Nazi collaborator or hero? This is the question that has preoccupied Sweden's Queen Silvia ever since media reports emerged nine years ago claiming her father had joined the Nazi party in 1934 and had been a Nazi collaborator. Following the allegations, Queen Silvia established a committee to investigate the issue, and its controversial findings were published Tuesday. The committee found that although her father, Carl August Walther Sommerlath, was in fact a member of the NSDAP Nazi party, he also helped at least one Jew escape the Nazis. Erik Norberg, a Swedish World War II expert, said that documents he studied show that shortly before the war broke out Sommerlath helped a Jewish businessman flee Germany for South Africa, and even offered him a coffee plantation and other property in exchange for his business interests in Germany. Other researchers have claimed the deal was not undertaken in good faith, but rather out of a desire to make money. The American Gathering of Holocaust Survivors and their Descendants, an umbrella group for Holocaust survivors, rejected the report's findings on Tuesday. "The report was not an independent inquiry it was commissioned by the queen with the participation of her cousin, a Brazilian lawyer. Such a probe can only raise suspicions of a whitewash, the organization said in a statement.
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