Евреи в Норвегии: История и судьба

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The history of Jews in Norway dates back to the 1400s. Although there were very likely Jewish merchants, sailors and others who entered Norway during the Middle Ages, no efforts were made to establish a Jewish community. Through the early modern period, Norway, still devastated by the Black Death, was ruled by Denmark from 1536 to 1814 and then by Sweden until 1905. In 1687, Christian V rescinded all Jewish privileges, specifically banning Jews from Norway, except with a special dispensation. Jews found in the kingdom were jailed and expelled, and this ban persisted until 1851. The first Jewish community in Norway was established in Oslo in 1892. The community grew slowly until World War II. It was bolstered by refugees in the late 1930s and peaked at about 2,100. The population was devastated during the Holocaust, in which a significant portion of the Norwegian Jewish community was murdered by Nazi Germany. Jews remain one of Norway's smallest ethnic and religious minorities.

The first mention of Jews in Norse literature is found in Postola sögur in Iceland in the 13th century, where they are mentioned along with the more general pagans. The literature of this time referred to Jews as gyðingar, juði, or in the Latin form judeus. Jews were also mentioned in unfavorable terms in subsequent literary Icelandic sagas, such as Gyðinga saga (Saga of the Jews). However, there are sources that dispute anti Semitism in Norway in the Middle Ages for the simple reason that there was no evidence of the presence of Jews in the country. A comprehensive study of contemporaneous documents, for instance, such as testaments, contracts, and legal cases among other primary data did not mention Jews or a Jewish community in Norway. Scholars cited that those mentioned in Church documents can be considered "virtual Jews" in the sense that the citations were indirect and that these mentions were probably symbols of non Christian behavior.

In 1436 and again in 1438, Archbishop Aslak Bolt prohibited celebrating a day of rest on Saturday, lest Christians replicate the "way of Jews," and this prohibition was reinforced through several subsequent ordinances, including those in Diplomatarium Norvegicum. The first known settlement of Jews on Norway territory was based on a royal dispensation. The first known mention of Jews in public documents relates to the admissibility of Sephardim, Spanish and Portuguese Jews who had been expelled from Spain in 1492 and from Portugal in 1497. Some of these were given special dispensation to enter Norway. While Norway was part of the Danish kingdom from 1536 to 1814, Denmark introduced a number of religious restrictions both to uphold the Protestant Reformation in general and against Jews in particular. In 1569, Fredrik II ordered that all foreigners in Denmark had to affirm their commitment to 25 articles of faith central to Lutheranism, on pain of deportation, forfeiture of all property, and death. The earliest recorded direct mention of Jews occurred in documents published in the 17th century when a group of Portuguese Jews were allowed to settle in Norway. Restrictions were lifted for Sephardic Jews already established as merchants in Altona when Christian IV took over the town. Christian also issued the first letter of safe passage to a Jew (Albert Dionis) in 1619, and on June 19, 1630, general amnesty was granted to all Jews permanently in residence in Glückstadt, including the right to travel freely throughout the kingdom. In this condition, the existence of anti Semitism can be considered negligible because the traditional Jewish prejudice often stemmed from the perception that the Jews controlled the economic, political and social spheres of a specific European society. However, this argument's attempt to downplay antisemitism is internally contradictory, since that perception of Jews is itself one of the most prominent and enduring signs of antisemitism. Public policy toward Jews varied over the next several hundred years. The kings generally tolerated Jewish merchants, investors, and bankers whose contributions of benefit to the economy of Denmark Norway on the one hand, while seeking to restrict their movements, residence, and presence in public life. Several Jews, particularly in the Sephardic Teixeira family, but also some of Ashkenazi origins, were given letters of passage to visit places in Denmark and Norway; but there were also several incidents of Jews who were arrested, imprisoned, fined, and deported for violating the general ban against their presence, even when they claimed the exemption granted to Sephardim. Christian IV of Denmark Norway gave Jews limited rights to travel within the kingdom and, in 1641, Ashkenazi Jews were given equivalent rights. Christian V rescinded these privileges in 1687, specifically banning Jews from Norway, unless they were given a special dispensation. Jews found in the kingdom were jailed and expelled, and this ban persisted until 1851. Consequently, as stereotypes against Jews started entering the awareness of the general public during the Enlightenment, there were also those who rose in opposition to some, if not all, of the underlying hostility. Lutheran minister Niels Hertzberg was one of those who wrote against Norwegian prejudice, ultimately influencing the later votes on the constitutional amendment to allow Jews to settle in Norway.

