A Swedish saviour
Unknown to this Netflix subscriber, The Swedish Connection (Swedish: Den svenska länken) is the story of the heroic activities of a Swedish bureaucrat who is credited with rescuing 100,000 Jews during WWII.
Coming within a week of seeing the wonderful Sydney Opera House one-man performance by Anton Berezin of the dramatisation of Eddie Jaku’s best-seller “The Happiest Man on Earth” and in the midst of the Royal Commission into Antisemitism, watching Netflix’s movie “The Swedish Connection” brought to mind another astonishing action by one person who could not let evil go unchallenged.
Ben Ferencz was the driving force behind the establishment of the International Criminal Court and the subject of the movie “A Man Can Make a Difference”. That he would now be rolling in his grave at the perversion of his dream is irrelevant. Those four events have coalesced to reinforce the importance of each of us using whatever influence, ability, contacts, and means at our disposal to rectify what we see as wrong.
“The Swedish Connection” is a recently released World War II drama film about Swedish foreign ministry bureaucrat Gösta Engzell, who develops and executes covert plans to rescue European Jewish refugees by using legal loopholes and paperwork. Sweden was officially neutral, albeit capitulating to German demands and engaging in press censorship to avoid angering Germany. Gösta Engzell , a mid-level bureaucrat, worked in a basement. His work involved processing large quantities of asylum requests from Jews wanting to enter Sweden. Engzell and his secretary, Rut Vogl, a German citizen residing in Stockholm, learnt of the Final Solution and of the fate of Danish Jews. The movie relates the machinations they undertake to eventually save in excess of 100,000 Jewish people. The movie also involves Dag Hammerskold and Raoul Wallenberg and how they became involved in saving European Jews.
The film had its world premiere at the Göteborg Film Festival in January 2026 and has been streamed on Netflix from February.
The review program “Rotten Tomatoes” rates it at 84%, describing it as “this little-known true story, a Swedish bureaucrat becomes an unlikely war hero as he attempts to save Jewish lives during the darkest days of WWII.”
Highly recommended
