Sture Karlsson came home early from school and told his mother that he needed to undress naked to get different parts of his body full.

"This is Hitler's invention," she said.

Did not understand I was Hitler's invention was for something, he says in the documentary I was a lower race.

The year was 1952, long after the Institute of Racial Biology had stopped working with pure racial biology.

But in Norrbotten, doctors and teachers measured people all the way into the 50s, without government directives.

- Mother had asked the teacher what it was about, but got the answer that it was part of the school's activities.

That was all, says Sture Karlsson.

"Pointed out as lower standing"

The historian Curt Persson has roots in Kurravaara in Norrbotten and has studied the racial biological measurements that took place during the 19th and 20th centuries.

He says that although skull measurements were made on many groups, they were based on an ideology of a lower standing race.

- The Tornedalians, like other national minorities, are presented as a threat to the Nordic race, he says.

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"All types were measured, but those who are distinguished are what we today call national minorities and indigenous peoples," says historian Curt Persson Photo: SVT

Watch the entire documentary I was a lower race on Sunday 7 March at 19.00 on SVT2, or on SVT Play.