"Danube" docked in Oslo, 26 november 1942. PHOTO: NTB SCANPIX

REPORTING

"Danube" docked in Oslo, 26 november 1942. PHOTO: NTB SCANPIX

REPORTING

When the holocaust came to Norway

On Wednesday night 26 november 1942, hundreds of Jewish women and children in Oslo taken in their home by police. They were led down to the harbor, where the German ship "Donau" waiting for them. None of them ever came back to Norway.

On Wednesday night 26 november 1942, hundreds of Jewish women and children in Oslo taken in their home by police. They were led down to the harbor, where the German ship "Donau" waiting for them. None of them ever came back to Norway.

- Oh, Mrs. Falkenberg, I think every night that I might for the last time puts me in my own bed, said Gisela Bernstein to a good friend.

It was Tuesday the 24th november 1942, and she had long known of a concern. Still, she was in a good mood that day, because she had just learned that the two teenage kids her soon both were safe in England. This she told her friend, who was visiting at her condo in Calmeyers gate 15 There she had lived alone since her husband Richard were imprisoned.

Also this night got Gisela Bernstein lie in his own bed. But the next night, at dawn, she woke up there knocking on the door. They had come to fetch her.

It was early awake in Oslo Thursday the 26thnovember 1942, must have noticed that something big was going on. Maybe they heard screaming and restlessness in the recovery already five o'clock in the morning.Maybe then the next family gathering out in the backyard with suitcases and bags. Or maybe they just absent noticed that there were an unusually large number of taxis in the streets this gray, very early morning. It had been requisitioned about 150 of them and 300 Norwegian police officers from the State Police, Criminal Police, emergency squad, his court and Germanic SS was sent out to retrieve all Jewish women, children and elderly in Oslo. They walked systematic action, by lists of all registered Jews in the city. They brought people in a villa on Grefsen, they brought many apartment buildings in Grünerløkka, author germ Ruth Maier was taken at a hospice for young women Dalsbergstien and out in Bærum provided they include former parliament president Jo Benkows mother. Mature picked up at the old homes and patients in hospitals, but the vast majority picked the Norwegian police Calmeyers gate 15 in Oslo. Outside the apartment building that currently houses the Jewish Museum in Oslo, there is a total of 19 memory plaques or "stumbling stones" cast down the street, to honor those who were deported. On one of them we find her name: Gisela Bernstein.

In Calmeyers gate kept it with a small taxi. They arrived by truck and were joined 54 years old Gisela Bernstein and her neighbors. As Sonja Esther Moritz and her two sons at five and nine years, and Kaja Lived, with two daughters of 11 and 13 years. Everyone was huddled in the truck and drove down to the docks, where the German cargo ship "Donau" waiting for them at dawn. A witness later wrote in exile newspaper The free Norway: "In the district round Calmeyer Gatens Misjonshus where there live many Jewish families outplayed heartbreaking scenes. The streets had been cordoned off by police. Old men, women and children were gathered on the sidewalks waiting to be driven to the America dock, where all were gathered to be brought aboard a 9,000 ton cargo ship. The unhappy man faces were marked by frantic horror and despair. It had gathered huge crowds at the barricades, which enraged and powerless as the harrowing scenes. "

Hundreds of people were taken in and around Oslo this November morning. But with the "Danube" were also Jewish men who had been arrested a few weeks before. They came from prisons and detention camps and were all transported to the docks. Among those were two of the residents of Calmeyers street Schapow Salomon and his son Julius in 20 years. Ruth Schapow, who was then 17 years old, witnessed her father was picked up by the Norwegian police. She and her mother were left in the apartment of 1 floor Calmeyers street and saw them carry him away.

- I knew I would never see my dad again. I knew he was running away to be killed, she says to Dagsavisen.

Today she has 88 years old and lives in Iladalen in Oslo. She is married Goldstein now. It is 70 years since October morning in 1942, but it is clearly in the memory.

- It was cruel to stand there and know that I would never see him again. Dad said nothing, but he thought probably the same as me, "I shall never see my girl again."

The arrests of the men in October happened suddenly and unexpectedly. But when rumors went in Oslo that they would deport all Jewish women and children 26 november, came many warning beforehand. Some Norwegian resistance fighters and policemen who had intercepted deportation order went out to Jewish families to warn them.

- There was a policeman and knocked on us Calmeyers gate, said Ruth Goldstein.

