‘The Swedish Connection’ Review: How a Civil Servant Took on the Holocaust (Netflix)

The tone chosen by this Swedish film about the deportation of Jews during World War II is a rather unusual one. There have been comedies —even outright farces— about that conflict before, but it’s far less common when the focus shifts more specifically to the Holocaust. Calling it a full-blown comedy might be a stretch, yet The Swedish Connection ultimately plays like a gently amusing farce about the bureaucratic maneuvering of an obscure Swedish civil servant trying to save persecuted Jews in other parts of Europe.

Unlike most countries on the continent, Suecia was never invaded by the Nazis, nor did it have a strictly collaborationist government. It maintained a position of neutrality, but in practice that often meant trying not to antagonize the Germans or jeopardize its diplomatic and economic ties with them. By 1942, however, rumors of something called the “Final Solution” —the Nazi plan to exterminate Europe’s Jewish population— began circulating within the Foreign Ministry. No one quite believes it, and no one is eager to get involved, so it’s conveniently dismissed as exaggeration or propaganda. But gradually, prompted by a handful of concrete developments, a small group begins to organize an unofficial rescue operation outside established diplomatic channels.

Reluctantly tasked with leading it —and without the backing of his own department— is a mid-level bureaucrat named Gösta Engzell (played by Henrik Dorsin), whom the film initially presents as something close to a comic figure. The entire movie leans into a faintly farcical tone, filled with mildly absurd characters, light comic situations, and narrative beats rarely found in films dealing with this subject matter. But Gösta slowly realizes he may be able to secure Swedish passports for Jews from countries such as Norway or Denmark who can claim even the most tenuous familial connection to Sweden —and that this bureaucratic loophole might offer them a way out.

The Swedish Connection follows the internal maneuvering, setbacks and small victories, and the growing sense of purpose —and eventually heroism— shared by Gösta and a handful of colleagues as they attempt to put this plan into motion without attracting the attention of Swedish authorities, and certainly not that of the Nazis. Amid personal complications and evolving strategies that would later become associated with more widely known figures across Europe, the situation grows increasingly urgent and the film correspondingly more serious. Not overwhelmingly so, though, as even in its most dramatic moments it maintains a lightly ironic, almost breezy tone.

Engaging if not especially gripping, and dealing with a story more consequential than its own directors sometimes seem to realize, The Swedish Connection plays like a lighter variation on narratives such as Schindler’s List, in which unlikely individuals find themselves drawn —almost against their will— into acts of incalculable moral courage. In that sense, this dramedy about a nondescript functionary in the Swedish bureaucracy who inadvertently helped save tens of thousands of Jews resonates not only with the historical period it depicts, but also with the present day —when, however sporadically, one still sees ordinary people risking their lives to help others in peril.