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A ray of hope in darker times

Nick Walker

Swedish artist's wartime plea for peace and goodwill to everyone

It was a wartime Christmas card that captured the zeitgeist of a haunted but hopeful Europe, with a cover illustration that featured four winged angels sawing a swastika into a Christian cross. What's more, the story behind this artefact is a veritable Christmas story in itself - one full of hope and faith.

The card's creator, Hugo Gehlin, was a nationally renowned Swedish artist, who in 1943 lived in the southern Swedish city of Helsingborg. At the time he was a bald, rather overweight 54-year-old, and according to those who knew him, 'always with a twinkle in his eye'. He was known as a garrulous and warm individual, with a large network of friends and admirers.

Helsingborg is the closest Swedish city to Denmark, and during the summer of 1943, Gehlin was one of a number of Helsingborgers who actively participated in the evacuation of almost 8,000 Danish Jews from Nazi-occupied Denmark.

Over the course of several weeks the Gehlin home became refuge to a large number of evacuees making their way to Sweden. And despite Sweden's neutrality, the actions of activists like Gehlin were perilous, especially given the ease with which Nazi agents crossed the Oresund straits, and the ever-present threat of invasion.

It was after this long, hot and anxious summer that Gehlin set about making his annual Christmas card. For many years the artist had printed a limited edition of about 600 Christmas cards that traditionally featured his yuletide woodblock carving of the year.

Gehlin was unaware that his intended Nazi swastika was in fact a Buddhist symbol (Nazi swastikas are 'tilted', they do not lie flat with a vertical axis), but its message - the inevitability of the triumph of good over evil, was most welcome at a time when evil had been triumphing over good with chilling regularity.

The message reads: 'Thank you [Lord] for 1943. And, Happy New Year.' A poem is written on the back of the woodblock carving.

Gehlin died in 1953. He is survived by two sons. Jan, the eldest, is a former leading trade unionist who now lives in retirement in central Stockholm. He vividly recalls the time when the Gehlin home was a sanctuary for fleeing Danish Jews, and his father's efforts to ensure their safety. 'My father was a courageous and principled man, and despite his natural modesty, was enormously proud of his actions during the war.

'My father passed on his world view to me. He was a passionate man, about his art and his work. He was an ardent anti-fascist and that never wavered, especially during the war. It was only when I was researching his life that I realised how he never missed an opportunity to express what he felt had to be said, through his art and his words. He was so aware of the need to say and do the right thing.'

Hugo Gehlin's artistic talents were considerable and spanned many mediums. Not only did he make woodcuts, he was a glass artist, a graphic designer and a sculptor.

He is best known for his painted glass work. These paintings feature in many churches in southern Sweden, where he was active during the war years. The exquisite interior of St Peter's Church in Malmo, features many Gehlin artworks.

Gehlin was a man of faith, but his faith was a secular one. Above all he believed in social justice. As the appalling news of the Holocaust began to reach Sweden's shores, he became an even more vocal opponent of oppression. Gehlin was particularly sensitive to the plight of Europe's Jews as his wife, Ester, was Jewish.

Even though Sweden was spared invasion and occupation during the war, anti-Semitism was fairly common during those years. His half-Jewish son Jan spoke out alongside his father. And, like his father, he let his work do the talking. Jan was 21 when his first novel was published in that pivotal year of 1943. Its message told of the moral duty of standing up against anti-Semitism, and given the times, was an audacious piece of work.

Jan explained the poem on the back of Angels 43, his father's famous Christmas card. 'Because it featured a Swastika, my father was concerned that the 1943 Christmas card would be misinterpreted, and so he asked one of his best friends, a conspicuously Jewish personality - and at that time one of Sweden's most internationally renowned painters - Isaac Grunewald, to write a poem about the four angels featured in the woodcut.'

Grunewald's involvement was significant and has turned Angels 43 into a valuable collector's item. Only one of the few remaining originals can be found outside private collections in Europe. The Hong Kong Angels 43 card rests in a safe deposit box in a bank, which, according to the owner, is located 'in the vicinity of one of the city's synagogues'.

Grunewald, probably the most famous Jewish Swede of his day, died at the age of 57 in a plane crash only three years after he wrote this poem. He had led a remarkable life. A native Stockholmer, at the age of 19 he travelled to Paris to study art under Henri Matisse. Grunewald regularly exhibited at home and abroad and art historians often cite him as being responsible for introducing modernism to Sweden.

Hugo Gehlin died of a heart attack only six years after Grunewald. But he had already shaped the next generation of highly principled and politically fearless Gehlins.

Jan Gehlin is proud of his father's role in taking a stand against anti-Semitism and fascism with his art, and feels it is his duty to sustain the same values in his own work.

'Fascism cannot be compromised with,' he says. 'We have a duty to remember and to tell. To preserve the truth, no matter how painful it is, in the interests of peace and freedom, and for our own sons and daughters.'

Most of us enjoy such a multitude of blessings at this time of year that we tend to take our good fortune for granted. But in a world that now seems to be troubled by religious bigotry, the spirit of 1943 is one to be cherished.

Two Christmases after Hugo Gehlin created Angels 43 in a studio by the Baltic, Hong Kong joined a glittering constellation of liberated European and Asian cities in finally being able to really celebrate Christmas, free from the fascist occupation. And free from fear.

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