A neo-Nazi organization active in Sweden has been disrupting lectures from Holocaust survivors throughout the country, but the police are refusing to provide security at the locations of such talks, according to Israel’s top envoy to the Nordic country.

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Ambassador Isaac Bachman, who has 29 years’ experience with the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, wrote of this situation in a diplomatic cable to the MFA in Jerusalem.

The neo-Nazi Nordic Resistance Movement is known in Sweden for its extremely provocative activities, despite it being a small organization with no more than 200 activists.

Members of the Nordic Resistance Movement march in Sweden

It has a clearly racist and anti-Semitic ideology, and its members make sure to plan their activities to cause the most friction and receive the highest amount of media coverage.

As one would expect from such an organization, the Nordic Resistance Movement denies the Holocaust and deems the eyewitness accounts of its few remaining survivors to be preposterous.

As part of their campaign to interrupt lectures by survivors, they went to a talk given three weeks ago by a Holocaust survivor who has lived in Sweden for decades and who frequently shares his personal experiences with the public.

Members of the organization protested outside the hall where he was speaking and distributed flyers to attendees that spread their Holocaust-denying ideology. The “informational materials” claimed that lecture being given was entirely bogus. The ensuing verbal confrontations deteriorated into a physical brawl.

Describing the event in his telegram, the ambassador wrote, “This incident is one of similar others in which the organization interferes with the running of lectures being given by Holocaust survivors…

“A similar and aggressive disturbance took place last April in another city in which the Holocaust survivor’s lecture barely continued, in spite of members of the neo-Nazi organization entering and interfering during. And all this (took place) after the police were called to the location.”

Due to such talks having become targets for provocation, the schools that organize them have tried to obtain security from the police. So far, they have been unsuccessful. Bachman wrote that the police refuse to provide security at the events because the member of the Nordic Resistance Movement “do not yet appear to innately provoke violence.”

(Translated and edited by J. Herzog)