The founder of the Swedenbased worldwide chain of furniture stores, IKEA, was
identified as a Nazi by the Swedish Security Service in 1943 during World War
II, a new book reveals, according to the Stockholm News website.
Och i
Wienerwald står träden kvar (And in Wienerwald the Trees Remain) by the author
Elisabeth Åsbrink tells of how Ingvar Kamprad, a global business leader and one
of the richest men in the world, had a personal file set up with Swedish
intelligence when he was 17 years old in the Swedish province of
Småland.
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Opinion: Can universities study anti-Semitism honestly?According to Kamprad’s file with Swedish intelligence, he
devoted much time and energy into recruiting new members to the Nazi
party.
Kamprad, whose Nazi sympathies became known to the public in the
1990s, had previously written off the troubling period of his life as a passing
instance of “teenage confusion.” He stated that he had been more of a fascist
than a Nazi, attracted by the ideology’s social element.
However, the
book describes how Kamprad’s contacts with the far-right New Swedish Movement
and their leader Per Engdahl continued long after the conclusion of WWII, even
when the full extent of the Holocaust became known to the world.
Engdahl
wrote in 1944 that Adolf Hitler was “Europe’s savior.”
The Stockholm News
also quoted the New Swedish Movement leader as saying “the Jews are an alien
element in the Western public body” and that “an anti-communist movement can
never reach its goal if it’s not also anti-Semitic."