Jewish Stockholm tour Voyage Tips and guide

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Stockholm has had a Jewish community since at least the 17th century. Sweden stands out as one of few European countries unaffected by the Holocaust, and much remains of the Jewish community's artifacts. Since 2000, Jews are recognized as one of five Swedish national minorities.

The first Jews in Sweden might have been Hanseatic merchants; records about them are however difficult to find. Gustav Vasa, the first king of independent Sweden in the 16th century, had a doctor who was in government documents referred to as "the Jew".

In the 17th century, the Swedish Empire annexed many territories around the Baltic Sea with Jewish communities. With development of trade and arts came immigration of Jewish merchants and scholars, in particular from German-speaking lands. The Protestant Church of Sweden had concerns that Jews challenged the state religion, and Jewish religious services were generally prohibited until the 1770s, and moreover, Jews were forced to be baptized at immigration.

In 1775, King Gustav III gave sealmaker Aaron Isaac a charter to practice the Jewish faith in Sweden, and in 1782 the Jew Reglement legalized the Jewish religion, still barring Jews from rights such as land ownership, membership in craft guilds, marriage with non-Jews, and voting. Jewish immigrants were required to have some wealth, and could reside freely only in Stockholm, Gothenburg and Norrköping; there was also a Jewish community in Marstrand on Sweden's west coast, with a synagogue inaugurated in 1782. The navy city Karlskrona, where Jewish craftsmen were in high demand, was also added. Travelling Jewish salespeople, as well as Roma travellers, were treated as vagrants, and could be detained for forced labour.

In the 19th and early 20th century, Sweden gradually increased civil rights for the whole population. Most of these rights were first limited to members of the Church of Sweden, and only over time granted to Jews, with anti-Semitic backlashes more than once from the Church of Sweden, and the increasingly influential bourgeois. Since 1870, citizens of all religions are equal before the law in Sweden. The late 19th and early 20th centuries saw immigration of Jews from the Russian Empire. As most of them were poor, Yiddish-speaking, and practicing Orthodox Judaism, they had difficulties integrating into the preexisting Jewish community, and Sweden as a whole. Some of them moved on to the Americas.

Up to the mid-19th century, anti-Semitism was mainly religious, as Jews who converted to Christianity were in general tolerated. The late 19th and early 20th century saw the rise of organized racism, and nationalist movements tried to use scientific theory to define "races", to attribute them different natural levels of intellectual abilities, and to claim that they should be kept "pure" or segregated. In extreme cases, such as the Nazi ideology, a Jewish "race" was framed as a natural enemy of the Germanic "race". In 1922, the Swedish government founded the State Institute for Racial Biology, as the world's first in its kind. Until 1935, the institute was headed by doctor Herman Lundborg, whose main concern for Sweden was the mixing of the Germanic "race" (including Sweden's majority population) with the Roma "race" and the "east Baltic race" (Sami, Finns, Tornedalians and Balts) which were perceived as naturally inferior. Lundborg encouraged eugenic policies against those communities, with a forced sterilization law which remained until 1975. While Lundborg and some of his colleagues disdained Jews, the institute had at least two Jewish employees, and failed to define any common biological traits of Sweden's diverse Jewish population. From 1935, Lundborg's successor Gunnar Dahlberg dismissed many of Lundborg's racial theories, in particular the prejudices against the Jewish "race".

During World War I, Sweden tightened immigration laws, mostly to limit the population of Jews and Roma from eastern Europe. Like most countries in Europe, Sweden remained reluctant to accept refugees through the interwar period, without regard to the Nazi Party coming to power in Germany in 1933 and Germany and other countries gradually increasing oppression against Jews, Roma, and political opponents. During the first years of World War II, Sweden made many concessions to Germany, including allowing free passage of German troops through Sweden to Norway, while remaining non-belligerent. By 1942, the horrors of the Holocaust became commonly known, with Swedish newspaper Göteborgs Handels- och Sjöfartstidning being among the first to describe the Nazis' mass murder policy. This knowledge, together with Germany's waning military power, prompted the Swedish government to save Jews and other refugees. Around 2,200 Jews lived in Norway; half of them escaped to Sweden. Out of the 7,000 Jews of Denmark, most managed to escape to Sweden, thanks to the Danish resistance movement. Swedish diplomats also saved many thousands of Hungarian Jews from death. Around 12,000 Jewish Holocaust survivors came to Sweden in the aftermath of the war; around a third of them remained.

