The Swedish Queen Silvia will study the role of her late father during the Nazi era, including claims he took over properties stolen from Jewish owners, her spokesman said. The Queen's German father died in 1990.
The statement by the Palace was a long-awaited reaction to the controversy ignited by a documentary aired at the end of last year. The film claimed that the father, Walther Sommerlath, in 1939 took over a factory which was siezed from its Jewish owners, as part of the so-called Aryanisation of Jewish assets in Germany before World War II.
It was already known that the father of the 67-year-old wife of King Carl Gustaf was a card-carrying member of the Nazi party, having joined as a German expatriate in Brazil as early as 1934, that he spent the war in Berlin running an arms factory, and that he remained an active member until the party was outlawed by the allies after the surrender of Germany.
However, the TV documentary also claimed that the father maintained close relations with officials involved in the extermination of the Jews, including Adolf Eichmann, and documented his role in the seizure of Jewish property.
Queen Silva has been criticized widely in the press for not clarifying these stories.
She was also criticized in Sweden following comments in which she had defended her father's membership in the Nazi party since 1934. She insisted her father was not "politically active or a soldier."
On this, the German journalist Rafael Seligmann said in the documentary: "When the Queen of Sweden raises in 2010 an argument which Adolf Eichmann made 49 years ago in an Israeli court, it is pathetic."
Now the Queen's spokesman Hofsprecher Ternert said the Queen would make enquiries in Germany and Brazil in order to clarify "a number of open questions" about the activities of her father. For this purpose, she will ask for professional help from historians and others.
