A yellow swastika on blue background, commonly used as a symbol for the Swedish National Socialist Front. Photo: Wikimedia Commons.

Hundreds of Swedish Jews and non-Jews brought together by the Swedish Committee Against Anti-Semitism marched on the southern city of Malmo on August 18th, to protest the rise of anti-Semitism in the country. Willy Silberstein, head of the organization, said that “there were many more people than we expected” at the march.

In June, the Swedish government’s Twitter account, which is controlled by rotating citizen users, was taken over by a woman who wrote offensive posts about Jews, including that “in Nazi Germany, they even had to sew stars on their sleeves. If they didn’t, they could never know who was a Jew and who was not a Jew.” The number of anti-Semitic hate crimes has risen in Sweden since Israel’s Operation Cast Lead in Gaza in 2009, with 400 anti-Semitic incidents in Malmo in 2009 alone, according to the European Jewish Press.