Sweden made no organized efforts to rescue Roma people, and their immigration to Sweden was in general prohibited until 1954. Only in the 1970s, Sweden recognized the internment and killing of Roma as an intentional genocide within the Holocaust.

A 1951 law abolished mandatory membership of a religious congregation for citizens of Sweden. Since then, a growing number of non-practising Jews are not organized. While Sweden does not keep religious identity as census data, the estimated Jewish population in Sweden as of the 2020s is around 20,000, many of them in Stockholm.

In the 1950s and 1960s, many political refugees came to Sweden from Hungary, Czechoslovakia and Poland due to Soviet-led oppression in these countries; some of them Jewish.

In 2000, Sweden hosted the Stockholm International Forum on the Holocaust. The Stockholm Declaration was a pledge of several governments, establishing the International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance, and the 27 January (for the 1945 liberation of the Auschwitz concentration camp) as the Day of Holocaust Remembrance. The same year, Sweden recognized Jews as one of five national minorities, together with the Romani, Sami, Finns and Tornedalians. These ethnic groups have resided in Sweden since before 1900. Thereby, Sweden is the world's only country granting official status to the Yiddish language, spoken as a mother tongue by around 1,000 Swedish citizens.

On foot, the tour takes around an hour. The streets of the Old Town are less suitable for wheelchairs, strollers, bicycles, and personal electric vehicles. Driving is not recommended.

The Jewish Museum hosts walking tours with similar waypoints.

59°19′37″N 18°4′12″E

Map of Jewish Stockholm tour

• 59.3238718.072971 Jewish Museum (Judiska museet), Själagårdsgatan 19. This 17th-century building was an auction chamber until it became Stockholm's first synagogue from 1795 to 1870, the year when Jews got full civil rights and the Great Synagogue was inaugurated. The building has been used for many purposes, such as a police station. The Jewish Museum was founded in 1992 on different premises and relocated to this building in 2019.  

• 59.3240818.071842 German Church (Tyska Kyrkan), Svartmangatan 16A. Officially named Sankta Gertrud, this 1642 church is the home to the first German-speaking parish outside Germany. As most Jews in Sweden came from German lands, this was the site for baptizing Jewish immigrants.  
• 59.323918.0709253 Västerlånggatan. Stockholm's main shopping street was famous for fashion stores owned by Jews, many of whom live here. 
• 59.32518.0679174 Forum för levande historia. A museum with exhibitions focused on human rights and crimes against humanity. Previous exhibitions have depicted Sweden's role in World War II in Europe and the Holocaust.  
• 59.32674718.0749725 Gustav III statue. Gustav III ruled Sweden from 1771 to 1792. Inspired by the Enlightenment, he was a patron of the arts, and he promoted religious tolerance and the rule of law. He invited many scholars, artisans and investors from continental Europe, one of them being sealmaker Aaron Isaac, who in 1775 was awarded a charter to live as a Jew in Sweden, and founded a Jewish congregation of 10 men. In 1782, his Jew Reglement legalized the Jewish religion. Immigration remained selective, as every Jewish housemaster would need to bring a wealth of 2,000 riksdaler (20 years' wages for a worker). These wealthy men could bring families and servants. Still, for decades to come, Jews could not own land, join guilds, marry non-Jews, vote, or testify in court.  

