Swedish extradition of Baltic soldiers

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The Swedish extradition of Baltic soldiers, in Sweden known as Baltutlämningen ("The Balts Extradition"), was a disputed political event in Sweden during 1945-1946, when Sweden extradited some 150 Baltic soldiers who had fought for the Axis against the Soviet Union in World War II.

On 2 June 1945, the Soviet Union demanded that Sweden extradite all Axis soldiers. The protocol was at first kept secret; when it became public, it was supported by most of parliament, and the Swedish Communist Party wanted to go further, by extraditing all civilian refugees from Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania.

The majority of the Baltic soldiers handed over were Latvians who had escaped from the Courland Pocket. When the troops reached Swedish territory, they were detained in prison camps. The refugees were handed over to the Soviets on 25 January 1946 in the port of Trelleborg for transportation on the steamer Beloostrov.

Sweden also extradited about 3,000 German soldiers, according to laws on prisoners of war. The Balts were however more controversial since the Soviet authorities viewed them as Soviet citizens (the Soviet Union had annexed the independent Baltic states in 1940) and therefore regarded the Balts as traitors, and the internees feared death sentences. Some of the Balts attempted suicide and a Latvian officer did succeed in killing himself.

Baltic and German soldiers being extradited from a prison camp in Eksjö

The reason that these soldiers were returned and not others was that the surrender document signed stated that all soldiers on the day of surrender must remain at that location. The Swedes only returned soldiers that arrived after 8 May 1945. The 36,000+ civilians and soldiers from the Baltic states that entered before that date were allowed to stay.

In 1970, Johan Bergenstråhle made a documentary film, Baltutlämningen (English title: A Baltic Tragedy), about the subject. The film is based on Per Olov Enquist’s Legionärerna: En roman om baltutlämningen (1968) (English title: The Legionnaires: A Documentary Novel) which had won the Nordic Council's Literature Prize and Enquist collaborated on the script.

On 20 June 1994, a party of the deportees (34 Latvians, 4 Estonians, and one Lithuanian) was received by King Carl XVI Gustaf of Sweden at the Royal Palace in Stockholm.