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.These numbers do not include Jewish Soviet or Polish prisoners of war that died in captivity as a result of murder or mistreatment in Norwegian camps, nor Allied Jewish soldiers killed in action in Norway. There is some evidence that prisoners of war who were found to be Jewish were singled out and were abused. .
Many Jews survived by fleeing Norway, nearly two-thirds escaping.Kronikk: Frontingen av «Den største forbrytelsen» gir en Holocaust-historie uten nyanser [Op-ed: To front the book The greatest crime, gives a history of the Holocaust—without nuances] 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, when 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 short-lived.
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.In August of the same year, radio confiscation orders were extended to all Norwegian civilians. According to Ringdal (see bibliography), it is thought that targeting Jews gave the authorities a "trial balloon" both for identifying Jews and confiscating radios.
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".Jessica Johnson. The Sami and World War II. Retrieved 3 December 2020
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 [as laborers]) were arrested in Tromsø and Narvik and thereafter imprisoned at Sydspissen (the first concentration camp in Norway).Jakobsen, Kjetil Ansgar. til de nordnorske jødene har fått lite oppmerksomhet [The fate of the Jews of North Norway, has received little attention]. 18 June 2021. Retrieved 18 June 2021. "Den 18. juni 1941 ble de mannlige jødene i arbeidsfør alder i Tromsø og Narvik, i alt 13 personer, internert i konsentrasjonsleiren Sydspissen i Tromsø" [...] Arrestasjonene den 18. juni markerte innvielsen av den første konsentrasjonsleiren som ble reist for politiske fanger på norsk jord
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.