Nobody knows why the Nazis thought that they could kill millions of Jews in complete secrecy; however, for some time they succeeded. The process of mass murder had been in operation for several months before any information about it managed to break through the web of Gestapo surveillance. Certainly some signals penetrated earlier, but they were vague and unconfirmed, and seemingly too fantas­tic, and they were easily drowned out in the clamour of war information.

But on 2 June 1942 the BBC informed the world that the Germans 'are engaged in killing the Jewish population on an unbelievable scale', and broadcast news of the genocide and of the methods of murder. A week later, on 9 June, Polish prime min­ister and commander-in-chief General Władysław Sikorski spoke about it even more emphatically. In his speech broadcast by the BBC he said:

The Jewish population in Poland is condemned to death in accordance with the slogan 'Slaughter all Jews, no matter how the war ends', Already this year tens of thousands of Jews have been slaughtered in Lublin, Vilna, L'viv, Stanislav, Rzeszów, and Miechów. In ghettos people are starved to death, executed en masse; even people ill with typhus are shot . . . The Polish government brings these facts to the attention of the Allied governments and to the opinion of the world. . . The perpetrators of these crimes must be held responsible . . . Only the prospect of just punishment and retaliation wherever possible can stop the fury of the German bandits.[1]

How was it that detailed and believable information about the Holocaust eventu­ally got out to the world despite the tight police cordon? Nobody could leave Germany without permission, and this was given only to people of whose discretion the Reich was certain. Of course, there was the work of intelligence services ­Polish, Czechoslovak, British, American, Soviet, and others-but they basically limited themselves to answering the questions they were asked. And they were not asked about the fate of the millions of Jews under German occupation. Even if sporadic news of hecatombs came via intelligence operators, it did not arouse interest-perhaps because, among the world´s powerful, few people were sympa­thetic towards Jews. The BBC's and Sikorski's pronouncements broke the wall of silence. Sikorski was at that time the only statesman who stood up for the victim of the genocide-despite having been known beforehand for his rather unsympa­thetic attitude towards Polish Jews.

We should assume that the BBC management and the Polish government must have deliberated seriously before deciding to accuse Germany of genocide. In every war truth is the first victim. The experiences of the comparatively recent First World War, when both sides competed in a propaganda war, not only exposing actual crimes, but also fabricating many, were still fresh in people's minds. Thus, they must have pondered in London over whether their information was, if not false, at least exaggerated. We may imagine the consequences if it were found that the accusations against Germany were mere war propaganda. The world had never before encountered crime on this scale. Certainly, during the First World War Turks had murdered hundreds of thousands of Armenians, but the fact that they were Turks, and it was not in Europe, meant that the tragedy was not taken as seri­ously as it should have been. What the BBC and Sikorski described was beyond imagination. An activist of the Polish Socialist Party (PPS) and minister (of infor­mation!) in the Polish government in London, Adam Pragier, remembers that in the summer of 1942 he met another PPS politician, Adam Ciolkosz, who was hurrying with information received from Poland on which Sikorski's statements we re based. Ciolkosz delivered it to the chairman of the Labour Party: 'It to Id of about 700,000 Jews who perished at the hands of the Germans. I myself did not believe that number could be accurate. I told Ciołkosz, "Propaganda, in order to be effective, must have some relation to the truth, or at least to likelihood. How can one believe 700,000 people were killed?"[2]

Pragier, an experienced politician, suggested 'editing' the description and an­nouncing to the world that the Germans had murdered 7,000 Jews, also a horrible number. Ciołkosz, however, would not give in to the suggestion; he trusted the source he was relying upon and knew personally the authors of the information. There must have been very strong justification if the BBC and the Polish govern­ment decided to present the case the way they did.

From the autumn of 1941 the Polish government was being alerted that Germans were killing wholesale the Jews of the Soviet territories which Germany had in­vaded that summer and which had belonged to Poland until 1939. These acts, how­ever, we re not perceived as genocide. Brutality is part of every war, and war boils down to murdering people; every war legalizes killing in one way or another.

  The murders in the eastern part of the Polish republic were, it appears, regarded as more or less natural atrocities of war, or as a settling of accounts for the pro-Soviet stance of a section of the Jewish community-justified or unjustified, depending on one's analysis. This meant that the German atrocities were understood in the same way as the murder of communists, which, at the time, was not commonly considered such a terrible crime.

