A Brief Stop On the Road From Auschwitz (11 page)

So it’s a fair guess that there’s an element of relief behind that phrase “only four people of Jewish descent.” Particularly since the local paper, as far as this very issue is concerned, has a past. For a few years in the 1920s, when the
Stockholms Läns & Södertälje Tidning
is still two competing newspapers with the separate titles of
Stockholms Läns Tidning
and
Södertälje Tidning
, the editor of the
Södertälje Tidning
recurrently expresses strong opinions about “the Jews.” His name is Elof Eriksson, and he’s firmly convinced that “the Jews” run the world. And Södertälje too, presumably, even though at that juncture it would be difficult to find a single person “of Jewish origin” in the little town, and
even though concern for Södertälje is hardly Elof Eriksson’s most apparent interest. Eriksson’s strongest opinions are reserved for “the intolerable party tyranny” and “all the dark and irresponsible forces working to break our nation apart for personal gain.” In an editorial manifesto for the new year of 1923, the paper pins its hopes on Italy, “where a strong, popular nationalist movement—fascism—has enabled the land to cast off the heavy yoke laid on the people’s shoulders by party bigwigs.”

On the morning of November 22, 1922, the residents of Södertälje are able to read in their local newspaper that “there is a secret force in existence, a global government that leads and directs the political and economic development of the world over the people and governments.”

On September 15, 1924,
Södertälje Tidning
pronounces it “an incontrovertible fact that the fate of today’s world lies largely in the hands of the Jewish people, which directs and controls all capital and financial activity, whilst at the same time invisibly leading political and social, even purely revolutionary and ‘anti-capitalist’ movements among the people.”

Elof Eriksson has a palpable respect for the power of “the Jews,” pointing out that “those peoples who answered Jewish domination with desperate measures such as pogroms and racial persecution have suffered dire consequences … while … those nations that treated the Jews ‘well’ have been spared the graver misfortunes visited on the anti-Semitic peoples.” The anti-Semitic peoples thus afflicted are the Russians, Germans, Hungarians, and Poles. Readers of
Södertälje Tidning
are informed on the morning of St. Lucia’s day in December 1922 that the Poles for some reason have elected a “Jew president,” against whom, however, the anti-Semitic masses have boldly risen up “in the battle for the racial purity of the Polish republic.” Gabriel
Narutowicz is admittedly not a Jew, but he’s an atheist and a liberal and has been elected as the first president of a free Poland with the support of “Jews, Germans, and Ukrainians,” which explains why he’s murdered by an upright fascist five days after coming to power. This “eruption of the anti-Semitic, nationalist movement” is reported in
Södertälje Tidning
on December 18, 1922, when readers are also reminded that it’s time to renew their annual subscriptions, at a cost of a mere six kronor for “a free and independent newspaper, freely speaking the truth in all directions.”

I follow the newspaper’s truths into the new year. On November 9, 1923, the paper reports with satisfaction that Adolf Hitler has proclaimed a national dictatorship from a beer hall in Munich, and three days later, with irritation, that Hitler’s revolution has been betrayed by a brazen “Judas kiss.” Over the summer months, the front page features a list of “announced spa guests,” complete with their titles and hometowns. On July 14, the list includes among others deputy manager Carl Gullberg and his wife from Gävle, stockbroker W. Doysk from Stockholm, Miss Margaret Setréus from Södertälje, and Mrs. Beda Våhlin from Lidingö.

I try to understand what is meant by “announced spa guests” and why their names are published on the front page, just as I try to understand what Elof Eriksson is doing in Södertälje. Does he live in the town? If so, where? Does he take walks in the park by the public spa in the summertime, raising his hat to the announced spa guests as they stroll by in their linen suits and summer dresses? Does he ever cycle out to Havsbadet on a summer Sunday to sit under a parasol and see the boats passing by out in Hallfjärden Bay on their way to and from the world? Is he at all interested in the reopened canal, which is twenty-four
meters wide and six meters deep, and which passes beneath the newly opened, double-track railroad bridge, which is twenty-six meters high to allow for navigation and has a thirty-three-meter-long drawbridge span that can be opened for ships of a size never before seen in Södertälje?

Is he, in short, interested in the Place? As far as I can see, he writes very little about it. Admittedly, it’s impossible to tell who writes what in the
Södertälje Tidning
because the articles are unsigned, but it’s reasonable to assume that Elof Eriksson’s fixation with forces far beyond the horizons of Havsbadet, the canal, and the railroad bridge increasingly monopolizes his pen. In September 1925 he leaves the
Södertälje Tidning
and presumably Södertälje too, if he ever lived there. He now launches the
Nationen
(The Nation), which comes out in Stockholm and establishes itself as Sweden’s most crudely anti-Jewish publication. During the war, Eriksson goes to Nazi Germany to deliver lectures on Jewish world domination and publishes books in German about the powerful position of the Jews in Sweden, and should the Germans decide to invade Sweden, Elof Eriksson can put into their hands a detailed list of each and every Jew.

But not many of them in Södertälje, as we have seen.

On the other hand, Södertälje has nothing to do with Elof Eriksson’s crusade.

Södertälje just happens to lie in his way.

Just as in August 1947 it happens to lie in David Rosenberg’s way.

Maybe something should be said about this: the town’s tendency to lie in people’s way. It’s a long story, stretching back
to the Viking age, so it’s not really true that the Place has no history. The new cityscape below the railroad station is perhaps established in a historic backwoods, but not in a historic void. The new cityscape is located here because of the new railroad station, and the new railroad station is located here because ever since the Viking age, Södertälje has been a thoroughfare, situated on people’s way to somewhere else.

