»I felt like I had killed my best friend. It was my secret. But it became a poison - eating me up from the inside«. 

One of the young people who died in the fire was Sofia Charlotta Nilsson. She would have turned 17 shortly after. I met her mother and stepfather, Gunilla and Peter Axman, back in 1998. They are now 69 and 67 years old and live in the countryside, in Varberg, south of Gothenburg. They moved there a few years after Sofia’s death.

In the vast garden, there are fruit trees and over 170 rose bushes, including a yellow rose named Sofia. Some of them are still in bloom, even though it’s has been a cold and windy autumn. Sofia’s dog, Fila, is buried out here. The dog helped Gunilla cope with her grief.

»After Sofia died, I was forced to walk the dog. That way, I also got out. Otherwise, I would just stay in, lying under the covers«, she says.

In the kitchen, candles are lit, and on the table a freshly baked apple pie, and whipped cream is served. A red-striped cat is purring on Peter’s lap. On the sideboard in the hallway, there’s a picture of Sofia in a frame with a golden angel. A smiling girl with light hair tied in a ponytail. A social gathering point for friends. She was a horse enthusiast and close to her two years older brother, Jonas, who is also sitting at the kitchen table.

The last time Gunilla Axman spoke to her daughter was on the evening of October 29th, around 8 PM. Sofia had just received her first mobile phone and called to say she was going to a party.

»Just make sure you do not go home all alone«, her mother replied.

Gunilla wasn’t worried when she went to bed, nor when she woke up early in the morning and realized that Sofia hadn’t come home. She thought her daughter was staying at one of her friends’ houses, Meriam or Amanda, who were also at the party.

»I thought, »She’ll probably come home. She usually does««, Gunilla recalls.

Like a wildfire in the chest

Rozbeh Aslanian is 44 years old today. His hair is gray and gathered in a ponytail, and he is dressed in a well-tailored blue suit, driving a Mercedes. He owns a marketing agency, is an author, and gives lectures on integration. He is also a spokesperson for B.O.A - the association for the relatives of fire victims. We meet at Ramberget, a rocky mountain overlooking Gothenburg below. This is where Rozbeh comes when he needs to think. Today, he’s here to talk. About the event that changed his life.

»That evening divided my life into two chapters«, he says.

Rozbeh Aslanian was born in Iran. Both of his parents were politically active, imprisoned, and tortured. In 1986, his mother fled with Rozbeh and his younger brother to Turkey, where they spent a year in a refugee camp before eventually ending up in Sweden. Like many other young people at the party, he had grown up in the northeastern suburbs marked by crime, unemployment, and poverty. There were young people from 44 different national backgrounds present at the party.

Shortly after the music had stopped, the door to the back staircase slammed open, and thick black smoke billowed into the room.

»It felt like the whole room took a massive breath. And then there was a deafening noise«, says Rozbeh Aslanian.

In technical terms, it’s called a »backdraft« when smoke gases from a fire ignite like an explosion. The lights went out, and people began to scream.

»My friend stood frozen to the floor. I grabbed his arm and pulled him with me towards the exit«.

But all 400 people in the room were thinking the same thing. The crowd moved from side to side. Each time, some people fell, others landed on top of them. Rozbeh was pushed forward, while his friend was pulled backward. They lost grip, and Rozbeh ended up in the hallway between the party room and the stairwell. Here, he was pinned against a wall with his back, unable to move.

»There were people below me and above me. My right arm was trapped between the legs of a girl, and her mouth was right next to my ear. She kept screaming for her mother, again and again: »Mom, mom, mom! Come and help me. I can’t breathe««.

Rozbeh tried to reassure her, but she was hyperventilating in panic. The smoke was very thick, and he could only take small mouthfuls of air at a time. Each breath felt like a wildfire in his chest.

»The girl kept screaming. But there was less and less energy in her screams, and suddenly, she went silent«.

Blocked by bodies

Around the same time, fire engines from several of Gothenburg’s fire stations arrived in the parking lot with firefighters. One of them was Peter Karlsson. He is a calm man with gray hair and a determined look behind his metal frame glasses. At 66 years old, he’s retired. He enjoys life in his row house in Torsland with his wife Agneta, who serves coffee and cinnamon buns with powdered sugar in the conservatory.

