The Holocaust in Norway

The German occupation of Norway began on 9 April 1940. In 1942, there were at least 2,173 Jews in Norway. At least 775 of them were arrested, detained and/or deported. More than half of the Norwegians who died in camps in Germany were Jews. 742 Jews were murdered in the camps and 23 Jews died as a result of extrajudicial execution, murder and suicide during the war, bringing the total of Jewish Norwegian dead to at least 765, comprising 230 complete households.

Many Jews survived by fleeing Norway, nearly two-thirds escaping. Of these, around 900 Jews were smuggled out of the country by the Norwegian resistance movement, mostly to Sweden but some also to the United Kingdom. Between 28 and 34 of those deported survived their continued imprisonment in camps (following their deportation)—and around 25 (of these) returned to Norway after the war. About 800 Norwegian Jews who had fled to Sweden returned after the war.

Background

The Jewish population in Norway was very small until the early 20th century, when pogroms in Russia and the Baltic states saw Jews seeking refuge, including in Norway. Another surge came in the 1930s, as Jews fled Nazi persecution in Germany and areas under German control. Niels Christian Ditleff was a Norwegian diplomat who in the late 1930s was posted to Warsaw, Poland. In the spring of 1939, he set up a transit station in Warsaw for Jewish refugees from Czechoslovakia that had been sent there through the sponsorship of Nansenhjelpen. Ditleff arranged for the refugees to receive food, clothing, and transportation to Gdynia, Poland, where they boarded ships bound for Norway. 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. The sanctuary in Norway was only shortlived.

The German invasion and occupation of Norway began on 9 April 1940. Josef Terboven was made Reichskommissar for Norway on 24 April 1940, even before the invasion was completed on 7 June 1940. The legitimate Norwegian government left the country, and German occupying authorities under Terboven put Norwegian civilian authorities under his control. This included various branches of Norwegian police, including the district sheriffs (Lensmannsetaten), criminal police, and order police. Nazi police branches, including the SD and Gestapo, also became part of a network that served as tools for increasingly oppressive policies toward the Norwegian populace.

As a deliberate strategy, Terboven's regime sought to use Norwegian, rather than German, officials to subjugate the Norwegian population. Although German police and paramilitary forces reported through the Reich Security Main Office chain of command, and Norwegian police formally into the newly formed Department of Police, the actual practice was that Norwegian police officials took direction from the German RSHA.

Much of the prejudice against Jews commonly found in Europe was also evident in Norway in the late 19th and early 20th century, and Nasjonal Samling (NS), the Nazi party in Norway, made antisemitism part of its political platform in the 1930s. 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). NS had also started gathering information about Norwegian Jews before the war started, and antisemitic op-ed articles were occasionally published in the mainstream press.

Preparations

The Nasjonal Samling (NS) was the Nazi party in Norway and started gathering information about Norwegian Jews before the war started. 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. Jewish burial societies and youth groups were likewise ordered to produce their lists.

In August, the synagogues were also ordered to produce lists of Jews who were not members. The resulting lists were cross-referenced with information Nasjonal Samling had compiled previously and information from the Norwegian Central Bureau of statistics. In the end, occupying authorities in Norway had a more complete list of Jews in Norway than most other countries under Nazi rule.

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. A complete inventory was transmitted to the police department in December 1941, and this also included individuals who were suspected of having a Jewish background.

Although several Norwegian Jews had already been arrested and deported as political prisoners in the early months of the occupation, the first measure targeting all Jews was an order from the German foreign ministry made through Terboven that on 10 May 1941 the police of Oslo were to confiscate radios from all Jews in the city. Within days local sheriffs throughout the entire country received the same orders.

On 20 December 1941, the Norwegian Department of Police ordered 700 stamps with a 2 cm tall "J" for use by authorities to stamp the identification cards of Jews in Norway. 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. They were also ordered to complete an extensive form. For purposes of this registration, a Jew was identified as anyone who had at least three "full-Jewish" grandparents; anyone who had two "full-Jewish" grandparents and was married to a Jew; or was a member of a Jewish congregation. This registration showed that about 1,400 Jewish adults lived in Norway.