In any case, in June 1942 one of the greatest secrets of the Third Reich had been uncovered, and the crimes were called by their name. Much time had to pass before the grim knowledge of the Nazi reality penetrated the public consciousness, but the revelations of the BBC and Sikorski were a breakthrough. Af ter June 1942 the powerful of this world could no longer be exonerated on the basis of ignorance.

What prompted the BBC and Sikorski in June 1942 was a document that had just reached London known among historians as the 'Second Letter of the Bund'. Addressed to the government of the Polish republic in London and date d II May 1942, the letter asserted that it was not possible any more to talk of cruelty, or even of murder, but of purposeful, premeditated genocide. Its authors wrote:

From the first day of the Russian-German war the Germans embarked on the extermination of the Jewish population on Polish territory, using for this work Ukrainians and Lithuanian policemen. . . . Men between 14 and 60 have been gathered together, in squares or in cem­eteries, and slaughtered there-shot with bullets or blown up with grenades. . . . Children in orphanages, the elderly in nursing homes, the sick in hospitals have been executed, women killed in the streets. . . . In L'viv 30,000 Jews were-murdered; in Stanislav, 15,000; in Ternopil, 5,000; in Zolochiv, 2,000; in Berezhany, 4,00o-a town formerly inhabited by 18,000 Jews now houses 1,700. The same happened in Zboriv, Kolomyia, Stryi, Sambir, Drohobych, Zbarazh, Peremyshliany, Kuty, Sniatyn, Zalishchyky, Brody, Przemysl, Rava Ruska, etc. . . . In November-December the murder of Jews also started in the Polish areas annexed by the Reich, the so-called Warthegau. These murders were performed by gassing, which took place in the village of Chelmno, twelve kilometres from Kolo, in the Kolo district. . . . In February 1942 the extermination of Jews began in the so-called General Government. It started in Tarnów, Radom. . . In March the mass expulsion of the Jews began in Lublin . . .

Though decades have passed, the text is still depressing. The letter provides a horrifyingly precise chronicle and detailed description. In no way does it exaggerate; in fact great care was taken to present the details in an irrefutable way. The authors draw the only possible conclusion, then repeated by Sikorski, that the actions of the Nazis were not conventional war cruelties, nor did they fit into the framework of traditional antisemitism or even pogroms:

The facts listed above indicate that the criminal German government has started the realiza­tion of Hitler's proclamation that in the last five minutes of the war, no matter what its out­come, he will have murdered all the Jews in Europe. We firmly believe that in due time Hitlerite Germany will pay the appropriate penalty for its horrors and brutality. But for the Jewish population that suffers an unheard-of Gehenna this is not sufficient comfort. Millions of Polish citizens of Jewish nationality face emmediate destruction. Therefore, we appeal to the Polish government, the caretaker and the representative of all people living on Polish soil, to take immediate steps in order to prevent the destruction of Polish Jewry.[3]

The letter was written during the German occupation. The government of the Polish republic was in London, as was, of course, the BBC. The distance between the sender and the recipient of the letter was enormous. How then, to use the Jewish saying, did 'the fish break through the net'? To say that Polish Jews were ill prepared for the war is an understatement. They had no central authority, no means of communication, no radio transmitter. They did not even have representa­tion in the Polish resistance.

How, then, did the news get through? The editors of the 'Second Letter of the Bund' stated that it was sent along the courier routes of the Polish underground on 21 May 1942, which is correct but incomplete: the courier routes of the Polish underground in this case had a face and a name-but they were not Polish. Nor was the courier Jewish, nor British, nor Russian. He was a Swede, and he waged his own private war against Nazism.

Let us try to identify him. 'Wrzos' (Cyryl Ratajski), the representative (delegate) of the Polish government in London in occupied Poland, sent the following coded radio message:

I report that on 2 I May I dispatched through Hjalmar the mail that contains the current correspondence, the materials from the Department of War Liquidation, and the telegrams not sent before, no. 49 to no. 70 inclusive, except nos. 57,62,65,68, which are being sent via the Triangle because of technical problems. After Hjalmar's arrival in Stockholm pleas e confirm immediately. Please send us as many quartzes as possible, at the first opportunity, and confirm the amount by telegram.

