In doing so we find an opposite pattern to what we have found so far. Jews in Sweden, the UK and France, feel strong ties to the country they live in, whereas Jews in Germany and Latvia do so to a much lesser extent. The last observation is readily explainable by the fact that a large number of Jews in these two countries, Germany and Latvia, are fairly recent immigrants from Russia. But in Sweden, many of the Jews living there are Holocaust or post- Holocaust immigrants from Central and Eastern Europe and Sweden is actually the only European country where there are considerably more Jews today than before the Holocaust. How is it that Jews in Sweden feel stronger ties to the country they live in than Jews in any of the other European countries?
When we take into account whether the respondents were born in the country they live in. the picture becomes even clearer. These relations are shown in Figure 13:
Almost 1 / 3 of the Jewish respondents in Sweden were not born in the country; still, almost 85 % of them say they feel that a strong sense of belonging to the country. The same holds for France. There are, however, differing backgrounds for the immigrated Jews’ sense of belonging to France and Sweden respectively. The majority of Jewish immigrants to France come from the former French colonies in French-speaking Maghreb. Most of them had already identified as“ French” while they were there, which of course facilitated their feeling of belonging to France when actually moving there. The Swedish case is radically different. Most Jewish immigrants to Sweden come from Eastern and Central Europe, they didn’ t speak Swedish and had no previous identification with anything Swedish. Many were survivors of
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