In 1998, he was 41 years old and an experienced firefighter working at the Central Station in Gothenburg. When the fire broke out, he was on the night shift. The firefighters had been playing floorball and ordered pizzas. Shortly before midnight, while some of them were heading to bed, the alarm went off.

All the men jumped into their vehicles. The call for help from the party had come at 11:43 PM, and the fire department from the nearest station arrived just seven minutes later. Subsequently, several other fire stations were alerted. Peter Karlsson drove at the rear in the station’s largest ladder truck when the incident commander at the scene radioed them. He asked them to alert hospitals to be ready to receive victims. And then he said something Peter Karlsson would never forget: »Now they’re jumping out of the windows«.

As the girl on top of Rozbeh went quiet, other sounds became clear. Voices of friends crying for help. And the noise from the party room followed by waves of heat. Rozbeh could feel his long curly hair and eyebrows melting in the heat. The room was pitch black. He managed to free his arm, and with strength he didn’t know he had, he lifted himself up, freed his legs, and began to move towards the exit.

»There was no floor beneath my feet. Every step I took was on a friend’s knee or face. I fell and had to crawl instead«.

He couldn’t breathe in the toxic smoke. It felt like he was underwater without knowing if he would ever resurface. And when he turned the corner, he saw something that filled him with dread: the door to the staircase was completely blocked by human bodies. Only a narrow gap at the top of the door frame was visible.

»I looked up at the pile of people and thought, »It’s over««.

New strenght

When Peter Karlsson parked at the burning building, he was met by the incident commander who asked him to leave the fire truck behind.

»We don’t need firefighting. It’s all about rescuing lives«, he said.

Peter Karlsson put on his smoke-diving gear and rushed into the building. At that point, there were still more than 150 people inside the building, but the door to the main room was blocked by lifeless youngster. »At first, it was all about getting them moved so we could get in and save more«, Peter Karlsson explains

.

Rozbeh Aslanian was on the other side of the door. He tried to snuggle up to his friends beneath and around him. He was tired and wanted to sleep. But in that moment, he had a thought:

»It began like a little spark, which grew bigger and bigger: I thought about how angry my mother would be if I didn’t come home. She would scold me and maybe give me a curfew. I thought, »She’ll kill me if I don’t come home«. It was highly illogical, but the fear gave me new strength, and I began to climb up the pile of people«.

Rows of corpses

Outside the door, firefighters, along with surviving young people, were pulling people out from the pile of bodies. Primarily those at the bottom who were being kept alive by the few pockets of oxygen that were still left within the pile. When Rozbeh was pulled out from the narrow passage in the doorway, he heard someone desperately screaming his name. It was his younger brother.

»He carried me out to the parking lot and disappeared back inside to help again«.

Outside, in the frosty October night, Rozbeh passed out on the asphalt. When he woke up, he felt being dragged away and placed on a concrete floor in a nearby garage. Here, many other people lay in rows – his deceased friends.

Rozbeh was probably placed in the garage because they believed him to be dead. The young people in the garage had orange and green blankets over them, but their feet stuck out, and he could recognize them by their shoes. At the same time, he heard the ringtone of mobile phones in their pockets. Calls from their worried families back home that they couldn’t answer.

»I listened to this symphony of ringtones, amplified by the garage’s acoustics. It was a sound that I continued to hear in my head for a very long time«.

Suddenly, he felt a hand being pushed down his throat. It was a rescue worker checking for signs of life among the rows of lifeless young people. He did this by triggering their gag reflex.

»I threw up a lot of black foam, and the man shouted, »This one’s alive!« That was the last thing I heard before I was taken into the ambulance and transported to the hospital«.

Red-hot Zipper

When the door was finally clear of bodies, Peter Karlsson entered the building’s first floor. Here, the young people were piled up, half-conscious or dead from smoke inhalation.

»They were in layers up to here«, he says, indicating with his hand one and a half meters. He grabbed a girl and lifted her. Below, there was another one calling out: »Help me«.

