In 1779 Jews were granted the right to live in Stockholm, Göteborg and Norrköping,  and in 1782, they were given permission to build synagogues, perform communal services and engage in trades not controlled by the guilds.  Jews were also allowed autonomy in their own affairs.

The process of Jewish emancipation began in 1838 when King Charles XIV removed some restrictions placed on Jews, granting them legal protection and many civil rights. However,  Jews could not hold political office until 1951.Due to immigration from Russia and Poland, the Jewish population grew between 1850 and 1920, reaching nearly 6,500 in 1920.

Sweden was neutral during the World War II. The country’s Jewish population was protected, and the government helped to save Jews from the Nazis. In 1942, after the Nazi invasion of Norway, Sweden allowed the immigration of 900 Norwegian Jews.

In October 1943, the country gave asylum to more than 8,000 Danish Jews who escaped there in small fishing boats. Swedish diplomat Raoul Wallenberg saved thousands of Hungarian Jews in Budapest. Count Folke Bernadotte helped bring the Jews  out of concentration camps and many Holocaust survivors were brought to Sweden for rehabilitation.

In 1956, Sweden accepted hundreds of Hungarian Jewish refugees and in 1968, thousands more, including many intellectuals, students and young professionals, fleeing state-sponsored anti-Semitism in other communist countries, in particular Poland. As a result, the Jewish population of Sweden doubled between 1945 and 1970.

There are about 20,000 Jews in Sweden, but only a third of them are affiliated to a community.  Sweden’s main Jewish communities are in Stockholm, Gothenburg and Malmö. There are also small communities in places such as Boras, Helsingborg, Lund, Norrkoping, Uppsala and Vasteras.

There are several synagogues,  a Jewish day school, a Jewish library, a Jewish magazine, and a weekly Jewish radio show.

Nonetheless, there have been a number episodes of anti-Semitism in Sweden. Malmö has had 79 attacks on Jews in Malmö in 2009 alone. The community in the town of Umea dissolved due to nonstop threats from neo-Nazis.