Next week's Pessach celebration will be the last for the Jewish community center of Umea, Sweden

The Simon Wiesenthal Center denounced the Swedish authorities’s failure to provide security to its Jewish citizens after Members of the Jewish Association of Umea, a city in the north of Sweden, decided to close the doors of their community center following a series of anti-Semitic incidents and threats to members of the community.

Swedish media reported that the Umea community center was vandalized with swastikas and the message, “We know where you live,” in addition to being targeted by threatening emails. Around 50 Jews live in the city.

The windows of an association member's car were also smashed. Accoerding to the Jewish association's spokesperson Carinne Sjöberg, ‘’too many things have happened lately which mean that Jewish parents don't feel safe having their kids at the schools.‘’

"Our children shouldn't need to live in a world where they have to be ashamed for what they are, but it's not possible to operate if people are scared,’’ she added.

‘’We are constantly receiving threatening emails,’’ she said. ‘’This is not the Umea that I have known, something happened. When incidents occur where Jewish children are vulnerable and at risk because of their origin, then it has gone too far.’’

“This is but the latest shameful episode when Swedish authorities fail to provide for the basic safety of its Jewish citizens,” declared Rabbi Abraham Cooper, Associate Dean of the Simon Wiesenthal Center. “This time, it is neo-Nazis operating with impunity in northern Sweden, threatening Jews.”

“It has been years since our Center put out a travel advisory on the southern city of Malmö, where authorities still refuse to deal with ongoing threats from extremist Muslims against the community’s Rabbi and the shrinking Jewish community," he said.

“The Swedish people should be asking themselves and of their governmental leaders, a fundamental question: Why is it that neo-Nazis and Islamists feel free to threaten and bully innocent people, while Jewish citizens are left to their own devices to protect their families and their communal associations?” Rabbi Cooper asked.

In Sweden, Liberal party leader Peder Vesterberg called the decision to close the center ‘’totally unacceptable’’. ‘’The Nazis will not get to win,’’ he said.

Mathias Sundin, anoter Liberal MP who chairs the Sweden-Israel Friendship Association, also reacted with anger ‘’It is disgusting and despicable. Nazism stands for the darkest chapter in human history. It is completely unacceptable people today in Sweden can be intimidated that way.’”

According to Paulina Neuding, former chief editor of Swedish magazine Neo, Jews in Sweden ‘’are not getting enough protection.’’ ‘’If they did, they would not have to close the Umea center.’’ ‘’Umea is not the only place in Sweden where there ae problems of anti-Semitism,’’ she told European Jewish Press (EJP). ‘’The most obvious example is Malmö where threats, violence and harassment come not mainly from neo-Nazis but from immigrants from the Middle East.’’ ‘’There too Jews report that they live in fear and that they don’t feel protected by the authorities. In Malmö the problems were not taken seriously by the political leadership.’’

‘’In Umea, it is very difficult, once you have threats, to have around the clock protection for the famous Jewish people in the town,’’ said Neuding.

She compares the situation to what his happening in France. ‘’Either Jews in Sweden will leave their own town, like what happened in Malmö, or they will leave the country for the US or Israel. I think we will see this more in the future…’’

‘’I don’t’ see the government reversing the trend,’’ she said.

Around 15,000 Jews live in the country, mainly in Stockholm, Gothenburg and Malmö

By Yossi Lempkowicz