The Norwegian State Railways "aided without protest in the deportation", according to author Halvor Hegtun.

In 1942, there were 2,173 Jews in Norway. Of these, it is estimated that 1,643 were Norwegian citizens, 240 were foreign citizens, and 290 were stateless.

An article on the University of Texas at Austin, College of Liberal Arts website states that Vidkun Quisling planned "to eradicate the Norwegian Sami because he considered them inferior to the Norwegian race".

Arrests and confiscation

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. Jews who were arrested automatically lost their citizenship. Jewish individuals, particularly those who were stateless, were briefly detained in connection with Operation Barbarossa. The first Jewish Norwegian to be deported was Benjamin Bild, a labor union activist and mechanic accused of sabotage, who died in Gross Rosen. Moritz Rabinowitz, was probably the first to be arrested in March 1941 for agitating against Nazi antisemitism in the Haugesund press. He was sent to Sachsenhausen concentration camp where he was beaten to death on 27 December 1942.

German troops occupied and vandalized the Trondheim Synagogue on 21 April 1941. 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. Several Jewish residents of Trondheim were arrested and detained at Falstad. The first such prisoner was Efraim Koritzinsky, a medical doctor and head of Trondheim hospital. 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 On 24 February 1942, all remaining Jewish property in Trondheim was seized by Nazi authorities.

After the establishment of first concentration camp

On 18 June 1941, 13 male Jews (they were considered old enough for working s laborers were arrested in Tromsø and Narvik and thereafter imprisoned at Sydspissen (the first concentration camp in Norway).

By the fall of 1942, about 150 Jews had fled Norway. The Jewish population in Norway had experienced some mistreatment specifically targeted at them, but the prevailing sense was that their lot was the same as all other Norwegians.

As the brutality of the Terboven regime came to light through the atrocities at Telavåg, Martial law in Trondheim in 1942, etc., persecution against Jews in particular became more pronounced.

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 leaving their wives and children on the street. These prisoners were held primarily at Berg concentration camp in Southern Norway and Falstad concentration camp in central parts of the country; some were held in local jails, while Jewish women were ordered to report in person to their local sheriffs every day.

On the morning of 26 November, German soldiers and more than 300 Norwegian officials (belonging to ''Statspolitiet'', '' Kriminalpolitiet'', ''Hirden'' and '' Germanske SS-Norge'') were deployed to arrest and detain Jewish women and children. These were sent by cars and train to the pier in Oslo where a cargo ship, the SS ''Donau'' was waiting to transport them to Stettin, and from there to Auschwitz.

By 27 November, all Jews in Norway (except one) were either deported and murdered, imprisoned, had fled to Sweden, or were in hiding in Norway.

Around 70 Jews remained imprisoned at Berg concentration camp until the end of the war, because they were married to "Aryans".

Deportation and mass murder

*The first group deportation of Jews from Norway was on 19 November 1942 when the ship ''Monte Rosa'' left Oslo with 21 Jewish deportees out of a total of 223 deportees (or prisoners) onboard.
*The original plan was to ship all remaining Jews in Norway in one cargo ship, the SS ''Donau'', on 26 November 1942, but only 532 prisoners boarded the SS ''Donau'' that day; on the same day, the MS ''Monte Rosa'' carried 26 Jews from Oslo. The ''Donau'' landed in Stettin on 30 November. The prisoners boarded cargo trains at Breslauer Bahnhof, 60 to a car and departed Stettin at 5:12 pm. The train journey to Auschwitz took 28 hours. All the prisoners arrived alive at the camp, and there they were sorted into two lines. 186 were sent to slave labor in the Birkenau subcamp, the rest - 345 - were killed (within hours) in Auschwitz's gas chambers.
*The remaining Jewish prisoners that had been en route to Oslo on 26 November for the departure of the ''Donau'' were delayed, possibly as a result of delaying tactics by the Red Cross and sympathetic railroad workers. These were imprisoned under harsh conditions at Bredtveit concentration camp in Oslo to await a later transport.
*On 24 February 1943, the Bredtveit prisoners, along with 25 from Grini, boarded the ''Gotenland'' in Oslo, altogether 158. The ship departed the following day, also landing in Stettin, where they arrived on 27 February. They traveled to Auschwitz via Berlin, where they stayed overnight at the Levetzowstrasse Synagogue. They arrived at Auschwitz on the night between 2 March and 3 March. Of the 158 who arrived from Norway, only 26 or 28 survived the first day, being sent to the Monowitz subcamp of Auschwitz.

