Swedish Queen's Grandfather Was a Nazi, But Might Have Been a Good One
Don’t Worry Sweden – the Queen’s grandfather wasn’t a Nazi! Or was he?
An investigation launched by Sweden’s Queen Silvia into alleged ties between her grandfather and the Nazis show evidence that not only was he not an active Nazi, but he may have even helped a Jewish friend escape from Germany. But some Holocaust survivor groups are not buying it.
"I wasn't afraid of what I would find when I started searching in the archives. I knew there was no reason to worry," German-born Queen Silvia said.
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However, Elan Steinberg, vice president of The American Gathering of Holocaust Survivors and their Descendants on Tuesday said the report's findings were "self-serving" and lacked credibility.
"The report was not an independent inquiry - it was commissioned by the queen with the participation of her cousin, a Brazilian lawyer. Such a probe can only raise suspicions of a whitewash," Steinberg said on the group's website.
"What Queen Silvia has produced only raises further troubling questions," he added.
The Queen’s grandfather, Walther Sommerlath, was a member of the Nazi party in 1934 while living in Brazil, but the Queen wanted the report to prove that he was not active after a TV report earlier this year accused Sommerlath of taking advantage of the Nazi’s “Aryanization” policies to take over a German factory belonging to Jewish businessman Efim Wechsler in 1939, the UK’s Daily Telegraph reported.
However, the 34-page report indicated that Sommerlath, who died in 1990, may have actually saved Weschsler’s life by trading him a part of a coffee plantation in Brazil for his Berlin factory. That move made it possible for the Jewish business owner to flee Hitler’s Germany and move to sunny Brazil.
It is unknown whether or not the motives of the business deal were to help Wechsler take advantage of Wechsler’s desperation to leave Germany, or was simply a clean business deal. Nonetheless, the Queen Silvia's report should stand for quite a while - or at least until somebody else cares to look into the secrets of a Swedish Queen's deceased grandfather.
