On Norwegian Jewry, by Tom Segev

"A doctoral dissertation on the subject by historian Bjarte Bruland contains details about the property of a woman - who was murdered at Auschwitz along with her children - restoration of which was held up because it was impossible to establish in what order the children had been put in the gas chamber, and therefore it was not clear from a legal standpoint who inherited what."

"In the history of the Jewish people, 2,000 Norwegian Jews merit no more than a footnote, but an exhibition now showing at Beth Hatefutsoth Diaspora museum in Tel Aviv presents their story as a microcosm, a window onto the vagaries of fate that befell all European Jews.

Up until 1851 Jews were not allowed to live in Norway, by dint of the second clause in the country's constitution, which also barred Jesuits and monks from migrating there. Once the ban was repealed, Eastern European Jews made their way to Norway; most of them actually wanted to go to America, but did not have the money to get that far. They tried - with great difficulty - to assimilate into local culture and become Norwegian patriots. A few posed for photographs dressed in the Norwegian army uniform; one kept the flag that was sewn on to the sleeve of his uniform when he played for the national soccer team.

Their story, as displayed in Beth Hatefutsoth, ranges from a 1920 notebook, attesting to the fact that a boy named David Fein made great effort to learn the letters of the Hebrew alphabet, to anti-Semitic posters that were pasted up around towns.

During World War II, the pro-Nazi government of Vidkun Quisling confiscated the property of all the country's Jews, and the Germans deported nearly 800 of them to death camps. The catalog for the exhibition, held under the auspices of the Royal Norwegian Embassy to Israel, states that about a decade ago, Norway became the first country to complete the process of restoring property and paying compensation to Jews for their losses and suffering caused during the Nazi occupation.

Beneath this diplomatic phrasing lies a half-century of abuse. Like the Swiss, the Norwegians prevented the restoration of many Jews' property by means of all kinds of regulations and bureaucratic trickery.

A doctoral dissertation on the subject by historian Bjarte Bruland contains details about the property of a woman - who was murdered at Auschwitz along with her children - restoration of which was held up because it was impossible to establish in what order the children had been put in the gas chamber, and therefore it was not clear from a legal standpoint who inherited what.

A few hundred Jews live in Norway today. These include ex-Israelis, members of kibbutzim who moved there when the female volunteers they met here returned home."

Source: Haaretz
Exhibition: Wergeland's Legacy, Beth Hatefutsoth, the Museum of the Jewish People

Norway: The Courage of a Small Jewish Community; Holocaust Restitution and Anti-Semitism, Interview with Bjarte Bruland and Irene Levin (JCPA)

On present day Norway, see:
Norway, Israel and the Jews blog