The deportation of Jews who had either come to Norway by accident or in good faith caused some embarrassment among Norwegians. The first who advocated for a repeal was the poet Andreas Munch in 1836. But it was Henrik Wergeland who became the leading champion for the Jews in Norway.

Henrik Wergeland was the son of Nikolai Wergeland, one of the members at the constitutional assembly who had most strongly objected to admitting Jews to the country. The younger Wergeland had long harbored prejudice against Jews, but travels in Europe had changed his mind. He published the pamphlet Indlæg i Jødesagen on August 26, 1841, arguing passionately for a repeal of the clause. On February 19, 1842, his efforts to put the matter to a vote in the Norwegian parliament was successful, when the proposition was referred to the Constitution Committee. On September 9, 1842, the motion to repeal won a simple majority: 51 to 43, but, falling short of a supermajority (2/3) it failed. On October 26, 1842, Wergeland published his book Jødesagen i det norske Storthing ("The Jewish issue in the Norwegian parliament"), which in addition to arguing for the cause also provides interesting insights into the workings of the parliament at the time.

Wergeland had submitted a new proposal to parliament later on the same day that the first repeal had failed. He died on July 12, 1845. The constitution committee referred their recommendation to repeal exactly a month after his death, on August 12. Several versions were put to vote, but the most popular version won 52 votes to repeal, only 47 to keep; worse than the last vote. In 1848, the motion to repeal earned 59 to 43 votes, still falling short of the 2/3 required. In 1851, finally, the clause was repealed with 93 votes to 10. On September 10, all remaining legislation related to the ban was repealed by the passage of "Lov om Ophævelse af det hidtil bestaaende Forbud mot at Jøder indfinde sig i Riget m. v." ("Law regarding the repeal of the hitherto permanent prohibition against Jews in the realm, etc.")

In spite of fears that Norway would be overwhelmed by Jewish immigration following the repeal, only about 25 Jews immigrated to Norway before 1870. Because of pogroms in Czarist Russia, however, the immigration accelerated somewhat in the late 19th and early 20th centuries. By 1910, there were about 1,000 Jews in Norway. Though the minority was small and widely dispersed, several stereotypes of Jews gained currency in the Norwegian press and popular literature in the early 20th century. In books by the widely read authors Rudolf Muus and Øvre Richter Frich, Jews are described as sadistic and obsessed with money. The attorney Eivind Saxlund published a pamphlet Jøder og Gojim ("Jews and Goyim") in 1910, which was characterized in 1922 as "antisemitic smut literature' by a writer in Dagbladet. Saxlund sued for libel and lost, but earned the admiration of the newspaper Nationen, who praised Saxlund for fighting "our race war." In 1920, The Protocols of the Elders of Zion was published in Norway under the title Den nye verdenskeiser ("The New World Emperor"). In 1916 Norwegian writer Mikal Sylten published an antisemitic periodical called Nationalt Tidsskrift. In 1917 he started using the Swastika as its symbol, several years before Adolf Hitler. The periodical was of a racist nature and published Antisemitic conspiracy theories. The periodical declared itself as the "only Norwegian journal that studies in depth Jewish true ties to events in the world and here at home" An attache called Who's Who in the Jewish World was printed four editions starting 1925. This pamphlet contained a list of Jews and presumed Jews in Norway, sorted by occupation. Housewives and children were listed under Different Occupations. Sylten was tried for his collaboration with the Nazis during the German occupation in the legal purge in Norway after World War II.

Prejudice against Jews became a focal point in the controversy about the legality of shechita, the Jewish practice of ritual slaughter. The issue had originally been raised in the 1890s, but a municipal ban on the practice in 1913 in Oslo brought the matter to national attention.

