History of the Jews in Norway

[2] After tireless efforts by the poet Henrik Wergeland, politician Peder Jensen Fauchald, school principal Hans Holmboe and others, in 1851 the Norwegian parliament (the Stortinget) lifted the ban against Jews and they were awarded religious rights on a par with Christian dissenters.

A comprehensive study of contemporaneous documents, for instance, such as testaments, contracts, and legal cases among other primary data did not mention Jews or a Jewish community in Norway.

While Norway was part of the Danish kingdom from 1536 to 1814, Denmark introduced a number of religious restrictions both to uphold the Protestant Reformation in general and against Jews in particular.

In 1569, Fredrik II ordered that all foreigners in Denmark had to affirm their commitment to 25 articles of faith central to Lutheranism, on pain of deportation, forfeiture of all property, and death.

[9] In this condition, the existence of anti-Semitism can be considered negligible because the traditional Jewish prejudice often stemmed from the perception that the Jews controlled the economic, political and social spheres of a specific European society.

The kings generally tolerated Jewish merchants, investors, and bankers whose contributions of benefit to the economy of Denmark-Norway on the one hand, while seeking to restrict their movements, residence, and presence in public life.

Lutheran minister Niels Hertzberg was one of those who wrote against Norwegian prejudice, ultimately influencing the later votes on the constitutional amendment to allow Jews to settle in Norway.

[2] Based on short-lived hopes that Denmark's concessions at the Treaty of Kiel in 1814 would allow for Norwegian independence, a constituent assembly was convened in Eidsvoll in the spring of 1814.

Nicolai Wergeland[16] and Georg Sverdrup felt that it would be incompatible with Judaism to deal honestly with Christians, writing that "no person of the Jewish faith may come within Norway's borders, far less reside there."

Other prominent framers, such as Hans Christian Ulrik Midelfart spoke "beautifully" in defense of the Jews, and also Johan Caspar Herman Wedel-Jarlsberg expressed in more muted terms the backwardness of the proposition.

In 1817, Glogau had challenged Christian Magnus Falsen, one of the proponents of the ban against Jews at the constitutional assembly about the meaning of the prohibition, asking whether he should be embarrassed by his ancestors or his homeland when relating his legacy to his children.

[19] Falsen responded by asserting that Judaism "carries nothing but ridicule and contempt toward the person that does not profess to it...making it a duty for each Jew to destroy [all nations that accept him].

There were also deportation proceedings against suspected Jews who could not produce a baptismal certificate, among them the singer Carl Friedrich Coppello (alias Meyer Marcus Koppel), opticians Martin Blumenbach and Henri Leia, Moritz Lichtenheim, and others.

On September 10, all remaining legislation related to the ban was repealed by the passage of "Lov om Ophævelse af det hidtil bestaaende Forbud mot at Jøder indfinde sig i Riget m.v."

[27][28] Though the minority was small and widely dispersed, several stereotypes of Jews gained currency in the Norwegian press and popular literature in the early 20th century.

In books by the widely read authors Rudolf Muus and Øvre Richter Frich, Jews are described as sadistic and obsessed with money.

The attorney Eivind Saxlund published a pamphlet Jøder og Gojim ("Jews and Goyim") in 1910, which was characterized in 1922 as "antisemitic smut literature' by a writer in Dagbladet.

In particular, Jonas Søhr, a senior police official, took a particular interest and eventually rose to the leadership of the Norwegian Federation for Animal Protection, while also opposing admission of Jewish refugees during World War I.

[38][39][40] The Norwegian Islamic Council, on the other hand, has found that sedation is compatible with halal rules, provided that the animal's heart is still beating at the time of slaughter.

'"[42] Representatives of both Muslim and Jewish communities, citing scientific studies, dispute the assertion that traditional halal and kosher slaughtering methods lead to unnecessary animal suffering.

[46] Nansenhjelpen was a Norwegian humanitarian organization founded by Odd Nansen in 1936 to provide safe haven and assistance in Norway for Jewish refugees from areas in Europe under Nazi control.

Nazi Germany invaded Norway on 9 April 1940, and a number of Norwegians were immediately arrested, and two months later the occupying force established the first prisoners' camp at Ulven, outside Bergen.

[48] During the War, the civilian Norwegian police (politiet) in many cases helped the German occupiers to arrest those Jews who failed to escape in time.

"[55] In June 1997, the Committee delivered a divided report, split into a majority[52] and a minority:[56] On 15 May 1998, the Prime Minister of Norway, Kjell Magne Bondevik, proposed 450 million kr, covering both a 'collective' and an 'individual' restitution.

[64] In July 2006, during the 2006 Lebanon War, the congregation issued an advisory warning Jews not to wear kippot or other identifying items in public for fear of harassment or assault.

[65] On 17 September 2006, the Oslo Synagogue was attacked with an automatic weapon,[66] only days after it was made public that the building had been the planned target for the Algerian terror group GSPC that had been plotting a bombing campaign in the Norwegian capital.

The Oslo city court judge could not find sufficient evidence that the shots fired at the synagogue amounted to a terrorist act.

Jespersen joked on national television in his weekly routine that "I would like to take the opportunity to remember all the billions of fleas and lice that lost their lives in German gas chambers, without having done anything wrong other than settling on persons of Jewish background."

)[71] In February 2015, however, a group of young Muslims organised 1,500 people to form two 'rings of peace' around the synagogues in Oslo and Bergen in response to recent terror attacks against Jewish centers in Europe.

Common motifs such as 'Jews are evil and inhuman', 'Jews rule and exploit the world' and 'Jews hate peace and propagate wars' are repeated in more recently published drawings, as well as in antisemitic sketches from the beginning of the twentieth century.