»Every time I took one, there was another one I had to leave behind. I have no idea how many I carried out«.

One of the young men he lifted had a jacket on.

»The zipper was so red-hot that my glove melted«, says Peter Karlsson.

Three times in half an hour, he had to change his oxygen bottle because the work required so much air. An investigation later estimated that firefighters managed to rescue between 60 and 70 young people from the room. But at 12:30 AM - just three-quarters of an hour after the alarm was raised - the incident commander concluded that there were no more lives to save. Instead, the firefighters shifted their focus to extinguishing the fire.

At the same time, the phone rang in a house in northern Gothenburg, waking up Gunnar Kampe, the priest at Hammerkullen Church in the suburb of Angered. It was 2 AM, and on the other end of the line, one of his staff members told him, that there had been »a fire at a nightclub with many young people«.

»Can we open the church«? she asked.

»I’m coming«, replied Gunnar Kampe.

He is 82 years old and still lives in the house where he was lying fast asleep when the phone rang. From there, he hurried to the church. When he arrived at 2:30 AM, a small group of young people had already gathered. But more and more kept arriving, and over the weekend, the church became a meeting place for over 500 bereaved and survivors, primarily young people.

»They just kept coming«, says Gunnar Kampe, who put all his staff to work making coffee, cooking food, and talking to the bereaved.

»People were crying and hugging each other on the church pews. Hundreds of candles were burning. It smelled like a Catholic cathedral«.

The newspaper in the mailbox

During the night, survivors were brought to three different hospitals in Gothenburg. Not only firefighters, ambulances, and police were there on the scene, but also media from all over Sweden and several other Nordic countries had arrived. At 3:30 AM, a press conference was held at the fire station. After Peter Karlsson and his colleagues had finished extinguishing the fire, they returned to the station, had coffee and some breakfast.

»In the media, there was a lot of talk about all those who died and not so much about how many we saved. It was as if we should feel guilty that so many had died. But I didn’t feel that way«, he says.

At 6:30 AM, Peter Karlsson went home. His wife had just woken up and was very surprised. »You’re not supposed to be off duty yet«, she said.

He told her what had happened, and she turned on the TV. As always after a night shift, Peter Karlsson went to bed. But after a few hours, he woke up. His parents had come to visit. They had heard about the fire and wanted to check on him.

»It’s the only time in my many years as a firefighter that I didn’t sleep through«.

Sofia’s mother, Gunilla Axman, woke up early on Friday morning, and when Sofia hadn’t returned home, she tried calling her mobile phone. She also tried calling her friends Meriam and Amanda, but no one answered.

»They were also deceased«, Gunilla says quietly.

She went outside to walk the dog, and on her way back, she picked up the newspaper from the mailbox. On the front page, there was a large picture from the scene of the fire and the headline:

»At least 50 dead in fire last night – Party in Backa ended in catastrophe«

When Gunilla Axman saw that, she knew that Sofia was dead.

»I could feel it. I sensed it in here«, she says, placing her hand on her chest.

Soot on Sofia’s cheek

But it wasn’t until Saturday, one and a half days after the fire, that the family finally got confirmation about her death. Gunilla and Peter Axman, Jonas, his father, and his wife went to Sahlgrenska Hospital, where relatives had the opportunity to identify the deceased. They were led into a large room with long tables. On the tables were trays with jewelry and other items found on the young people.

It was Jonas who spotted his sister’s necklace. It was on a tray along with her belly button piercing, and a description which read: »Girl. Long, blond hair«

»When I read that, I thought, »Well, then her body exists« I was almost relieved. I thought she would be completely burned«, says Gunilla.

Accompanied by a priest, two police officers, and a psychologist, the family was led to the mortuary. Gunilla asked the psychologist to go in first to see what awaited them. The psychologist returned and said that Sofia still had makeup on and only a little soot on her cheek and nose. When they entered, Gunilla first held her hands in front of her face.

»Just like when you watch a scary movie. Slowly, I removed my hands. And at last, I dared to look. She was so beautiful, as if she were sleeping«.

