Ilmar Reepalu

IImar Reepalu (born 11 October 1943) is a Swedish Social Democrat politician and currently the mayor of the city of Malmö. After a professional life as a urban planner in Borås and Malmö, he became a municipal commissioner of Malmö in 1985. In the beginning for the opposition, but since the 1994 election he serves as the chairman of the municipal board - a position equal to that of mayor.

Although frequently expressing controversial views - most notable is his statements on the wave of rising antisemitism in Malmö - he also commands great respect as being instrumental in the transformation of Malmö from an industrial town in decline towards being a centre of culture and green technology.^[1]

Biography

Ilmar Reepalu was born in October 1943 in Nõva in Ostland, present day Estonia. In August 1944 his family fled the advancing Soviet forces in a open boat, heading towards Sweden. Outside the island of Svenska Högarna their boat capsized, but they were saved by the patrolling Swedish navy. He and the rest of his family was at first interned at a refugee camp at Medevi Brunn, but they could later esablish themselves in Motala where Reepalu grew up.

Reepalu's political life started in 1958, when he as a student at the gymnasium where involved with starting the local branch of Social Democratic Youth League. After serving his draft time as a combat diver with the Costal Rangers, he moved to Gothenburg where he took a degree in Civil engineering (1968) and trained as an architect (1970), both at Chalmers University of Technology. During his time in Gothenburg, he where also involved in political groups that fought the proposed demolitions in the Haga district of Gothenburg.

From 1970 to 1973 Reepalu was employed by VBB, a building consultant firm. From 1973 he was employed as a urban planner in Malmö, except between 1977 and 1979 when he was the acting head of urban planning in Borås.

Reepalu have expressed that he did not want to mix political assignments with his job as an urban planner, so when then-mayor Nils Yngvesson asked him in 1973 to sit for the Social Democrats at the building board of Malmö he declined. In 1984 he got his first political assignment, as a alternate member for the health board. The year after he was employed full-time as a politician, becoming a municipal commissioner and in 1994 he was elected chairman of the municipal board.

Reepalu as mayor

In the past he has been accused of antisemitism and not doing enough to protect Jewish from attacks.^[2]

See also

• History of the Jews in Sweden

References