- "The Germans will take you," he said. When my mom and I in coverage.

For several weeks the mother and daughter lived Schapow in various apartments around the city. Finally they join the secret group who called themselves Carl Fredriksen Transport, carrying resistance fighters and Jewish refugees to Sweden. Ruth and her mother were in a truck and was in hiding under a tarp along with other refugees. Along the border, they were stopped by the occupying power. It was a thrilling ride. But they came across the border, and Ruth and her mother came to Malmö.

- "Have the boat gone?" Asked my mom when we heard about the "Danube". We thought maybe my dad and my brother were even there. I thought it was cruel to think of them, but I was most concerned with taking care of my mom. She was devastated. I had to be strong and arrange furniture and everything else when we came to Malmö.

Also Gisela Bernstein's husband, Richard, was taken out of prison and transported to the Port of Oslo on 26 november. He had been imprisoned in Norway for long periods during the war, in addition to being a Jew, he was also a social democrat. He came with his wife Gisela as a political refugee from Germany to Norway in 1939 and got an apartment in Calmeyers gate 15 He was originally an Austrian, but the work as long as the political editor of the Social Democratic newspaper Vorwärts Berlin. In his time as press man in the 1930s he also wrote articles for the Norwegian newspapers, probably also Arbeiderbladet (Dagsavisen).

One of the reasons Gisela not fled Calmeyers street when the officer warned residents there was likely that she would not leave her husband in Norway. And she knew at least that the children were safe, both were in England. Son Heinz had fled through occupied Europe on a motorbike, while her daughter Susanne at 15 got out of the Third Reich and the UK with a children transport for refugees just before the outbreak of war in September 1939.

No one knows if the couple Richard and Gisela Bernstein ever met on the quay in Oslo on 26 november 1942. She was brought on board in the "Danube", which would go to Stettin in German-occupied Poland, as he was brought on board another ship, "Monte Rosa", which would go to Aarhus in Denmark the same day. It is possible that the two ships sailed from Oslo Fjord, while, in a convoy, only to be separated out in the Skagerrak.

On board the "Danube", a total of 532 Jewish refugees. Of those, there were 42 children, the youngest a baby of four months. The men were separated from women and children, but on the way across the Skagerrak got one of the women allowed to come up to the men to sing to them. It was she who was once named himself "Larvik princess 1939", Marie Sachnowitz. People sat on the deck and listened to the young girl who sang the popular Danish 30th century duty drum "Moon Beam". It went to the heart of many of the text fits well to the situation:

"Everything is just a dream, an illusion Flygt

There's over, if sustained

So I stand Compare, hjælpeløs, Precharge

In light af my moon shine. "

Some hoped for the longest time that they were on their way to a work camp in northern Norway. But 30 November was Gisela Bernstein and the others on board the "Danube" arrived in Stettin, Poland. Richard Bernstein's ship, "Monte Rosa" came to Aarhus in Denmark. But both Richard and Gisela were brought by train to Auschwitz. Richard Bernstein survived two months there, before he died 21 January 1943, 60 years old.Gisela Bernstein was sent to the gas chamber on the day she arrived by train to Auschwitz, on 1 December 1942. So were all the other women and children who came from Oslo. Only nine people from "Donau" survived the war, all men.

Calmeyers gate 15 in Oslo city center was deserted again after all the Jewish residents had been deported. All activities in the heart of the building, synagogue, stopped. For many years, the premises leased, but in recent years the Jewish Museum opened here.

- I think no one knew what awaited them. Many of those who were warned beforehand, just could not believe this could happen in Norway, says Mats Tang room, historian at the Jewish Museum in Oslo.

He is working hard to prepare the museum's new memorial exhibition next week. 70 years have passed since the "Danube" went from the dock. Tang lodge has worked out pictures and stories of people who were deported and 1100 who managed to escape. But here we find the stories of the Jewish refugees from Northern Norway and Central Norway who arrived a day too late to join the "Danube". 158 people were detained in prison until 25 February 1943, in anticipation of the transport ship "Gotenland." Two of them were Sakolsky Ruth and her mother from Tromsø. Jewish Museum will exhibit the worn, old children's album documenting little Ruth's short life. She was only two years old when she and her mother were sent to the gas chambers in Auschwitz. "Gotenland 'transport was the last part of the great deportation action against the Norwegian Jews.