Afterwards, they bought flowers and went to the scene of the fire, where they spent a lot of time the following days. A sense of community developed in the parking lot.

»We met everyone else there: Sofia’s friends, other parents, and siblings. We couldn’t stay at home«, says Gunilla.

They also visited Hammerkullen’s Church several times. Here, every day Gunnar Kampe read the names out loud of the deceased young people, as they were identified.

The people who came were not typical churchgoers, Gunnar Kampen recalls:

»I met a girl at one point who was sitting outside. She said, »I’ve never been in a church before, but now I’ve been here for four days««.

The fire occurred at the end of October. It wasn’t until the new year that things went back to normal.

»Day after day they came. I was only home to sleep a few hours a day, then I stood under the shower until I was awake and then went back«, says Gunnar Kampe.

For Gunnar Kampe, it became a milestone in his life as a priest.

»My faith was put to the test«, he explains.

»I had to prove in practice what loving your neighbor is about. What was really in the heart. But you can’t organize that loving, warm atmosphere. It just came«, he says.

The town’s children

Rozbet Aslanian was hospitalized for ten days. The muscles in his legs were crushed, he walked with crutches, and his long hair was burned. Subsequent examinations showed that he had lost 10 percent of his lung function.

»But my injuries were minor. Many were devastated by severe burns. Some lost their arms and legs«, he says.

While he was in the hospital, his best friend’s parents came to visit. He couldn’t look them in the eyes because he felt it was his fault that his friend had died. Because Rozbeh had not listened when he wanted to go outside.

»They asked me, »Where did you last see him? You were supposed to meet up. What did he say to you?« I couldn’t tell them it was my fault he had died. Instead, I lied and said, »I didn’t see him««, he says.

In the time following the fire, the town provided a lot of support for the young people. There were psychologists, workshops, and field trips - many opportunities to come together.

»The municipality tried to do everything they could. They saw us as the town’s children. Everyone was deeply affected«, says Rozbeh.

Part of this support was also driven by a sense of guilt towards a generation of young people with foreign backgrounds who had previously gone under the radar and lacked opportunities in the city.

»We were a generation of children who came with the waves of refugees in the early 1990s, who had become teenagers and started hanging out in the city. We needed places to meet, party, and be together. That’s one of the reasons we organized our own party«, says Rozbeh.

An open heart

Gunilla Axman and the rest of the family attended the funerals of all the deceased. However, Gunilla, Peter, and Jonas don’t remember much from the first few years after the fire.

»Grief has erased it. We were gone. Shut down«, says Jonas.

Gunilla Axman tried to take care of her family and her part-time job as a social worker. Occasionally, she met with several of the other mothers. Together, they organized a memorial event for 900 people in Angered’s sports hall one year after the fire. It was an effort to get the city’s young people to go out again.

»A celebration of life«, the newspapers called it.

Along the way, Gunilla and Peter Axman also got in touch with Rozbeh Aslanian, who had been a friend of Sofia.

»They found her phone and went through her list of friends, calling to tell them she had passed away«, says Rozbeh.

He told them that he had been at the party, and over time, they formed a connection. He couldn’t talk to his own mother about the fire.

»She had experienced torture and couldn’t handle other people’s traumas. But because Gunilla, Peter, and I had lost in the same way, we could share it. I was their link to Sofia, and they were the parents I needed«, says Rozbeh.

For several years, Gunilla and Peter Axman organized horse riding camps for survivors and bereaved. They opened their home to several of the young people and, over time, not only embraced Rozbeh but also another young woman as their daughter.

»I understood that I could open my heart. There is plenty of room in here«, says Gunilla, pointing to her chest.

Four young perpetrators

The technical investigations revealed that the fire had been intentionally set. A year after the fire, the authorities offered a reward of three million kroner to anyone who could provide information about who had ignited the fire. A few months later, four young men between the ages of 17 and 19 were arrested and charged with arson. They had been denied entry to the discotheque because they wanted to get in for free, and subsequently, they decided to disrupt the party and set fire to some newspapers on the back stairs under a pile of chairs. Afterward, they fled.

For Rozbeh the betrayal was even deeper. He knew all four perpetrators.

