MALMÖ, Sweden (JTA) – Malmö, Sweden’s third largest city, has in recent years become known as a breeding ground for anti-Semitism.

With about a third of its inhabitants born outside Sweden, many of them often living in ethnically homogeneous districts, the city has also become a synonym for Sweden’s integration problems.

But this week, Malmö – and by extension, the Swedish government – aimed to turn this rumor upside down with a conference on combating anti-Semitism that was attended in person or on video by almost 50 heads of state, foreign ministers, EU officials and world Jewish congressional representatives. US Secretary of State Antony Blinken, Israeli President Isaac Herzog and French President Emmanuel Macron sent video messages.

YouTube, led by Jewish CEO Susan Wojcicki, pledged over $ 5 million to nonprofits and authorities to fight online anti-Semitism. Facebooks COO Sheryl Sandberg, who has spoke publicly about how her Jewish ancestors escaped persecution in Europe to the United States, went live with video and said that her company is engaged in careful review of users’ content – despite that previous problems with moderation in the subject.

Unlike other similar conferences on the subject, the Malmö International Forum on Holocaust Remembrance and Combating Anti-Semitism did not end with a joint declaration signed by all participants. Sweden’s Prime Minister Stefan Löfven said he preferred that the leaders present focus on discussing “concrete measures” that can be used to curb anti-Semitic incidents and behaviors.

European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen, who almost joined from Brussels, introduced the recently adopted “EU Strategy to Combat Anti-Semitism and the Promotion of Jewish Life (2021-2030) “ and proposed the establishment of a program for young European ambassadors for Holocaust Remembrance.

“We are not looking for another explanation, we want to translate these principles for these documents into reality,” said Löfven, who will leave his office next month, in a speech on Wednesday.

Whether and how the conference serves as a turning point for the country’s anti-Semitism problems in the country remains to be seen. While the heads of state had the spotlight, Swedish media reports in recent weeks have told stories about the local Jews who continue to leave Malmö, some after suffering anti-Semitism directly in their daily lives.

“You can give your nice speeches, we move while you do it”, mother of a 12-year-old Jewish girl told the Swedish newspaper Dagens Nyheter. Her daughter described how she had found graffiti that read “Free Palestine” and “F – k Israel” from her school cupboard, and how someone spat on her jacket. It has proved too much for the girl’s mother, who is moving her family to Israel next summer, even though she does not speak Hebrew.

That story is not unique – all the Swedish Jewish students interviewed in a survey published by the City of Malmö earlier this year said they had been subjected to some form of anti-Semitism at school.

The problem extends far beyond the classroom. In 2017, the Malmö synagogue’s window was smashed with stones. In 2020, the city had to terminate its partnership with the Arab Book Fair, as an anti-Semitic book appeared on the website (the title has since been removed).

But it was perhaps an experiment done in 2015 by a Swedish journalist who drew the most attention to the situation. The reporter, dressed in a kippah and a hanging David Star, was verbally and physically attacked as he walked through different parts of Malmö.

In Malmö and beyond, Swedish Jews have felt trapped between different streams of anti-Semitism – from both radicalized Muslim immigrants and neo-Nazi movements.

“Yes, you take a risk when you walk around with a Star of David,” Frederik Sieradzki, spokesman for the Jewish Community of Malmö, told the Jewish Telegraphic Agency in an interview ahead of the conference. In 2019, in the wake of a report on the city’s declining Jewish population, he told JTA that his Jewish community could completely disappear in 2029.

But Sieradzki struck a more optimistic note when he spoke at this week’s conference. Society, he said, is forging closer ties with Katrin Stjernfeldt Jammeh, Malmö’s mayor since 2013, as detailed plans to “create better conditions” for Jews in the city in an interview with Haaretz before the conference.

“We have worked with the Jewish community in several ways to map the problem, to create an understanding of the problem and today we have a long-term commitment. We are investing more than 2 million euros (2.3 million dollars) over four years, she says. “We also work within our school system, mapping the problem there as well and creating different ways to prevent prejudice.”

Sieradzki confirmed that the number of Jews in the city has halved in the last 20 years to about 500 members today. But he was careful to draw conclusions about cause and effect, emphasizing that the fear and experience of anti-Semitism is not the only factor driving the numbers down. Younger generations have better career opportunities in Stockholm, and also more ways to get involved in religious life; older people move to the cities where their children and grandchildren live; many older members of the Malmö community, among those who survived the Holocaust, die out over time.

Even those who decide to leave for Israel point to several reasons for their moves, he said. And Sieradzki has noticed that over the last two years the curve has leveled off and the number of members of the Community organization has remained largely unchanged. He takes it as a good sign.

During an event held before the conference to celebrate Jewish life in Sweden, Ronald Lauder, the head of the World Jewish Congress and a prominent Republican donor, spoke about another factor that has been a hotspot in the country for decades: the harsh criticism of Israel in it. Swedish society and the government.

Ronald Lauder speaks at a synagogue in Malmö, October 12, 2021. (World Jewish Congress / Shahar Azran)

In Malmö’s main synagogue, he expressed disappointment with the UN, where Sweden until recently had regularly signed resolutions designating Israel for international reprimand. Before this September, Israel and Sweden’s foreign ministers had not spoken to each other in seven years, a historical low in relationships.

The former mayor of Malmö, Ilmar Reepalu, was also known for his sharp anti-Israel stance and for blaming attacks on Jews for their support of the Jewish state.

“What if Sweden was under attack today?” he told the audience, which included Löfven, who defended Israel’s actions in armed conflicts with the Palestinians and others in its region.

Over a decade ago, Lauder wrote an op-ed there he strongly criticized Swedish politicians and the media for inspiring anti-Semitic attitudes to what he considered their overall Israel rhetoric. But his tone on Tuesday was dramatically different.

“Ten years ago, Sweden was not friendly at all, not only against Israel, but against the Jewish people,” Lauder told JTA. – We worked day and night. We watched and listened to what the Prime Minister and his government were doing. It was like a miracle … I will use Prime Minister Löfven as an example when I talk to people. I hope other countries will follow suit. ”

Löfven, who has led Sweden since 2014, has been clear that he wants to leave a legacy of defending Jews. He first visited the Auschwitz Museum in 2017 and on International Holocaust Remembrance Day 2019, he declared that Sweden would create a state museum to commemorate the Holocaust. In 2020, an allocation of over $ 1 million to the target was announced, and last month the government declared additional support of approximately $ 3.5 million to the National Historical Museums Agency, which is responsible for the task.

It has now been confirmed that the new museum will be located in Stockholm – even though opinions about that choice were divided among both Swedish Jews and researchers. Stockholm – Sweden’s most famous Justice among the nations, diplomat Raoul Wallenberg – and Malmö were the two most mentioned places.

Malmö, located in the southernmost part of Sweden, only 250 km across the Sound from Copenhagen, became a refuge for several thousand Danish Jews in 1943 and for another four thousand in 1945, when it took in evacuees from Bergen-Belsen concentration camps. Despite this, some feared that the history of the Holocaust would have been used to hide Malmö’s current problems. Others argued that contemporary issues made it more important to place a museum about Jews there.

Despite the gestures, 97-year-old Holocaust survivor Lea Gleitman, who has lived in Malmö since 1946, briefly summarized the feelings many Swedish Jews had about Malmö Conference, in an interview with Sweden’s national broadcaster SVT.

“It’s important, but only if it really leads to something. Sometimes it’s just talk, but we may have hope, she says.