It’s not such a bad thing really, to be a place people have to pass through on their way to somewhere else. The Vikings, or whatever we like to call the people who passed through here a thousand years ago, were on their way from Constantinople to Birka, or from Sigtuna to Novgorod, or more generally on their way between the Baltic Sea and Lake Mälaren. Initially, this just happened to be where there was a shallow channel linking the two, and even when the land rose, turning Mälaren into an inland lake and the channel into an isthmus, the Vikings still gained time by dragging their keelless ships on rolling logs across the place first mentioned by name, Telge, in the travel writings of Adam of Bremen, a canon who passed through around 1070 on his way between the sees of Skara and Sigtuna. Perhaps he and his people made camp for the night, and perhaps he got the chance to observe the few people who lived here, and perhaps they contributed to Adam of Bremen’s positive memories of Swedish hospitality: “They count it as the most shameful of all things to refuse hospitality to travelers, indeed they engage in an eager race as to who is the most worthy to receive the guest. Then he is shown all possible kindness, and for as long as he wishes to stay his host will take him to the homes of one friend after another. This gracious trait is one of their customs.”

But it remains doubtful whether these particular memories stemmed from Adam of Bremen’s transit of Telge; it seems likely
that the few people living here made their living from passing travelers, and maybe even competed to make money from them, so they presumably had little reason to forge closer bonds with people who, when all was said and done, had only come to them with the aim of passing them by.

But it’s also a delicate business, being a thoroughfare. The element of passage can easily grow to be more important than the place itself. The place can invest its greatest effort in being a place of transit, while its greatest fear is that the traffic will cease and the place be called into question.

There’s nothing unusual, of course, about such a place, whose location is its raison d’être. Every town with a railroad station knows this, and it’s not unusual for such places to wither away once the through traffic finds other ways around: when a waterway is drained, a railroad line rerouted, or a new motorway built; or when new means of communication are adopted; or when the need to travel from one particular place to another tails off or disappears. What’s more, people who habitually pass through a place readily start to see themselves as its main characters and those who line their transit route as mere extras. Perhaps over time they even develop prejudices about people who prefer to stay put in the place they themselves prefer to pass through as smoothly as possible; they start to perceive these others as a bit less urbane, a bit less enterprising, a little slower, at worst a little more stupid. People and places that are shaped by being perpetually seen in passing can for the same reasons accept the idea that they don’t deserve much more.

Telge is born as a thoroughfare and shaped by its difficulties in remaining a thoroughfare over the centuries. So when that narrow neck of land grows wider, and the ships grow bigger, and the favored thoroughfare becomes the longer but more
navigable route via the rapidly expanding town of Stockholm, the dream of a canal is born.

When Södertälje canal is finally excavated and eventually opened in October 1819 and smaller vessels, after a break of about a thousand years, can again ply the waterway through Södertälje between the Baltic Sea and Lake Mälaren, the situation is very different. Building canals is in the spirit of the age, it’s true, and a canal through Södertälje is considered a national interest, but to Södertälje the canal proves to be no guarantee of prosperity and rehabilitation.

In fact, the canal’s a flop. It’s pretty to look at and stroll along, of course, and possibly an attraction for those passing through, but the number of boats using it is far too small, and its costs outstrip the income it generates. The main traffic through the town is no longer by boat between the sea and the lake, but by horse-drawn carts and coaches, and before long by railroad, and in a distant future by car, between Stockholm and the world, that is, from one bank of the canal to the other. The wider and deeper the canal is dug, the wider and higher the bridge over the canal must be built, in order for one thoroughfare not to block the other.

As time goes by, it’s no longer self-evident that the quickest route between Stockholm and the world must of necessity pass through Södertälje. New bridges and modes of conveyance open up new options for circumventing the pigs and the biscuit sellers of the town center and creating a straighter and quicker thoroughfare. Södertälje is perfectly placed for the shortest route by water between the Baltic Sea and the inner reaches of Lake Mälaren, but not for the shortest overland route between Stockholm and the world, which becomes obvious when it’s time to put a new railroad line over the new canal and to build a new railroad bridge, and a straightening and shortening of the passage
can be considered. The straightest route between Stockholm and the world hereby turns out to pass several kilometers south of Södertälje, with the result that the railroad station in Södertälje is built on the southern fringes of Näset and is given the name Södertälje Södra, which means Södertälje South. To get to the station that is given the name Södertälje Central and is located in the center of town, you must switch trains in Södertälje Södra.

Along the shortest and quickest rail route between Stockholm and the world, Södertälje becomes a railroad station at the edge of town, with a single spur to the town center.

In due order, then, the foundations for the future cityscape on the southern fringes of Näset are inaugurated: the railroad bridge, the railroad station, and the widened and deepened canal. On October 19, 1921, the first train runs on the new railroad bridge over the new canal to the new station at Södertälje Södra, where the pines are still standing below Platform 1.

This is not quite how it was envisaged, so no one knows as yet what to do with the pines. It was envisaged that the railroad would run somewhere else and the pines would be replaced by a social vision, but because it shortens the trip between Stockholm and the world by two minutes, Södertälje must exchange big dreams for petty adaptations, which become a definitive part of the place’s history in the summer of 1943, when ax blows echo amid the heavily falling pines and the new, three-story yellow-and-gray apartment blocks are set out in rows along the stone-paved boulevard below the railroad and a cityscape of sorts rises up at a furious pace in the enclosed enclave between the canal, the railroad embankment, and the harbor.