And in the Vienna Woods the Trees Remain

The book is told through letters exchanged between a Jewish boy who had to flee from war-torn Austria to Sweden and his parents, who were not allowed to leave.

I was interested in the book because during his stay, this Jewish boy became friends with the later founder of IKEA — Ingvar Kamprad. And they became friends even though Ingvar was a great enthusiast of right-wing politics and Nazism.

Unfortunately, only a fraction of the book is devoted to the relationship between these two, so I was a bit disappointed.

Not that the correspondence between the boy and his family isn’t interesting, but as a person living in Central Europe, where these events took place, I have the feeling that I’ve heard similar stories many times before.