Quartzes are dollars, the Triangle is Stronnictwo Ludowe ('the Peasant Party'), and Hjalmar is the alias of the courier. The courier also had another alias, Szirer. He used 'Hjalmar' in his contact with the office of the representative and 'Szirer' with the Armia Krajowa (Home Army, AK). That was the reason why five days earlier, on 16 May, the commander-in-chief of the AK, General Rowecki, complained about couriers carrying other organizations' mail. 'Recently, for example, along with our mail, Szirer has also taken the mail [of the Peasant Party]. The Swedes tak e a very irregular route; still, they are fast and reliable and moreover can be entrusted with large deliveries. We cannot allow them to be exposed.'[4]

Rowecki probably did not know that Szirer-Hjalmar would be carrying the letter from the Bund, which did indeed, as he warned, expose that precious Swedish route, but this is a subject for another article. It is worth noting, however, that Rowecki's own report was also carried from Warsaw by the mysterious Szirer.

It is time now to reveal the name of the mysterious courier. Szirer, or Hjalmar, was a little-known Swede, completely forgotten in his homeland, unknown to the Jews and the Poles, and unrecognized by most historians. As I said, he conducted his own private war against Nazism. His name was Sven Norrman. Glory to him for ever.[5]

Norrman (1892-1979) was an engineer. From 1912 he work ed for the electronic corporation ASEA (now ASEA-Brown Boveri, ABB), linked with the Stockholm Enskilda Bank (now Skandinaviska Enskilda Banken, SEB), which was part of the business empire of the Wallenbergs. Until 1917 Norrman was the ASEA represen­tative in Russia. After the revolution he had to leave the country, and in search of an assignment for himself he turned his attention to Poland, which he argued could fill the gap left by the collapse of the Russian mark et. But it was not until 1925 that he established the Polish ASEA branch Polskie Towarzystwo Elektryczne ASEA (PTE). In 1930 it was turned into a joint-stock company with 1,625,000 zlotys' capita!. In 1936, 80 per cent of the company's shares were in Polish hands. The board of directors included the former president of Warsaw Piotr Drzewiecki, the former minister Czesław Klarner, and well-known lawyer Aleksander Lednicki. Norrman was the chief executive officer. PTE was not the only Wallenberg com­pany in Poland; the Wallenbergs were also involved in Polish telephones, the match monopoly, and several smaller enterprises.

In Warsaw Norrman learned Polish, made friends-and had love affairs, hunted, attended balls, collected Polish art. His professional activity left its imprint in Poland, where PTE became the main supplier of complex generators. Within four­teen years it had built a locomotive factory in Chrzanów and several power plants, and installed seventy turbines. It also produced engines and transformers. Its economic results were less impressive: PTE was making losses, which in 1937 caused the buy-out of all shares by ASEA while leaving the principal shareholders on die board.

Most Swedes had left Warsaw in the summer of 1939 before the war began, but Norrman stayed. He slept in the bunker of the Swedish embassy at 3 Bagatela Street, and was evacuated together with the remnants of the Swedish community on 21 September.[6]

With the fall of Poland, Swedish property was left abandoned. To take care of it, someone needed to be on the spot. Therefore, shortly after the surrender of Warsaw, at a meeting at Marcus Wallenberg' s home, the decision was made to return to the areas occupied by the Germans; there was no talk of going back to those areas taken over by the USSR. Those present at the meeting were aware that the move would be difficult: the management would have to take a stand either for or against the occupying power, and for or against the conquered population. Any support for the Poles, or, even more, for the Jews, would anger the Germans, whereas good relations would require collaboration. The managers demanded guidelines. Norr­man remembered in particular that Wallenberg said, 'I don't know how to proceed in such abnormal circumstances, but we must act so as to be able to return after the war with our heads held high.' While Wallenberg implied that the war had not ended with the conquest of Poland, he might not have realized what he was inciting his subordinates to do or how his directive would be interpreted.

