And in the Vienna Woods the Trees Remain
The Heartbreaking True Story of a Family Torn Apart by War
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4.0 • 1 Rating
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- $2.99
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- $2.99
Publisher Description
Named a Best Book of the Year by Kirkus Reviews and a Notable Translated Book of the Year by World Literature Today
Winner of the August Prize, the story of the complicated long-distance relationship between a Jewish child and his forlorn Viennese parents after he was sent to Sweden in 1939, and the unexpected friendship the boy developed with the future founder of IKEA, a Nazi activist.
Otto Ullmann, a Jewish boy, was sent from Austria to Sweden right before the outbreak of World War II. Despite the huge Swedish resistance to Jewish refugees, thirteen-year-old Otto was granted permission to enter the country—all in accordance with the Swedish archbishop’s secret plan to save Jews on condition that they convert to Christianity. Otto found work at the Kamprad family’s farm in the province of Småland and there became close friends with Ingvar Kamprad, who would grow up to be the founder of IKEA. At the same time, however, Ingvar was actively engaged in Nazi organizations and a great supporter of the fascist Per Engdahl. Meanwhile, Otto’s parents remained trapped in Vienna, and the last letters he received were sent from Theresienstadt.
With thorough research, including personal files initiated by the predecessor to today’s Swedish Security Service (SÄPO) and more than 500 letters, Elisabeth Åsbrink illustrates how Swedish society was infused with anti-Semitism, and how families are shattered by war and asylum politics.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
Journalist sbrink (1947: Where Now Begins) sets one family's Holocaust tragedy against the legacy of WWII in Sweden in this multilayered history based on hundreds of letters between a young refugee and his parents back in Vienna. Opening with Hitler's 1938 annexation of Austria, sbrink documents the closing of the Swedish border to "non-Aryan" refugees, and efforts by the Church of Sweden to help Jewish converts to Christianity escape Nazi Germany. In 1939, Josef and Elise Ullmann arranged for their only son, Otto, to be baptized and sent to a children's home in Sweden until they could be reunited. sbrink quotes extensively from the family's correspondence, revealing Otto's homesickness and his parents' anguish as they're denied emigration papers, evicted from their home, and deported to the Theresienstadt Ghetto. Meanwhile, Otto gets placed on a farm owned by the father of future IKEA founder Ingvar Kamprad. sbrink's investigation into Kamprad's pro-Nazi activities during the same period he befriended and worked alongside Otto raises more questions than it answers, though she carefully documents the influence of anti-Semitism and xenophobia on Sweden's immigration policies. This devastating account has the lyricism and complexity of a finely wrought novel.
