Oslo – Norway’s Police Apologize For Deporting Jews

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    On Nov. 26, 1942, 532 Norwegian Jews were taken to the German slave ship Donau to their deaths at Stettin and Auschwitz. Only nine returned. Oslo – Norwegian police apologized for the first time on Monday for their complicity in the deportation and murder of over 700 Jews during the Nazi occupation in World War Two, just months after the prime minister made a formal apology.

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    “Norwegian police officers participated in the arrest and deportation of Jews,” police chief Odd Reidar Humlegaard said on the 70th anniversary of Norway deporting the first group of Jews to Auschwitz.

    “It is fitting that I express my regret for the role police played in the arrest and deportation of these completely innocent victims,” he said.

    Vidkun Quisling, Norway’s leader during the Nazi occupation whose name has become a synonym for traitor, ordered the registration of Jews in 1942 and the state apparatus played a complicit role in their eventual deportation.

    Norway acknowledged the state’s role in 1998 and paid some $60 million to Norwegian Jews and Jewish organizations in compensation for property seized.

    But the move fell short of a full apology, causing further national debate and the establishment of a Holocaust research center. Current prime minister Jens Stoltenberg only made a formal apology earlier this year.

    Norway’s Jewish population rose to around 2,100 by 1942 from 1,700 before the war as refugees from Germany, Austria and Czechoslovakia fled the continent.

    Authorities eventually deported 772, of whom only 34 survived. Others either stayed in hiding or fled to neighboring Sweden, which protected its Jewish population and also accepted around 8,000 Danish Jews.


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    11 Comments
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    Buchwalter
    Buchwalter
    11 years ago

    Norway had Quisling a follower of Hitler although the other Scandinavian countries saved Jews, Danemark and Sweden. In Bergen Norway the Germans had a heavy water reactor for purpose of building an atomic bomb. The reactor was destroyed by the RAF

    Secular
    Secular
    11 years ago

    Better late than never

    Butterfly
    Butterfly
    11 years ago

    He is sorry?? Maybe he can bring the dead back to life also??

    victorg
    victorg
    11 years ago

    They’re still a bunch of anti Semites

    Benny
    Benny
    11 years ago

    How about stopping being anticemitic country today as well?

    DRE53
    DRE53
    11 years ago

    I don’t see why they would apologize. Those who deported are long dead and we can’t hold descendants responsible for the acts of their ancestors.
    The only thing they can do is to strengthen tolerance and fight racial hatred.

    PaulinSaudi
    PaulinSaudi
    11 years ago

    What else can he do but apologize?

    DRE53
    DRE53
    11 years ago

    I don’t see why they would apologize. Those who deported are long dead and we can’t hold descendants responsible for the acts of their ancestors.
    The only thing they can do is to strengthen tolerance and fight racial hatred.

    PaulinSaudi
    PaulinSaudi
    11 years ago

    (Oddly enough the Swedes are amongst my least-favorite people on the earth. Don’t get me started.)