The Swedish Jewish community has asked local police to revoke a Neo-Nazi group’s permission to march near a synagogue in the city of Gothenburg this Yom Kippur.
“It’s the day of the year when many Jews who normally don’t go to the synagogue will gather there. On this day, the police have decided to grant the neo-Nazi Nordic Resistance Movement (NRM) permission to march through Gothenburg, no more than a stone’s throw away from the synagogue,” Aron Verständig, chairman of The Official Council of Swedish Jewish Communities, and Allan Stutzinky, chairman of the Jewish Community in Gothenburg, wrote in an opinion piece in the Svenska Dagbladet translated by The Local.
“Aside from out of fear for our own security, it evokes uncomfortable associations for us Jews. During the Holocaust it wasn’t unusual for the German Nazis to conduct their horrendous atrocities on the most important days of the Jewish calendar.”
“Let them stay in the periphery, where they belong,” Verständig and Stutzinky wrote.
The Local cited a report from earlier this year crediting the NRM with a rise in anti-Semitic incidents.
Last month the Jewish Telegraphic Agency reported that police in Sweden were investigating a protest organized by the Swedish-Palestinian Centre in Helsingborg at which anti-Semitic epithets were shouted.
Also last month, Neo-Nazis marched past a synagogue in Charlottesville, Virginia during a “Unite the Right” demonstration, brandishing weapons and screaming anti-Semitic slogans.
