Some Jewish parents in Umea were said to be too scared to send their children to school
A Jewish community association in northern Sweden has decided to close following a series of far-right threats, seven years since it opened.
Their centre in the town of Umea was targeted with swastikas and daubed with messages like “we know where you live”, and a car was vandalised, TV said.
Local members said the authorities had been unable to provide enough security.
Community spokeswoman Carinne Sjoberg said some people no longer dared to come to the centre.
She told Swedish broadcaster SVT that too much had happened recently that meant Jewish parents did not feel safe sending their children to school.
“Our children shouldn’t have to live in a world where they should be ashamed of what they are,” she said. It was like stepping into her parents’ shoes in the 1930s, she told Swedish radio.
Community leaders say the situation for Jews in some Swedish towns is difficult.
Umea also hit the headlines two years ago when a march was held to mark the anniversary of Kristallnacht, the outbreak of mass violence against Jews in Nazi Germany in 1938. The town’s Jewish community was not invited.
“We’ve had problems with neo-Nazis in Gothenburg and Umea, but in other cities like Stockholm we feel safer,” said Isak Reichel, secretary general of Sweden’s central council of Jewish communities.
For Jews in the southern city of Malmo the threat was mostly from Islamist groups, he told the BBC.
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