The Holocaust in Norway
[7] 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.
Halldis Neegaard Østbye became the de facto spokeswoman for increasingly virulent propaganda against Jews, summarized in her 1938 book Jødeproblemet og dets løsning (The Jewish Problem and its Solution).
To identify Norwegian Jews, the authorities relied on information from the police and telegraph service, whilst the synagogues in Oslo and Trondheim were ordered to produce full rosters of their members, including their names, date of birth, profession, and address.
[8][9][10][11] On the basis of the lists compiled in the spring, the Justice Department and county governors started in the fall to register all Jewish property, including commercial holdings.
These were put into use on 10 January 1942, when advertisements in the mainstream press ordered all Norwegian Jews to immediately present themselves at local police stations to have their identification papers stamped.
[14] Both German and Norwegian police officials intensified efforts to target the Jewish population during 1941 and the Falstad concentration camp was established near Levanger, north of Trondheim.
[citation needed] The first Jewish Norwegian to be deported was Benjamin Bild, a labor union activist and mechanic accused of sabotage, who died in Gross Rosen.
The Torah scrolls had been secured in the early days of the war, and before long the Methodist church in Trondheim had provided temporary facilities for Jewish religious services.
[18] Several others followed; altogether eight of these were shot in the woods outside the camp that became the infamous site of extrajudicial executions in Norway[19] On 24 February 1942, all remaining Jewish property in Trondheim was seized by Nazi authorities.
After numerous cases of harassment and violence against individuals, orders were issued to Norwegian police authorities on 24 and 25 October 1942, to arrest all Jewish men over the age of 15 and confiscate all their property.
On 26 October, several Norwegian police branches and 20 soldiers of Germanic-SS rounded up and arrested Jewish men, often[citation needed] leaving their wives and children on the street.
On the morning of 26 November, German soldiers and more than 300 Norwegian officials (belonging to Statspolitiet, Kriminalpolitiet, Hirden and Germanske SS-Norge)[22] were deployed to arrest and detain Jewish women and children.
[ Price gouging or ] extortion of refugees, was focused on in Marte Michelet's 2018 book; the existence of those phenomena is hardly controversial, according to Ervin Kohn and Rolf Golombek (leaders of the largest Jewish congregation in Oslo).
According to the trial against him in Baden-Baden in 1964, Reinhard arranged for the SS Donau to set aside capacity for prisoner transport on 26 November and ordered Karl Marthinsen to mobilize the necessary Norwegian forces to effect the transit from Norway.
Consequently, the Norwegian government was regularly briefed on Allied intelligence relating to atrocities committed by German forces in Eastern Europe and in occupied Netherlands, France, etc.
On 1 December 1942, the Norwegian foreign minister, Trygve Lie sent a letter to the British section of the World Jewish Congress where he asserted that: ...it has never been found necessary for the Norwegian Government to appeal to the people of Norway to assist and to protect other individuals of classes in Norway, who have been selected for persecution by the German aggressors, and I feel convinced that such an appeal is not needed in order to urge the population to fulfill their human duty towards the Jews of Norway.Although the Norwegian resistance by the fall of 1942 had a sophisticated network for transmitting and propagating urgent news among the population that led to very effective passive resistance efforts, e.g., in keeping the teachers' union, athletics, physicians, etc., out of Nazi control,[41] no such notifications were issued to save Jews.
[42] Resistance groups including Milorg, however, were partially being unraveled in 1942, and executions of their own members, are some of the events that seemingly eclipsed the subject regarding the signals about an upcoming rounding-up of Jews.
"[44] The discrimination, persecution, and ultimately deportation of Jews was enabled by the cooperation of Norwegian agencies that were not entirely co-opted by Nasjonal Samling or the German occupying powers.
In addition to the police and local sheriffs who implemented the directives of Statspolitiet, the taxis aided in transporting Jewish prisoners to their point of deportation and even sued the Norwegian government after the war for wages owed to them for such services.
Within a few weeks, however, the Norwegian home front organizations (including Milorg and Sivorg) had developed the means to move relatively large numbers of refugees out of Norway and also financed these escapes when needed.
"When the White Buses travelled down [southward from Scandinavia] to fetch prisoners who had survived, Jews were not permitted on board because they were no longer considered Norwegian citizens, and the government after 8 May [1945] refused to finance their transportation home.
[53] On 27 May 1995, Bjørn Westlie published an article in the daily, Dagens Næringsliv, that highlighted the uncompensated financial loss incurred by the Norwegian Jewish community as a result of Nazi persecution during the war.
In addition, Jewish professionals were typically deprived of any legal right to practice their profession: attorneys were disbarred, physicians and dentists lost their licenses, and craftsmen were locked out of their trade associations.
[62] A small area, referred to as a park near Carl Berners plass, "Dette er et fint sted" ["this is a nice place"] in Oslo, has a Holocaust monument.
[63][64] On the International Holocaust Remembrance Day in 2012, Prime Minister of Norway Jens Stoltenberg issued an official apology for the role played by Norwegian police in the deportations.
[65] Stoltenberg delivered his speech near the dock in the capital Oslo where 532 Jews boarded the cargo ship SS Donau on 26 November 1942, bound for Nazi camps.
[65] In 2015, the chief of public relations of the Norwegian State Railways, Åge-Christoffer Lundeby, said: "The transportation of Jews that were to be deported and the use of POWs on the Nordland Line is a dark chapter of NSB's history".
The book received great reviews, but also criticism from historians at Jødisk Museum in Oslo—Mats Tangestuen and Torill Torp-Holte—for losing sight of important nuances in the portrayal of who were helpers and who were violators.
[76] Harry Rødner's book Sviket, published in 2022, combines his family's history with the results of his investigation into the policies of the Norwegian government in exile, including Haakon VII in dealing with news about the Holocaust in Norway.
Jewish museums were (in the 21st century) established in Oslo and Trondheim, and there have been notable papers written within criminology about the legal purge in Norway after World War II.
