Sweden’s Prime Minister Olaf Palme has expressed “deep regret” to the Anti-Defamation League of B’nai B’rith for the unautharized sale of copies of the notorious Czarist anti-Semitic forgery, The Protocols of the Elders of Zion, at a government-sponsored Islamic exhibit at the Stockholm Historical Museum early this month.
In a letter responding to a protest made by Abraham Foxman, associate national director of the ADL, the Prime Minister said that a private exhibitor had “abused the trust of the museum” by offering the “infamous Protocols” for sale at its own stand for a brief period at a lecture without the know ledge of the exhibit officials.
Palme pointed out that museum officials had had no opportunity in advance to check the organization’s display of books for the lecture. He added “that the book was not for sale in the museum bookshop and that it only appeared on the premises that particular evening, and only for three hours.”
Palme emphasized that “if this publication had been discovered by anybody in charge at the museum, it would obviously have been banned from distribution.”
Foxman expressed his thanks to the Swedish Prime Minister for his thorough and detailed reply which, he said, “fully vindicated his belief in Sweden’s opposition to anti-Semitism and all other forms of religious and racial bigotry.” Nevertheless, Foxman added, “It points up the need for special vigilance in even so enlighted a nation as Sweden.
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The Archive of the Jewish Telegraphic Agency includes articles published from 1923 to 2008. Archive stories reflect the journalistic standards and practices of the time they were published.