Norrman returned to Warsaw with a few other Swedes in mid-October. Those who returned supposedly had no illusions: they knew the city well, having been there during the siege, and none of them was an admirer of the  Nazis; nevertheless, they were surprised. Even more shocking than the destroyed city was their contact with the Nazis. Decades later Norrman's face froze when he talked about his first encounter with the reality of the occupation. When the train from Berlin arrived at the burned-down main station, a German official greeted them with a speech in a specially decorated hall. He lectured them on the barbarism of the Poles and the grace of the Fiihrer, and said that the fate of Warsaw would be the lot of all who resisted Germany's triumphant progress.

Probably Norrman set the strategy for PTE at once. In a report for the ASEA chairmanship written in 1969 he stated that he had found the factory in Warsaw burned down, but the personnel had managed to escape. The buildings were repaired without the German authorities being asked permission, and the factory was put back in operation but with production as low as possible-just enough to protect the work ers and provide them with the means of survival.

It is likely that on the very day after his arrival Norrman went to Wlodawek, where PTE was installing turbines. He probably also had a personal reason for going. He took photographs of the Jews with yellow patches on their backs, and miserable shops with 'Jude' painted on the windows. After returning to Warsaw he met a friend: the engineer Piotr Drzewiecki (1865-1944), a well-known personality in the capital. Drzewiecki, who was Warsaw's president between 1917 and 1921, was an industrialist and organizer. He was also an economist and a member of the board of PTE. Many years later Norrman told me: 'Drzewiecki started explaining to me that this war was different from all previous wars; the stakes were indeed the fate of Europe and the world, and it was a war involving not only states and armies, but nations as a whole.' Drzewiecki was carefully prepared for the conversation, but there was no need to argue his case: the two men were in accord, especially after the shock of Norrman's experiences in Warsaw and Wlodawek. I tried to find out how his views had developed, but by the 1970S hindsight had distorted our previous consciousness: 'You know what the Nazis were like: what they wanted, what they did, I don't need to explain it to you!' In any case, after he had talk ed to Drzewiecki, Norrman believed that he had to join the struggle: 'You don't need to convince me.' he said, 'I am ready.' The next day he took a train to Berlin and from there flew to Stockholm. He carried a letter to Ignacy Jan Paderewski, who lived in Switzerland. His alliance with the resistance had begun.

An employee of PTE, bookkeeper Tadeusz Radzyński, described one aspect of this alliance:

At the end of September 1939 director Norrman left Poland and only visited every two or three months, each time having obtained a visa from the General Government in Krakow. On these visits Norrman, who shied away from no risk, initiated the establishment of an underground cell whose task was to inform the world about the situation in occupied Poland. The division of duties was such that materials to be carried by this courageous Swede were gathered beforehand bf other participants: engineer Brzuzek, engineer Jaroszyński, engin­eer H. Wysocki, H. Raczyński, and this author. For example, my part included getting hold of underground publications. H. Raczyński provided photographs of act s of German bestiality and attacks by resistance fighters on military targets (to that end he had obtained a certificate as a street photographer).[7]

Norrman, to whom I showed Radzyński's account, claimed that it was not he who created the cell within PTE, but his deputy, the engineer Aleksander Brzuzek, who had also initiated the collection of materials. Norrman never asked who gathered the materials, but he certainly knew that it was don e by his subordinates. His obser­vation of cases of persecution among the population amounted to helping the Jews, especially the employees of PTE. His return to Warsaw had inspired his group to create the organization, collect materials, and smuggle them abroad. These were not unimportant materials, since everything seems to indicate that for a time the PTE materials were the basis of information for the Polish government, first in Paris and then in London.

Norrman's activities were not limited to carrying the materials gathered by PTE employees. He gave regular support to Jewish employees of PTE hiding on the 'Aryan' side; to those who were in the ghetto he sent help through people who knew how to slip into the ghetto. In the summer of 1972 I talked in London with the engineer Mieczyslaw Thugutt, who had been the representative of the Polish gov­ernment in Stockholm responsible for communication with Poland. At one point Thugutt took down from a bookshelf volumes of Sprawozdania sytuacyjne z kraju ('Reports on the Situation in the Country') published by the Polish government during the war. 'All the reports published here up to May 1942 were carried out of the country by Sven Norrman', he said. Concerned about exaggeration, lasked: 'Absolutely all of them?' 'Yes, literally all, I checked it', he replied. Sprawozdania sytuacyjne were written by people with differing political viewpoints, yet they con­tained none of the aggressive antisemitism which was so common in Polish political life before 1939, and which had by no means disappeared during the occupation. The rep orts that comprised the Sprarvozdania were first-hand accounts of the torture and starvation of Jews overcrowded in the ghettos and, from the autumn of 1941, of the mass executions in the east.