• 59.32602818.0720286 Charles XVI John Statue. Napoleonic general Jean-Baptiste Bernadotte became King Charles John of Sweden and Norway in 1818, and the House of Bernadotte is still on the Swedish throne. Charles John oversaw many civil rights reforms, and in 1838, he signed a reformed Jew Reglement, recognizing Jews as citizens of Sweden, allowing them to settle anywhere. The bill was met by anti-Semitic backlashes, and the parliament delayed some of the reforms, such as the right to own land and testify in court.  
• 59.32569418.0751897 Sjöfartshuset. In the mid-19th century, this palace was the residence of Carl David Skogman, a bureaucrat who wrote the 1838 Jew Reglement. During the summer of 1838, a series of protests (the Crusenstolpe riots) against the government took place in Stockholm. A main reason for the protests was the imprisonment of liberal publicist Magnus Jacob Crusenstolpe. However, many people in Stockholm were also angry at the immigration and integration of Jews, adding anti-Semitic elements to the protests. A mob smashed the windows of Skogman's home. Some Jewish homes in the Old Town were also attacked. In 1838, Jews and Christians were allowed to marry, but some of the proposed reforms were delayed; only in 1849 could Jews testify in court, and in 1862 Jews could vote in city elections.  
• 59.327718.070498 Norrbrobasaren. The place which today is a lawn in front of the parliament building hosted a market hall for fashion, books, and other goods during the 19th century. Well-dressed aristocrats paraded along the street to get attention. As Jews were barred from joining most craft guilds, many of them made a living as retailers, including the Bonnier family, who ran a bookstore here. In 1864, Sweden abolished guild privileges, allowing Jews to take on most professions. The market hall was torn down to make room for the Parliament building.  
• 59.327418.0699 Swedish Parliament building. Sweden's legislative building. Sweden's parliament traditionally had four estates: nobles, clergy, burghers and peasants. As tenant farmers and workers were thought to be represented by the master of the house (who was in most cases male), only a fraction of the population could vote. Both the Lutheran clergy and the guild-connected merchants and craftsmen saw Jews as rivals. By the 19th century, a growing class of businesspeople and scholars lacked representation, paving the way for the 1866 reform creating a two-chamber parliament elected by property-owning men regardless of birth. Up to 1870, adherence to the Lutheran faith was required both for voting and holding public office, excluding Jews, Catholics and others. The current parliament building, first designed for the two-chamber parliament, opened in 1905.  
• 59.33002218.07220310 Charles XII statue. Charles (Karl) XII, born in 1682, spent much of his reign from 1697 to his death in 1718 at war with Denmark, Poland and Russia, and was for many years in exile in the Ottoman Empire. He brought an entourage of Jewish and Muslim scholars to Sweden, as well as some merchants who lent money to the Swedish Crown. Charles XII was the first Swedish king to allow Jews to hold services in Sweden, though the policy was temporary, implying that they would either assimilate or emigrate. As usual for historic war-time leaders, Charles XII's legacy is complex, and has been re-evaluated with the times; he has been known both as a warmongering tyrant and a national hero. Since the 1980s, Swedish neo-Nazis have idolized Charles XII; his death date, November 30th, was during the 1990s the largest annual gathering of the far right in Sweden, and was notorious for hate speech against Jews and other minorities, riots, and counter-protests. 21st-century scholars have recognized Charles XII's curiosity about foreign cultures, including the Jews, and for Ukraine's independence from the Russian Empire.  
• 59.332918.0711 NK (Nordiska Kompaniet), Hamngatan 18-20. The retail company Nordiska Kompaniet was founded in 1902 by Swedish-Jewish businessman Josef Sachs. From 1902 to 1915 they had their premises at nearby Stureplan. The current flagship store was finished in 1915 and is recognized as a legacy department store; since the 1990s, though, it has been run as a shopping centre for independent vendors. Josef Sachs also founded the low-cost retail chain EPA (Enhetsprisaktiebolaget, i.e. Unit price company) in 1930, which raised protests from competitors, with anti-Semitic elements. While NK has arguably been Stockholm's most famous fashion retailer, the word EPA became a prefix for cheap goods of poor quality (one example being epatraktor, a geared-down automobile re-registered as a tractor).  
• 59.3319118.0741612 Great Synagogue, Wahrendorffsgatan 3B. Stockholm's largest synagogue opened in 1870, the same year Jews got full civil rights. Architect Fredrik Wilhelm Scholander designed the Synagogue as an Assyrian temple with floral ornaments. It was of great size for its time with nearly 1,000 seats, while the congregation only had around 450 members. Since 2015, it has been led by Ute Steyer, Sweden's first female rabbi. The 1945 bronze statue is called Escape with Torah.  
• 59.33191718.07586113 Raoul Wallenberg Monument. A 1999 monument for Swedish diplomat Raoul Wallenberg. The aesthetics have been questioned, and Mr Wallenberg's story is better told by a more traditional bust across the water. A 2006 monument called "The Road" represents a pair of railroad tracks between the Wallenberg monument and the Holocaust monument at the Synagogue. It is designed by Gabriel Herdevall, who also designed the aforementioned Holocaust monument, and Aleksander Wolodarski (born 1944), a Polish-Jewish architect came from Warsaw to Stockholm in 1967 and stayed to evade the 1968 anti-Semitic purges in Poland. 