Efforts to ban shechita put well intended humane society activists in league with antisemitic individuals. In particular, Jonas Søhr, a senior police official, took a particular interest and eventually rose to the leadership of the Norwegian Federation for Animal Protection, while also opposing admission of Jewish refugees during World War I. The animal rights cause was used as a means to attack not just the method of slaughter, but also the community itself. Those opposing the ban included Fridtjof Nansen, but the division on the issue crossed party lines in all mainstream parties, except the Agrarian Party (today, the Centre Party), which was consisten in its opposition to schechita. During the 1890s, protests were raised in the Norwegian press against the practice of shechita, on the grounds that it was cruel to animals. The Jewish community responded to these objections by stating that the method was humane. A committee commissioned on 11 February 1927 consulted numerous experts and visited a slaughterhouse in Copenhagen. Its majority favored a ban and found support in the Department of Agriculture and the parliamentary agriculture committee. Those who opposed a ban spoke of religious tolerance, and also found that schechita was no more inhumane than other slaughter methods. Ingvar Svanberg writes that many of the arguments against shechita were based "on the distrust of 'foreign' habits" and "often contained anti Semitic elements". C. J. Hambro was one of those most appalled by the antisemitic invective, noting that "where animal rights are protected to an exaggerated extent, it usually is done with the help of human sacrifice".

The controversy continued until 1929, when the Norwegian parliament banned the practice of slaughtering animals which have not been first stunned or paralyzed. The ban remains in force today. No forms of religious slaughter are named as being banned in the Norwegian legislation. Norwegian law requires that animals be stunned before being slaughtered, without exception for religious practices, which is incompatible with shechita. The Norwegian Islamic Council, on the other hand, has found that sedation is compatible with halal rules, provided that the animal's heart is still beating at the time of slaughter.

The former chief rabbi of Norway, Michael Melchior, argued that antisemitism is one motive for the bans: "I won't say this is the only motivation, but it's certainly no coincidence that one of the first things Nazi Germany forbade was kosher slaughter. I also know that during the original debate on this issue in Norway, where shechitah has been banned since 1930, one of the parliamentarians said straight out, 'If they don't like it, let them go live somewhere else.'" Representatives of both Muslim and Jewish communities, citing scientific studies, dispute the assertion that traditional halal and kosher slaughtering methods lead to unnecessary animal suffering. Norway's acceptance of hunting, whaling and sealing were also raised as proof of the alleged hypocrisy of the Norwegian position. Minister of Agriculture, Lars Peder Brekk of the Centre Party (which has always rejected shechita, see above), rejected the comparison. Proponents of the continued ban, including officials from the Norwegian Food Safety Authority claimed that animals slaughtered according to shechita were conscious for "several minutes" after they were slaughtered, and writer and farmer Tore Stubberud claimed that animals in Judaism had "no moral status pure objects for archaic, religious needs", and wondered whether the EU, in allowing for such slaughter had become "purely a bank, without values". To get around the ban, kosher meat has had to be imported into the country. In June 2019, it was proposed to extend the ban to imports of kosher meat. The proposal has also been described as antisemitic.

Niels Christian Ditleff was a Norwegian diplomat who in the late 1930s was posted to Warsaw, Poland. In the spring of 1939, Ditleff 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. Nazi Germany invaded Norway on 9 April 1940, and a number of Norwegians were immediately arrested, and two months later the occupying force established the first prisoners' camp at Ulven, outside Bergen. Many Jews who could, fled the country. "Nearly two thirds of the Jews in Norway fled from Norway". 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. In 1942, before deportations started, there were at least 2,173 Jews in Norway. Of these, 1,643 were Norwegian citizens, 240 were foreign citizens, and 290 were stateless. At least 765 Jews died in German hands; more than half of the Norwegians who died. Only 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. By the mid 1950s, about 1,000 Jews resided in Norway, of whom 700 lived in Oslo and 150 in Trondheim. Forty one Norwegians have been recognized by Yad Vashem as being Righteous Among the Nations, as well as the Norwegian resistance movement collectively.

as of 2012, there were about 1,500 Jewish people living in the country as a whole. The number of registered members in religious Jewish communities has been declining in recent years, and was 747 in 2015. Most of these were based in Oslo. Other Jewish organizations in Norway include B'nai B'rith, WIZO, B’nei Akiva, Keren Kayemet, Help the Jews Home (Hjelp Jødene Hjem), a Kosher Meals on Wheels, Jewish study circles, and a home for the elderly. There is also a Jewish community center in Trondheim. Norwegian Jews are well integrated into Norwegian society, and prominent among them were Jo Benkow, a former president of the Stortinget; Leo Eitinger and Berthold Grünfeld, both notable psychiatrists; Robert Levin, the pianist; writer, actress and theater critic and Bente Kahan, an actress and singer. Of these, only the last two are still living.