Sven Norrman was not the only Swede working with the underground. Others included the procurement clerk at PTE, Goest Gustafsson (who was the chief courier for the AK), the chief executive of the match monopoly, Carl Herslow, and the chief executive of PASTA, Sigge Haeggberg. Documents indicate, however, that Norrman carried the greatest burden. He brought money for the resistance, the basis for the survival of its people as weIl as for saving the endangered ones. I did not manage to establish how much money he brought in, but there were hundreds of thousands of dollars. Incidentally, the director of finances in the office of the representative was Czesław Klarner; it is likely that his acquaintance with Norrman had influenced Klarner's nomination since these finances consisted in large part of the money smuggled in by Norrman.

With time the initial contacts with the group in PTE expanded to include con­tacts with the office of the representative. Contacts with the AK came later, around the summer of 1941, or so it appears from my conversation of August 1974 with its chief of staff, General Tadeusz Pełczynski, who was one of the liaisons who sub­mitted to Norrman the reports to be carried out and who received dollars from him.

Norrman did not reveal his real opinions, either in occupied Poland or in Sweden. He pretended to be loyal towards Germany, and he did it so well, I was told by the Swedish actress Elna Gistedt, who stayed in Warsaw during the war, that he was considered a sympathizer with Germany and with Nazism (though, as we talked, it was clear that Norrman was not happy about this). This notion of his being a Nazi sympathizer had also become firm within British intelligence in Sweden. They decided to place him under surveillance, which he related to me not without pride. This surveillance lasted until summer 1942, when Norrman's role was revealed. But pretending has its limits. Norrman partied with German dig­nitaries and officers, but he refused to participate in hunting. He told them that he could not hunt and did not wish to. It was a lie: he liked hunting, but in the circum­stances of the occupation, in order not to use arms alongside the Germans, he denied himself this hobby.

One important factor helped Norrman's activity: the Wallenbergs assigned him to talks with Albert Speer. The issue was Swedish technology for gas-generated ear engines. Facing shortages of liquid fuels, the Germans were particularly interested in the idea. This provided Norrman with the status of a privileged person and, as a result, with the right of practically unrestricted entrance to and exit from Germany, including the occupied territories.

I met Norrman in the spring of 1971, when I first received documents about the role of Swedish entrepreneurs in Warsaw in the struggle against Nazism. In these documents the name of Sven Norrman came up many times. I was a newcomer to Sweden, and I did not know how to find him. On a hunch, a friend of mine started to look in the Stockholm phone book. We found a Sven Norrman, and I called him.

My conversations with Norrman prompted me to write about the Swedes who during the Second World War took the side of the murdered, the oppressed, and the fighters for freedom and humanity. In 1979 I published in Uppsala a book en­titled The Swedish Contribution to the Polish Resistance Movement, 1939-I942. After several years I decided to return to these issues, and on renewed reading of the material, I found that many problems appeared in a new light.

Norrman told me that Jewish representatives had contacted him in 1942. They delivered materials to him about the situation of the Jews, asking him to pass them on to London. He wanted to see for himself whether what he had been to Id was exaggerated, so he slipped in to the ghetto. He walked through some streets and took a few photographs, but he was thrown out by a Jewish policeman. "'It could end in disaster", he told me, but it didn't', Norrman recounted. The shock of his experience in the ghetto was still traumatic for Norrman, despite the thirty years that had passed. He wanted me not to ask him about it: he couldn't talk. He had Jewish business partners, friends, people to whom he was close; but I believe that even without these personal reasons he would have been shocked. He took the rep orts and delivered them to the Polish government in London. He knew that his photographs would be included in the newsreels shown in British and American cinemas, and that they would alert the world if the world wanted to know. Norrman was convinced that he had some prints of the ghetto photographs at home. We searched his house and found photographs taken in the autumn of 1939 in Warsaw and Włocławek,[8] but we couldn't find those from the ghetto; nor could they be found by his heirs, who inherited his estate in 1979.