»Three of them were good friends and part of the same circle as me. When I found out, I hated them so much that I only thought about them dying. I had fantasies of putting out a cigarette on their faces, cutting them with a knife«, he recalls.

The four young men appeared before the district court in May 2000 and then before the court of appeals in October of the same year. The one who had started the fire was sentenced to eight years in prison, two others received seven-year sentences, and the last, who was under 18, was given a three-year youth sanction.

Both Gunilla, Peter, Jonas, and Rozbeh were present in court. Some of the bereaved were furious that the perpetrators didn’t receive harsher punishments. However, neither Gunilla, Peter, nor Jonas felt anger or hatred.

»The sorrow and pain took up so much space. There was no room for hatred. We spent all our energy just to get up, eat, and take a shower. To manage daily life«, Gunilla Axman explains.

Gunilla Axman had the opportunity to speak in court. She chose to read out all 63 names of the young people who had died.

»The perpetrators knew many of those who had died. I thought maybe they would feel something. I was hoping for an ending like in a movie, where they would stand up straight and say, ’I’m so sorry.’ But they didn’t. They shut down«.

Rozbeh also addressed the accused.

»I told them what I thought about friendship, loyalty, and betrayal and why I believed they could never call themselves anyone’s friend again«.

According to the newspapers, it was the only time that the accused who had started the fire broke down and began to cry.

Seven years later, Rozbeh was in Stockholm to visit his then-girlfriend when he suddenly encountered one of the perpetrators in the metro. He had just been released from prison. They looked each other directly in the eyes.

»He looked sad and was not a physical threat to me, but I knew what he had done, and I got scared«, says Rozbeh.

He considered pushing him onto the train tracks.

»For so many years, I had fantasized about taking his life, and now I had the chance. But I thought, if I do it, then I am at least as bad a person as he is«.

Instead, he turned away, took the escalator up, and went out onto the street. There, he broke down in tears and called Peter Axman.

»He talked me through all the emotions I had. And afterwards, I understood that I was on my way to forgiveness«.

One of the perpetrators has since left Sweden, but the other three still live in Gothenburg. They have name protection due to threats. And several of them have been in prison for crimes related to organized crime.

There are many ways to move forward, says Rozbeh. But forgiveness is central.

»Even a five-year-old can figure out that you shouldn’t start a fire when your friends are dancing on the other side of the wall. It was very, very stupid. But they had no intention to kill anybody. And I have forgiven them«.

Defeating the demon

After the funerals and the trial, many expected the survivors and relatives to move on. Rozbeh Aslanian went to Malmö in south of Sweden to study. It was an escape.

»I didn’t want to be in Gothenburg anymore. Every street corner, every parking lot reminded me of people who were no longer there. A time that no longer existed. I lost 35 friends that night«.

At the same time, he was plagued by guilt.

»I felt like I had killed my best friend. It was my secret. But it became a poison - eating me up from the inside«.

He tried to numb the guilt with alcohol, girls, and exercise.

»I felt like I had become a bad person. And I decided to take my own life«.

But first, he had to tell his best friend’s parents what had really happened that night. He called and asked if he could stop by. Throughout all the years, he had avoided talking to them, so they were surprised but happy. He took a train to Gothenburg. »The worst journey I have ever made«, he says.

Shortly after, he found himself in his friend’s kitchen. The parents had poured some coffee and asked him to sit down, but he remained on his feet.

He told them how he hadn’t listened to his friend, who suggested they should leave. How he had done everything to help him out as they ran towards the exit. And how they had lost grip of each other.

»And then I said to them, ’I’ve come to tell you that it was me who took your son’s life««.

The next thing he remembers is being in his friend’s mother’s arms.

»She hugged me, kissed me on the forehead multiple times, and whispered in my ear again and again, »It wasn’t you who started the fire. It wasn’t you who started the fire. Remember that««.

They stood like that for a long time.

»She said, »I want you to leave that room. Don’t stay in there. Leave. You need to be free«. And I felt something change inside me at that moment«.

When Rozbeh went back to Malmo, he could feel that he had left a heavy backpack in his friend’s parents’ kitchen, a burden he had carried for many years. In the days that followed, he felt lighter and stopped thinking about taking his own life.