On the new plaque that stands in the shade at the edge of the Akershus beach, outside the city walls, we can see that in all 772 people were deported to Germany during the war.Only 39 of them returned home.

By an already small Norwegian Jewish minority of 2,100 people in 1940, it was after the war recorded only 559 members of the Jewish community.

Alongside the plaque says the artist Antony Gormley eight empty chairs facing out toward the bay. They symbolize the deported Jews who were expelled from the Norwegian society. Next to the pier where the "Danube" lay waiting for 70 years. Today, when Dagsavisen standing, looking beyond the gray autumnal Oslo Fjord, just royal ship "Norway" moored here. Just beyond we glimpse two of the Danish boats.

- Here we have a memorial service Monday morning, said Guri Hjeltnes, director of the Holocaust Center.

For deportation of Norwegian Jews were what one might call "the Norwegian Holocaust."And how could it happen? How could Norwegian police be involved in this? Did they know that they sent people straight to the gas chambers?

Terje Emberland, history researcher at the Center for Studies of Holocaust and Religious Minorities, says it's still ongoing field's historical debate about how much NS and the Norwegian police knew of Hitler's "final solution" of the Jewish question in Europe. But we expect that the peaks of NS were well informed and that some of the policemen who had been Eastern Front, also knew about the fate of the Jews.

- The question of what the Norwegian police knew, the little child when you consider that those arrested and deported little kids, sick and old people to "labor service in the East," says Emberland.

- All police officers who were involved in this, must know that they did something criminal, they arrested innocent Norwegian citizens, says Emberland, who argues that "the Jewish question" in Norway was not particularly urgent for Hitler's Germany.

Jews in Norway was a small minority that was not considered a great "danger" against the regime.

- As the deportations were not really "necessary"?

- The Jews' fate was already sealed. It had been anticipated that they would be sent out.But there are indications that this action was precipitated by various reasons and that those who led it, ran out of time on it. The point of the campaign in the autumn of 1942 was also responsible to do NS regime and involving the Norwegian police. It was an important part of a strategic plan to Nazif the police. The strategy was to make the Norwegian police to a part of the SS unit, said Emberland.

- Lay the prestige of the Norwegian NS regime in this action?

- Yes, it did enough, on the German commanders. They would see that the Norwegian police were efficient and skillful action. They put a lot of energy into this campaign and worked around the clock to make this happen, says Emberland, which, like most historians believe that the key to why this could happen in Norway, occupation.

Norway was at this time a Nazi dictatorship with a regime that worked closely with Hitler's Germany. Deportations were part of "a broad European extermination project," which Kjetil Simonsen puts it. He is also a historian at the Holocaust Center and has started a research project on the Norwegian government bureaucracy and thus police in occupied Norway. For in the course of the war changed the Norwegian Police radically. It was Nazi sympathizers, was during the war directly to the SS and got a special political police who traced the "political enemies" of the NS regime, the Jews.

- The Norwegian Holocaust was part of a grand, race political project. One must see the measures against the Jews in Norway as a small part of Hitler's major extermination project, which was planned at the Wannsee Conference in January 1942, says Simonsen.

He does not believe Norway was particularly antisemitic compared with other European countries before it was occupied in 1940.

- The situation was not as in Poland, where Jews had to sit on the treasury benches in the universities, but there was still a reservoir of cultural prejudice against Jews in the Norwegian society. The main driving force behind the Norwegian Holocaust was the German National Socialism, which saw the struggle against Judaism as a key to racial "salvation." But the Norwegian anti-Semitism may have helped create an indifference to the small Jewish minority, says Simonsen, who adds:

- There is a difference between indifference and to plan and carry out a genocide.

Mats Tang room at Jewish Museum displays a copy of a letter Gisela and Richard's daughter, Susanne Medas, sent to parents after the war through the Red Cross.

"We wait longingly at the message from you. We hope you are doing well. Heinz works in agriculture, though I'm in college. Kiss. ​​"

The short answer from the Red Cross saying:

"Your parents have been sent to Germany."

After the war, Susanne also a long letter from her mother's friend, Mrs. Falkenberg in Oslo. Here she tells us about the last time she faced Gisela Bernstein, home in Calmeyers gate 15

"Tuesday 24th november I visited her for the last time. I asked her home to us on Sunday, and she was in a good mood. Joy Brilliant she read to me a long letter from Mr. Their brother that he was traveling to England. "