• 59.33250618.078414 Bodarne, Strandvägen 1-5. The side buildings of this monumental city block was erected during the height of Stockholm's industrialization from 1902 to 1904, replacing a row of simple shacks (bodarne means "the shacks") along the waterfront. They were commissioned by industrialist and property developer Isaak Hirsch (1843-1917) who owned property across Stockholm, and gave much of his wealth to charity. At old age he was one of Stockholm's most revered citizens, one of few to be known under first name only. His senior housing foundation remains today. The wealth and fame of Jewish families such as Hirsch and Sachs should be contrasted with the thousands of Jewish immigrants who came from the Russian Empire from the 1860s to the 1910s, most of them poor, Yiddish-speaking, and practicing Orthodox Judaism, with difficulties to integrate into Sweden.  

• 59.3323418.0791215 Svenskt Tenn, Strandvägen 5. A store for high-quality Swedish design, in particular the Art Deco Style; see Swedish Grace tour for its architectural expression. Josef Frank, a Jewish Austrian designer, began work with Svenskt Tenn in 1932. Though anti-semitism was on the rise in Germany and Austria, Sweden was reluctant to receive refugees during the 1930s. In total, around 3,000 Jews migrated to Sweden during the 1930s, most of them being well-connected citizens such as Josef Frank, who came to Sweden in 1933. Frank became the most famous designer to work with the store, though he moved to the United States in 1940.  
• 59.33189718.08062216 Strandvägen 7 (Hotel Diplomat). In World War II, Germany occupied Denmark and Norway in 1940, while Finland was co-belligerent with Germany. With Europe at war, Stockholm became a haven for diplomats, with an opportunity to spy on their enemies. The palace at Strandvägen 7 hosted embassies of the United States, Italy, Yugoslavia and Turkey and the German military attaché. On the backstreet was the local branch of the German Nazi Party. While Sweden had an established partnership with Germany for generations and much of the Swedish elite was pro-German in the early phase of the war (including celebrities such as explorer Sven Hedin), German propaganda failed to make the Swedish Nazi movement anything more than marginal. In the early years of the war, Sweden made many concessions to Germany, and was reluctant to receive Jews, anti-Nazi activists or any other refugees. However, by the end of 1942, the Holocaust became well known, partially through Swedish journalists and diplomats. In the meantime, the tide of the war was turning, and Sweden had to mend its reputation through humanitarian missions. The building is today a hotel, appropriately named Diplomat.  
• 59.3317618.079717 Raoul Wallenberg bust. For much of World War II, Hungary had been an Axis power with some independence from Nazi Germany, and the Hungarian Jews had been spared from the Holocaust. From March 1944, the Hungarian government made concessions to the Nazis, and SS leader Adolf Eichmann had Jews deported from the Hungarian countryside to death camps, while the Jews of Budapest were subjected to segregation laws. The United States formed the War Refugee Board to prevent the mass murders. Along with the diplomatic missions at Strandvägen 7, the building also housed the trading company Meropa, and The War Refugee Board approached its owner Kálmán Lauer; as he was a Hungarian Jew and could not carry out the mission himself, he recommended his nearest deputy, Raoul Wallenberg. As a special attaché for the Embassy of Sweden, Wallenberg travelled to Budapest and issued diplomatic passports to Jews. With the Arrow Cross coup on 15 October 1944, oppression of the Jews accelerated. As the concentration camp system was collapsing, the Nazis intended Jews to be sent to forced labour on site, or to death marches towards German territory. The Nazis did not prevent the Arrow Cross party or Hungarian gendarmes from killing Jews on site. Raoul Wallenberg had buildings purchased by the Swedish Embassy and founded a hospital, housing as many as 10,000 refugees under diplomatic immunity. Sweden refused to recognize the Arrow Cross regime, and Wallenberg was at odds with them and the Nazis until the Soviet army took over and looted Budapest in January 1945. Around 120,000 Jews in Budapest survived the war, many of them thanks to Wallenberg and other Swedish diplomats. The Soviets interned Wallenberg, and he was never seen again, as he probably died in a Moscow prison, though the truth might never be known. He was long rumored to be alive, and was declared dead only in 2016. The bust was erected in 2023, in a more traditional representation than the monument at the synagogue. 