»I understood that I had defeated the biggest demon in my life, which was the guilt over my friend’s death«.

When the day approaches

For Gunilla, grief held on to her for many years.

»I felt like I wasn’t really living. I couldn’t remember anything. I had no energy. I could only do one thing at a time. I hardly recognized myself«.

After about a year, she got in touch with psychologist Regina Birkehorn.

»She told me, »Gunilla, you’re in a crisis. It’s entirely normal«. I realized that there was nothing wrong with me. But I was still grieving«.

Regina Birkehorn later wrote the book ’Brännande Sorg,’ (translated: burning sorrow) where she interviewed young survivors and families. In 2009, Gunilla Axman trained in crisis management, and for many years now, she has worked as a counselor for both businesses and individuals, dealing with issues like divorce, deaths, or burnout.

»It felt very meaningful to use my own experiences in this way«, Gunilla says.

It’s been 25 years since the fire. Just like every other year, the survivors feel it in their bodies as the day approaches.

»You sense it in the air. When the autumn cold sets in. You get a special feeling in your body even now, so many years later«, says Sofia’s brother, Jonas.

Gunilla nods.

»In the days before, you lose energy and think, ’Why do I feel like this?’ But then you remember it’s October. The memories are ingrained in your cells«.

Gunilla isn’t bitter. Not even though »life didn’t turn out the way we wished«, as she says.

What hurts the most is that Jonas no longer has a sister, and his son, 19-year-old Emil, doesn’t have an aunt or cousins. She speaks softly:

»But then you have to look at the love that still exists in what remains«.

Under the same disco ball

The building on Backaplan still stands, between a real estate agency on one side and an indoor playland on the other. Since I was here last, a memorial in marble has been erected facing the road, bearing all the names of the deceased, embossed in gold. Their ages are also listed. The youngest was 12 years old.

Traffic flows by. A father pushing a stroller with his child and two girls wearing headscarves also pass. The space on the first floor has been converted into a memorial room. The walls are painted white, and autumn light streams in through large windows onto the light wooden floor. Only the back staircase, where the fire was ignited, has remained raw gray concrete with soot marks.

Along the walls on shelves, there are portraits of all the deceased young people. Many of the letters, flowers, stuffed animals, and pictures that were placed on the parking lot in the time after the deadly fire have been preserved and displayed in glass cases. Papers and pictures have turned yellow. The flowers have withered and lost their colors. Personal belongings from the young people found at the site are also behind glass. Small echoes from the past: a charred boot, a library card, a lip balm.

Rozbeh Aslanian often gives lectures here. Since moving back to Gothenburg, it has become his city again. He talks about the difference between being a victim of an event and a survivor of the same event.

»I have survived despite all of this this, rather than becoming a victim because of this. I can wake up in the morning and be grateful that I survived because I haven’t been frozen by the trauma but have chosen to make it a part of my life«, he says.

When he took over the chairmanship of B.O.A - the association for the relatives of fire victims eight years ago, he chose to connect his work to the issue of integration, which he is also politically engaged in. He gives lectures in schools and to professionals working with integration, using the story of the fire to talk about diversity.

»My message is that we were young people from 44 different countries, who laughed, danced, and fell in love under the same disco ball. If we could do that in a room that was too small for us, we can also do it in a country as large as Sweden«, he says, adding, »I use the story to build bridges between people rather than turning it into a story about grief and pain«.

He misses his friends and wishes they were still with him.

»But today, 25 years later, I can look back and see that I have gained lessons and knowledge from the fire that I could never have obtained in any other way, and that I wouldn’t want to be without«.

Many times, over the past few years, he has repeatedly asked himself, »Why did I survive? There were so many who died, some of whom were closer to the door when the fire broke out. Why me?« His answer is that he survived so he could tell the story of the fire, as he has just done.

It’s drizzling over Gothenburg. He must move on, to give a lecture to a group of young people. »It’s the way I keep my friends alive«, says Rozbeh Aslanian before he gets into his car and drives down to his city, down the hill.