Everyone is aware of Raoul Wallenberg's efforts on behalf of Jews in Budapest during World War II. But few know about Gösta Engzell, a Swedish Foreign Ministry official who, a few years earlier, had begun trying to save Jews in Nazi-occupied countries by asserting their connection to Sweden and demanding that the Germans allow them to come to Sweden.
Now the story is told in "The Swedish Link" with Henrik Dorsin in the lead role in the Netflix film, which will premiere in theaters on February 6 and come to Netflix on February 19.
Everyone knows that the Swedes were very cowardly and allowed the Germans to travel by train through Sweden. I was hopeful to learn that there were people who worked on the other side and were brave and made a difference, says Sissela Benn, who plays one of Engzell's employees.
The son remembers
Henrik Dorsin has been in contact with Engzell's 97-year-old son Göran, who remembers that during the war his father told him about what was going on in German-occupied countries.
He remembers when his father called him and told him what he had just learned, how devastated he was about it, and that he then tried to find ways to help.
But while Raoul Wallenberg's fate became known all over the world, Gösta Engzell's efforts were less widely publicized and were not highlighted until the 1990s. Engzell died in 1997, aged 100, and never really spoke publicly about his heroic role.
"It's probably an old, typically Swedish attitude. You don't brag. Self-praise stinks. I think it's something people should learn to do today," says Dorsin and smiles.
Credible bureaucrats
These are unusually dramatic roles for Henrik Dorsin, Sissela Benn and Johan Glans, who plays a Swedish diplomat in Germany. All three are known for more comedic roles. Dorsin's theory is that it works well because they look like the everyday bureaucrats Engzell and his colleagues were, and not like movie stars.
If it had been Persbrandt, Adam Pålsson, Sverrir Gudnason and... Alva Bratt in the roles, perhaps the bureaucratic world would not have felt so credible, says Dorsin, laughing.
You have to believe that they are standing against the Nazis on the other side and saying, "Can you look at this paper?"
Mikael Forsell/TT
Facts: Gösta Engzell
TT
Born in Halmstad. He was head of Legal Affairs at the Ministry of Foreign Affairs from 1938, ambassador in Warsaw 1949–1951 and in Helsinki 1951–1963.
In 1942, Engzell took the initiative to rescue hundreds of Norwegian Jews and bring them to Sweden. A year later, just over 7,000 Jews fled from Denmark across the Sound to Sweden.
Engzell's role in saving Jews during the war was unknown to the general public and was only seriously highlighted in a 1997 thesis by American researcher Paul A. Levine.
