When I read in the Swedish news of two men waiving a Nazi-flag out on the river Svartån, close by to where my mother grew up, it felt like an attack aimed at me and her, since my grandmother Maria had been placed there after being rescued from the German prison camp Ravensbruck. The police calls it a hate crime. Is it?
Where and how did they get the flag? Found and waved at a costume party or ordered new to enliven the dictatorship of Hitler?
Either way, I remember the tales of how afraid my grandmother had been of letting my mother walk home from school. Afraid of Nazis coming to get her, of the police. You see, the real threat lies not in two men's curiosity of the power of the past, but in the current doings of the police. I should know since I've just been detained in Sweden. The majority were all of immigrant background, brown eyed brunettes or black, no Swedish names, me included. What if the current trend of police brutality in the US isn't the worst, but decades of hidden racism in Sweden? And always incarcerating the one who reported a crime first. This needs to change. Statistics, please!
Ein, zwei, polizei... drei, vier, nicht mehr!
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