The Swedish Connection is a recent Swedish docudrama, now available on Netflix, about the efforts of a team of Swedish public servants – the Legal Department of the Foreign Affairs Ministry – to save European Jews from the Holocaust. The title of the film signals the bureaucrats’ strategy, which was to allow European Jews who could show any kind of “connection” to Sweden, which was officially neutral, to find refuge there.

The Legal Department is headed by the self-effacing Gosta Engzell, whom his boss, Cabinet Secretary Stefan Soderstrom, describes as a nobody. Initially, the Legal Department ignores or slow-walks thousands of requests by European Jews to emigrate to Sweden. Engzell changes his position in 1942 because he begins to hear rumours about the Nazi’s Final Solution. In addition, a beautiful and charismatic young German woman, Rut Vogl, joins the department, and begins to shame her colleagues, especially Engzell, into finding ways to admit Jews. There is no hint of romance between Vogl and any of her colleagues, but her advocacy is critical. (We learn later in the movie about Vogl’s background.)

Lessons from Yes Minister

Engzell, Vogl, and their colleagues in the Legal Department launch a bureaucratic war to permit as many Jews as possible to enter Sweden. Bureaucratic warfare is a necessity. Cabinet Secretary Soderstrom is certain the Nazis will win the war and does not want to anger the new hegemon. The politicians, Foreign Minister Christian Gunther and Prime Minister Per Hansson, want to see which way the wind is blowing before deciding whether to support Soderstrom or Engzell. The Nazi Government is aware of what the Legal Department is doing and, while respecting Swedish sovereignty, trying to stop them.

The movie has shades of Yes Minister, the classic British comedy about what it calls “the struggle between the political will and the administrative won’t.” In this case, though, it was the administrative will versus the political won’t. Some of the bureaucratic techniques employed by Engzell and his colleagues include:

• Admitting Jews to Sweden in a case in which their rationale is weak, thereby setting a precedent to facilitate the admission of Jews who have stronger cases
• Delaying the implementation of a political order to stop admitting Jews by questioning whether it would also apply to partial Jews and, if so, what percentage Jewish (one half? one quarter?)
• Leaking stories about the concentration camps in the media, thereby creating sympathy for Jewish refugees and building support for admitting them
• Finding financial support for Jewish immigrants, a requirement imposed on the Jewish community, from a sympathetic colleague in the Swedish central bank (Dag Hammarskjold, “before he was famous” the film tells us), an organization with unique financial powers
• Engzell taking advantage of his wife’s aristocratic background to resist a demotion to the Swedish Embassy in Moscow, a diplomatic Siberia.

The bureaucratic maneuvering undertaken by Engzell and his department is quite subtle, even for people well-versed in the ways of bureaucracy. I watched the movie a second time to make sure that I caught all the nuances of bureaucratic warfare.

Not Schindler’s List

Stephen Spielberg’s Schindler’s List is the classic movie about a righteous Gentile saving Jews from the Holocaust. It is emotionally compelling in dealing with the severity and consequence of the issue at stake. Therese Ahlbeck and Marcus Olssion, who wrote and directed The Swedish Connection, chose a very different tone. The film starts almost as a comedy, with animation and characters speaking directly to the viewer. Throughout, ironic or humorous commentaries are flashed on the screen to illustrate plot points (such as “Dag Hammarskjold Before He Was Famous”, and the definition of a legal precedent). The musical score draws on upbeat pop music from the period in which the film was set, two notable examples being “Papa Loves Mambo” and “Accentuate the Positive.”

As the movie goes on, the tone shifts to the ensemble and caper genres, in which the good guys (Engzell, Vogl, and several mid-level public servants) brainstorm and work together to outwit the bad guys (Soderstrom and the Nazis). Near the end, there is an emotionally powerful moment that evokes Dunkirk (and Dunkirk). When the Germans begin to round up Danish Jews, we see a flotilla of small boats under cover of darkness bringing Jews ashore in Sweden. Some viewers may find the tone of The Swedish Connection off-putting or even offensive compared to the high seriousness and emotion of Schindler’s List. I don’t share that assessment.

After the war, Gosta Engzell carried on with his career, serving as Envoy in Poland and then a decade as Ambassador to Finland. Though he lived to 100, he did not speak or write about his work during the war. But what he did was immensely important. For example, we learn at the end of the film that he inspired and facilitated Raoul Wallenberg in his efforts to save Hungarian Jews. Altogether, Engzell and his colleagues in the Legal Department were responsible for saving at least 30,000 Jews. Though Engzell chose to remain silent, this film finally tells his story.