Queen Silvia of Sweden has revealed that her father conducted a business deal with a prominent Jewish businessman whereby he took over his company in Berlin in 1939 and thereby facilitated the man's emigration from Nazi Germany.
It is the conclusion of an investigation into alleged links between the Queen's father Walther Sommerlath and the Nazis, the Local reports from Sweden and Germany.
Sommerlath reached a settlement with Efim Wechsler to take over his company in Berlin and in exchange handed over a coffee plantation in Brazil.
"I have searched in the Brazilian and German archives and found that my father and Efim Wechsler made an agreement on the factory in Berlin and coffee plantation in Brazil," Queen Silvia told Göteborgs-Posten.
The report in pdf (English): Download QueenSilviasFatherReport
According to the Queen it was her father's transfer of the plantation, and three plots in São Paulo in 1939 that made it possible for Wechsler to move to Brazil. Wechsler had already in 1938 been urged by the authorities to leave Germany.
Queen Silvia announced in May that she intended to get together with her relatives to investigate reports of her father's alleged links with Nazism. The Queen has received assistance in the investigation of a cousin working as a lawyer in Brazil and a former Swedish national archivist.
The American Gathering of Holocaust Survivors and their Descendants reacted to the report by dismissing it as "self-serving" and lacking in credibility. "The report was not an independent inquiry - it was commissioned by the queen with the participation of her cousin, a Brazilian lawyer," the organisation said in a statement quoted by the Associated Press news agency. "Such a probe can only raise suspicions of a whitewash."
The report in pdf (German): Download EineUntersuchungKöniginSilvia
Full story: The Local: Silvia's dad in deal with Jewish businessman and Swedish queen's probe shows father was hero, not nazi
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