large minority prior to the Holocaust. Yiddish was a language so widely spoken that many non-Jewish Poles and Lithuanians had a comprehension of it, and those who worked in certain trades sometimes even mastered it.5 In Northern Europe, Jews encountered a different Jewish culture and a new social position.
From being part of a very large minority—who in fact constituted the majority of the population in the part of town they came from—they became a very small minority, and they were confronted by an assimilatory and rather homogeneous non-Jewish environment.There were also substantial differences between the Nordic countries regarding social relations and values within the Jewish communities. The Eastern European Jews who moved to larger cities like Copenhagen, Gothenburg, and Stockholm met acculturated Jewish communities like the bourgeois Jews of Western Europe. These were communities and individuals with a rather stable economic position that in particular fostered the idea of the Germanic Bildung. Many regarded themselves as Danes or Swedes with a Mosaic faith rather than as ethnic Jews (Bredefeldt 2008, 214; Thing 2008, 25). The newcomers to Sweden and Denmark had to deal with the established communities’ bourgeois way of life and strong opinions on how Jewishness should be expressed.
Thus, clear class and cultural distinctions between the old families and the Eastern European newcomers developed. For the likes of the Schwartzmans, who might have been impoverished but had probably belonged to the upper strata in Nayshtot, this may have been a difficult experience. In addition, the established communities’ path of assimilation or acculturation was not an option for most newcomers. Rather, they defined themselves by traditions, culture, and Zionism (Banik 2016; Ekholm and Muir 2016).
Not surprisingly, this created mutual suspicions. The established families feared that the Eastern European newcomers, with their foreign habits, language, and appearance, would cast a shadow on all Jews and increase the anti-Semitism they so carefully tried to avoid (Bredefeldt 2008, 77–78).Despite the relative absence of discriminatory laws regarding civil rights, Jewish migrants were not necessarily warmly welcomed in the Nordic countries. For instance, Swedish and Norwegian authorities clearly discriminated against the naturalisation of Eastern European Jewish applicants (Carlsson 2004; Johansen 2005). As mentioned above, Jews were not granted citizenship in Finland until 1918. Anti-Semitism was latent at most times, but anti-Jewish sentiments were present in cartoons, media, and fiction (Andersson 2000; Lien 2016; Ekholm 2013, 109–110). Importantly, most of the anti-Semitism was directed against a particular notion of Jews or Jewishness, such as the Bolshevik Jew or the capitalist Jew. Only occasionally did sentiments target actual Jews living in the Nordic countries (e.g. Banik 2015, 21–30). Nevertheless, whether it was a fear of Bolshevism or criticism of capitalism, the idea of Jews as a factor behind the forces that were shaking up the modern world was often present in the rhetoric, regardless of the actual number of Jewish individuals (Ekholm and Muir 2016, 176). While there were no pogroms in the Nordic countries, the social sphere for Jews was rather narrow.
While Jewish life in Eastern Europe was gradually becoming more diverse, as outlined above, life in the Nordic countries was more one-dimensional. On the one hand, migration enabled families to pick and mix between the traditions they wanted to keep and new ideas, so they had an opportunity to develop new Jewish identities. On the other hand, because of their small numbers and the presence of Jews already living in Denmark and Sweden, the communities were characterised by conformity. The number of Jewish organisations was few, and it was to some extent expected that all members would contribute to the community’s maintenance. Hence, conformity made the choice of perceived Jewish values more limited.
In addition, we know that it was imperative to keep up appearances. For example, speaking Yiddish publicly was frowned upon by the children that were born in the Nordic countries (Banik and Levin 2010; Harviainen 1986, 16). It was important not to provoke society in general, and values and traditions from Eastern Europe that were not well received in their new home country were quickly abandoned. In addition, they responded to the host society’s ideas of ‘Jewish behaviour’ by actively avoiding undertakings that could confirm anti-Jewish sentiments.