There were smaller and individual deportations after the ''Gotenland'''s voyage. A smaller number of Jewish prisoners remained in camps in Norway during the war, primarily those who were married to non-Jewish Norwegians. These were subject to mistreatment and neglect. In the camp in Grini, for example, the group that was harshest treated consisted of violent criminals and Jews.

Altogether, about 767 Jews from Norway were deported and sent to German concentration camps, primarily Auschwitz. 26 of these survived the ordeal. In addition to the 741 murdered in the camps, 23 died as a result of extrajudicial execution, murder, and suicide during the war; bringing the total of Jewish Norwegian dead to at least 764, comprising 230 complete households. Out of those killed, 346 of them were murdered on 1 December 1942, making this the day with the highest death toll.

People who (in advance) were privy to specifics of the rounding-up and deportation of Jews

Karl Marthinsen, chief of Statspolitiet (STAPO) wrote in a 17 November 1942 memo, that time had been too short for dequate preparations on his part and that he should have had as many weeks for preparations, as there were days eft until deportation of Jews In contrast, Gunnar Sønsteby claimed nce, in 1970that Sønsteby had three months advance knowledge about the deportations from Norway; doubts about his claim include the views of historians such as Tore Pryser saying that "In my view, Sønsteby was bluffing. He was trying to give the impression that he knew more than he did. Sønsteby was treated as an oracle, not in the least by the press orps.

Escape to Sweden

Early during the occupation, there was traffic between neutral countries, primarily Sweden over land; and the United Kingdom, by sea. Even as the occupying authorities tried to limit such traffic, the underground railroad became more organized. Swedish authorities were at first only willing to accept political refugees and did not count Jews among them. Several Jewish refugees were turned away at the border, and a few were subsequently deported.

The North Sea route would become increasingly challenging as German forces increased their naval presence along the Norwegian coast, limiting the sea route to special operations missions against German military targets. The land routes to Sweden became the main conduit for people and materials that either needed to get out of Norway for their safety, or into Norway for clandestine missions.

There were a few private routes across the border, but most were organized through three resistance groups: Milorg ("military organization"), Sivorg ("civilian organization") and Komorg, the communist resistance group. These routes were carefully guarded, in large part through a network of secret cells. Some efforts to infiltrate them, especially through the Rinnan gang (Sonderabteilung Lola) succeeded, but such holes were quickly plugged.

Price_gouging_or_.html" ;"title="Price_gouging.html" ;"title="Price gouging">Price gouging or ">Price_gouging.html" ;"title="Price gouging">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).

Recommendations for (or warnings to) escape

Examples of Jews being recommended to escape include outgoing communication by anti-Nazi Germans in Norway: Theodor Steltzer warned Wolfgang Geldmacher—married to Randi Eckhoff, sister of member of the Resistance " Rolf Eckhoff. From them, warnings were passed on to Lise Børsum, Amalie Christie, Robert Riefling, Ole Jacob Malm and others".

As of the 2020s, there is debate between scientists in regard to what should be "counted as warnings" in advance of the deportion of Jews rom Norway, and in relation to deportations from other countries

Report of disappearance—filed in Norway—regarding two Jews on the first transport from Prague to Poland

On 16 December 1941, "secretary of Nansen International Office for Refugees received a letter from the stateless Jews Nora Lustig, Fritz Lusting and Leo Eitinger. They were in Norway, and wrote that Czech Jews that they knew, had been deported to an unknown place in Poland. They asked Filseth, to report missing (through Red Cross), two Jews, shipped with the first transport from Prague to Poland".