I was interested in what the Jewish materials were, who gave them to him, and when and how the contact had been established - but Norrman, who was now old and frail, could not recall all of the story, only that they were Jews; they did not introduce themselves by name. He did not remember how the contact had been established, nor did he remember the date of his excursion to the ghetto, just that it was during the liquidation.

What strikes me is that a few months after the initial contact, in the autumn of 1942, when Jan Kozielewski-Karski was preparing for his trip to London and the United States as emissary of the resistance movement, the Jewish representatives told him that in the West his revelations would be met with disbelief, and because oj that it was crucial that he should be able to say that he had seen the fate of the Jews with his own eyes. Karski was instructed by the Bundists, and we can assume that they were the same people who several months earlier had contacted Norrman. Whether the idea of eyewitness confirmation of the fate of the ghetto came from the Bund or from Norrman makes no great difference; in giving their instructions to Karski, the Bundists effectively followed Norrman's earlier advice. Still, the rep­etition of the strategy is in itself interesting.

After a few months, by which time Norrman and I were on informal terms, I asked him something like this:

The fact that Poles and Jews, though by no means all Poles and all Jews, felt that they must carry on a struggle, or undertake it, doesn't surprise me. The struggle was imposed on them by the occupation, by Nazism. But why you, a pacifist, who hated the war and the army, a Swede from neutral Sweden? Why did you get involved, take the risk, and not just once, but every time you crossed the border, and all the time, in fact, constantly, in the occupied country?

Now more than 80 years old, Norrman pondered for a moment, lifted a cup of coffee to his mouth, and took a sip. After a while he said:

You know, during my entire life I was a businessman. I liked my job - I gave it up only quite recently - and I was good in my field. I joined the struggle because I wanted to do something that was not for profit for once in my life.

It was said in the best Swedish manner: with restraint and distance. But it was not the full answer. He had no illusions about the direction in which events were devel­oping. He felt for the persecuted Jews, and knew that it was only one step from persecution to extermination. True, he devoted his whole life to business. Yet in 1939 he entered an unknown path. Hitler was going from one victory to another, and his alliance with the Soviets was reason for the darkest of predictions. Many of Norrman's compatriots, although by no means Nazi partisans, thought that one should adjust to the situation. Norrman could not and did not want to take such a position.

Life gave Norrman many opportunities to do 'something that was not for profit'. He chose an activity that could have resulted in the loss of more than just money. But his statement should be remembered as coming from a man who hated high­-sounding words. He was clearly moved and glowed with emotion when in 1974 I brought the Armia Krajowa Cross that had been awarded to him, and warm greet­ings from General Pełczyński. He and General Pełczyński had known each other from the time of the occupation, and from what both elderly gentlemen said it appears that they had met several times during the war. Pelczynski was one of the envoys delivering to Norrman the mail for London and collecting packages from there. The people who delivered the mail knew who he was, while Norrman did not know their names. He recognized Rowecki only after the war, in a picture in a news­paper. He remembered Pelczynski when I showed him a photograph. They were from the same generation. After May 1942 they lost contact. Pełczyński, who in 1974 was 82, thought that Norrman was long dead; Norrman believed the same about Pełczyński.

I belong to the handful that managed to survive. The survivors carry the duty to preserve this memory, and the memory of those who of their own volition risked their lives and stood up for the murdered. A Jewish legend proposes that the world is wicked and has long deserved the second flood. That the world exists is owing to the lamed-vav, the thirty-six tsadikim. They are humble, and do not boast of their deeds and virtues. The world does not know them; the y cannot be recognized when living. Only after their death do people learn of their greatness. Sven Norrman is one of the righteous whose memory should not die.

Translated from Polish  by Gwido Zlatkes

---

NOTES

[1] Quoted in K. Iranek-Osmecki, Kto ratuje jedno ziycie: Polacy i Zydzi I939-I945 (London, 1968), 186. As a rule this address of Sikorski's is omitted by his hagiographers (see M. Kukiel, Generał Sikorski (London, 1970); O. Terlecki, Generał Sikorski, 2 vols., vol. ii (Krak6w, 1981); W. Korpalska, Władysław Eugeniusz Sikorski: Biografia polityczna, 2nd edn. (Wrocław, 1988). However, it is not surprising since in these books the Holocaust is overlooked altogether.