'Part of a dangerous trend of taking antisemitism out of the Holocaust': A surprise decision to remove the name of Jewish historian Hugo Valentin from the Holocaust research center at Uppsala University has sparked backlash in Sweden's Jewish community
Published in Haaretz: https://www.haaretz.com/jewish/2025-02-03/ty-article-magazine/.premium/this-was-the-only-academic-center-in-sweden-named-after-a-jew-now-his-name-is-gone/00000194-c6af-d533-a3b6-cfafbd030000
STOCKHOLM – Years before the Nazis rose to power, Hugo Valentin, a prominent member of Stockholm's Jewish community, recognized the dangers of Nazi ideology. A historian and scholar, he warned against the "wild psychosis of hatred" as far back as 1930, and even before the outbreak of World War II, he cautioned against the "total eradication of German Jewry." When the Third Reich began implementing the Final Solution, he was among the first to inform the Swedish public that the Jews of Europe were being annihilated. Already in 1942, he wrote in a Swedish daily newspaper that 700,000 Polish Jews had been murdered, and he continued to report about the mass killings of Jews around Europe over the next few years for the Swedish Jewish Chronicle.
Until his death in 1963, Valentin was considered a leading authority on antisemitism. He connected ancient, medieval, and modern antisemitism and argued that "it is not the Jews who are hated, but an imaginary image of them." A pioneer of Swedish-Jewish studies, Valetin was also a vocal supporter of Zionism and of the young state of Israel. In 2009, nearly half a century after his death, Uppsala University – Sweden's oldest institute of higher education and one of its most prestigious – merged its Center for Multiethnic Studies with the Program for Holocaust and Genocide studies. Since Valentin had been a distinguished scholar of the history of the local Jewish community and antisemitism, as well as Nazism and genocide, it seemed only natural to name the center after him.
And so, the Hugo Valentin Center was established – the only academic center in Sweden named after a Jew. Late last year, the university announced that a decision had been taken to change its name: As of January 1 this year, it would be called the Uppsala Center for Holocaust and Genocide Studies.
Hugo Valentin apparently got cancelled.
"The removal of Valentin's name is part of a dangerous trend of taking antisemitism out of the Holocaust," said Aron Verständig, chairman of the Council of Jewish Communities in Sweden. Speaking with Haaretz, he described the deceased historian as "the foremost writer of Jewish history in Sweden and one of the first to write about the Holocaust."
Pontus Rudberg, an associate professor of history at Uppsala University who was previously affiliated with the center, was also concerned. "It's disgraceful," he said. "It supports the trend that removes Jewish perspectives and Jewish history from Holocaust and genocide studies. It's also disgraceful because you don't remove the name of the person your institution is named after unless he's done something wrong."
Rudberg said he was surprised by the decision-making process. "I was asked by the director of the center for my opinion in a vague way during an informal meeting a week or two before the decision was made," he told Haaretz. "I said I was against it, but I didn't realize it was an actual process, and I found out about the decision, which was made with no informed and open debate, only when it was published just before the Christmas holidays."
In a protest letter addressed to Anders Hagfeldt, vice chancellor of the university, Professor Emeritus Harald Runblom, another Uppsala historian, wrote that "erasing a name in this context is like tearing down a statue, and it raises legitimate questions. Has he become persona non grata? Is there political opportunism behind this?"
Another letter addressed to the vice chancellor, signed by 93 international scholars, warned that erasing Valentin's name could set in motion "a broader trend of distancing Holocaust and genocide studies from Jewish history" and described the move as "an affront to Hugo Valentin's legacy and a diminution of his remarkable contributions." Among those signed on this letter were the distinguished Holocaust historians Christopher Browning and Jan Grabowski.
Weighing in on the controversy, journalist Nathan Shachar recently penned an op-ed in Dagens Nyheter, a leading Swedish daily, titled "Uppsala University embarrasses itself – does not dare to be linked to Sweden's most famous Zionist." "In the difficult reality since October 7, the center wants to tone down its Jewish affiliation for populist reasons of convenience and avoid being associated with the most famous of Swedish Zionists," he wrote.
Rudberg offered a somewhat different explanation for Valentin's erasure. "It's ignorance, rather than bad intentions," he said, "The people who made the decision don't know much about Valentin. They think he was mostly involved in Jewish history and antisemitism studies. They don't understand he was also a pioneer in Holocaust and Genocide studies."
Still, the decision seems to be in line with the current zeitgeist on campus. In November, a group of 131 university members published a letter in the Swedish daily Aftonbladet demanding that the university cuts all ties with Israeli universities "complicit in the genocide."
The letter was the latest in a series of calls at Uppsala to boycott Israel, and although the university's leaders have refused to bow to such demands from student groups, the fact that many professors and researchers support such sanctions against Israel has many Jews on campus feeling uneasy. Since October 7, the Uppsala campus has emerged as a hotbed of the Swedish pro-Palestinian protest movement. On a number of occasions during the past year, students disrupted university activities and the administration made the decision to summon police over what it perceived as threatening disruptions to campus life.
Several Jewish students, who agreed to speak with Haaretz on condition of anonymity, said they felt protests against Israel have crossed the line into antisemitism. They said that posters sighted at demonstrations and encampments on campus over the past year have supported violent resistance and denied Israel's right to exist.
Asked for comment, Elsa Bådagård from Uppsala University's office for Humanities and Social Sciences, issued the following statement: "Uppsala Center for Holocaust and Genocide Studies is a center within the Faculty of Arts, and the decision regarding its name has been made by the faculty board upon request from the board of the Hugo Valentin Center in December 2024.
The different reactions to the name change have been received and noted by the Faculty of Arts. However, since the request originated with the center, the faculty will not overturn its collegial decision on the basis of these opinions. Furthermore, the proposition to change the name has the support of the current employees at the center."
Bådagård insisted that the reason for the name change was that the board wanted it to reflect the primary field of research of the center, which is Holocaust and Genocide Studies. "It was not part of any political agenda, and the name change will not lead to any change regarding the focus of the various activities at the Center," she said, adding that "this is a purely organizational decision, and should not be read as a wish for the Faculty of Arts to distance itself from Hugo Valentin and his work."
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