After the arrest of Jewish men (on 26 October 1942)

The arrest and detention of Jewish men on 26 October 1942 changed that premise, but at that point many were afraid of reprisals against the imprisoned men if they left. Some Norwegian Nazis and German officials advised Jews to leave the country as quickly as possible.

On the evening of 25 November, resistance people got a few hours' notice before the scheduled arrests and deportation of all Jews in Norway. Many did their best to notify the remaining Jews who were not already detained, usually by making brief phone calls or short appearances on people's doorsteps. This was more successful in Oslo than other areas. Those who were warned only had a few hours to go into hiding and days to find their way out of the country.

The Norwegian resistance movement had not planned for the contingency that hundreds of individuals had to go underground in one night, and it was left to individuals to improvise shelter out of sight of the arresting authorities. Many were moved several times in just as many days.

Most of the refugees were moved in small groups across the border, typically with the help of taxis or trucks, railroads to areas near the border, and then by foot, car, bicycle, or on skis across the border. It was a particularly cold winter, and the crossing involved considerable hardship and uncertainty. Those who had the means, paid their non-Jewish helpers for their trouble.

The passage was complicated by the vigilance of police who were committed to capturing such refugees, and Terboven imposed the death penalty for anyone caught aiding Jewish refugees. Only individuals who by application were granted "border zone permits" were allowed within easy traveling distance to the border with Sweden. Trains were subject to regular search and inspection, and there were continuous patrols of the area. A failed crossing would have dire consequences for anyone caught, as indeed it turned out for a few.

Still, at least 900 Jewish refugees made their way across the border to Sweden. They usually went through a transit center in Kjesäter in Vingåker, and then found temporary homes throughout Sweden, but mostly in certain towns where Norwegians gathered, such as Uppsala.

Criticism of the Norwegian government in exile, and of Milorg

Some have said that the Norwegian government in exile should have warned the Jews (and told them to flee), since Trygve Lie already in June 1942 knew about what was happening to Jews in continental Europe, while others say that "What could one expect from Lie while the British and the Americans did not believe the messages from Poland? Also in Norway there had been difficulty in believing that gruesomness had taken place".

Some have said that Milorg did too little for the Jews, while othersDen allvitende forteller - Etter hvert som beretningen skrider frem er det ikke lenger mulig å skille mellom det som redelig er hentet fra andre – og der annenhåndskilder tendensiøst tilpasses forfatterens eget foretrukne narrativ om krigen.
[The all-knowing narrator- As the narration proceeds, it is no longer possible to differentiate what is appropriately fetched from others - and where ''annenhåndskilder'' (or secondhand sources) are ''tendensiøst'' fitted to the author's preferred narrative about the war.] say that "The great rescue operation Carl Fredriksens Transport was a result of orders from a ''tilbaketrukket'' leader of Milorg, Ole Berg, and later financed by Sivorg".

In 2014 Jahn Otto Johansen said that "the Norwegian Cabinet n exilein London, and Milorg's leadership, as well as large parts of Norwegian society, did not particularly care about the Jews. There is agreement about this among ''seriøse'' historians. - I can refer to he book bySamuel Abrahamsen ''Norway's response to the Holocaust''. I cooperated closely with" him "and discovered how many worked against his project because the orwegianCabinet nLondon's-, Milorg's- and Norwegian society's alleged positive attitude towards the Jews, was not to be doubted". There was antisemitism in Resistance groups n Norway according to the 2020 book by Elise Barring Berggren history studentand historians Bjarte Bruland and Mats Tangestuen.

Criminal culpability and moral responsibility

Criminal prosecution

Although both the Norwegian Nazi party Nasjonal Samling and the German Nazi establishment had a political platform that called for persecution and ultimately the genocide of European Jewry, the arrest and deportation of Jews in Norway into the hands of the camp officials turned on the actions of several specific individuals and groups.

The ongoing rivalry between Reichskommissar Josef Terboven and Ministerpresident Vidkun Quisling may have played a role, as both were likely presented with the directives from the Wannsee Conference in January 1942. The German policy was to use Norwegian police as a front for the Norwegian implementation of the conference plans, orders for which were issued along two chains of command: from Adolf Eichmann

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