• 59.33472218.07583318 Adat Jeschurun. Orthodox synagogue. The interiors come from the Synagoge Bornstrasse in Hamburg, which survived the 1938 November pogroms (Kristallnacht) as it was in a tenement building. Due to the threat against the Jews, director Hans Lehmann, a German Jew residing in Stockholm, had the furnishing imported in March 1939. The pews, prayer books and the Torah Ark were labelled as "old furniture" to avoid suspicion from German authorities. The synagogue has been active in Stockholm since 1940.  
• 59.33523918.0767471 Bajit, Nybrogatan 19 A. Jewish cultural centre and the site of the Stockholm Jewish Congregation, with a library, a school, a café, and a kosher grocer. The Hillel School was founded in 1955, and has had public funding since 1963. 
• 59.33518.077372 Schmaltz, Nybrogatan 19. A restaurant and deli inspired by the Jewish-American cuisine. 

• 59.33706118.04260219 Swedish Holocaust Museum, Torsgatan 19. Sweden's first museum dedicated to Holocaust remembrance was founded in 2022 and opened its first exhibition in 2023.  
• 59.31810218.06834320 Adrat Jisrael Synagogue, S:t Paulsgatan 13. The synagogue of an Orthodox congregation founded in 1871, featured in the Millennium series; see Millennium Tour. 
• 59.31355918.088521 Heckscherska huset, Klippgatan 19. Built in 1913 to accommodate Jewish immigrants from Eastern Europe, state-of-the-art, with flush toilets but tight quarters. Received refugees during World War II. 
• 59.33277818.03416722 Kronoberg cemetery. In use from 1787 to 1857. This cemetery was opened in opposition to Aaron Isaac's authority over the Jewish community.  
• 59.33630618.0267523 Aronsberg cemetery. Named for Aaron Isaac, in use since 1782; back then, the island was a farmland, far from the city.  
• 59.26511118.10108324 Southern Jewish cemetery. Part of Skogskyrkogården (the Woodland Cemetery), a UNESCO World Heritage Site.  
• 59.35956618.028425 Northern Jewish cemetery. On the large Northern Cemetery in Solna. The chapel, in Moorish style, was inaugurated in 1857. It was the burial place for Holocaust survivors who died shortly after arriving in Sweden. 

As of 2025, the security situation for the Jewish community is complicated. Many sites of the Jewish community have elevated security routines and might require advance booking.

• Stockholm military tour for more context on Sweden during the World Wars and the Cold War