The mainstream Norwegian political environment has strongly adopted a platform that rejects antisemitism. However, individuals often privately hold antisemitic views. There have been episodes of vandalization of the Oslo Synagogue. In July 2006, during the 2006 Lebanon War, the congregation issued an advisory warning Jews not to wear kippot or other identifying items in public for fear of harassment or assault. On 17 September 2006, the Oslo Synagogue was attacked with an automatic weapon, only days after it was made public that the building had been the planned target for the Algerian terror group GSPC that had been plotting a bombing campaign in the Norwegian capital. On 2 June 2008, Arfan Qadeer Bhatti was convicted for the shooting attack and given an eight year preventive custody sentence for serious vandalism. The Oslo city court judge could not find sufficient evidence that the shots fired at the synagogue amounted to a terrorist act. The synagogue in Oslo is now under continuous surveillance and protected by barriers. In August 2006, the writer Jostein Gaarder published an op ed in Aftenposten, titled God's Chosen People. It was highly critical of Israel, as well as Judaism as a religion. Allegations of antisemitism and an intense public debate resulted in the Jostein Gaarder controversy. In December 2008, Imre Hercz filed a complaint to the Norwegian Press Complaints Commission against Otto Jespersen, a comedian who mocked the Holocaust, but fellow comics and his TV station backed the performer. Jespersen joked on national television in his weekly routine that "I would like to take the opportunity to remember all the billions of fleas and lice that lost their lives in German gas chambers, without having done anything wrong other than settling on persons of Jewish background." Jespersen also presented a satirical monologue on antisemitism that ended with, "Finally, I would like to wish all Norwegian Jews a Merry Christmas – no, what am I saying! You don't celebrate Christmas, do you!? It was you who crucified Jesus," on 4 December. Jespersen has received criticism for several of his attacks on social and ethnic groups as well as royalty, politicians and celebrities, and in defence of the monologue TV 2 noted that Jespersen attacks in all directions, and that "if you should take [the monologue] seriously, there are more than just the Jews that should feel offended". In 2010, the Norwegian Broadcasting Corporation reported that antisemitism was common among Norwegian Muslims. Teachers at schools with large shares of Muslims reported that Muslim students often "praise or admire Adolf Hitler for his killing of Jews", that "Jew hate is legitimate within vast groups of Muslim students" and that "Muslims laugh or command [teachers] to stop when trying to educate about the Holocaust". One Jewish father also told how his child had been taken after school by a Muslim mob, "to be taken out to the forest and hanged because he was a Jew". (The child escaped.) In February 2015, however, a group of young Muslims organised 1,500 people to form two 'rings of peace' around the synagogues in Oslo and Bergen in response to recent terror attacks against Jewish centers in Europe. Unconnected with Norwegian Muslims, antisemitic graffiti was sprayed on a school and sports facility in Skien in August 2014. Later that year, a swastika was carved into the glass doors of the Trøndelag Theater, the day after the premiere of a Jewish puppet theater performance. In October 2014, a Jewish cemetery was vandalized in Trondheim, with sprayed marks and the word 'Führer' scribbled on the chapel. An article published by the Jerusalem Center for Public Affairs stated that antisemitism in Norway comes mainly from the leadership – politicians, organization leaders, church leaders, and senior journalists. Despite dissenting opinions, it claims that antisemitism in Europe originated in Muslim immigration, this essay blames the European Christian leadership for antisemitism that began around 1000 CE, centuries before Jews came to Norway. Another issue arising from the article is the publishing of antisemitic caricatures. Since the 1970s, many pro Palestinian caricatures have been published in the Norwegian media. But a comparison of those depictions with antisemitic caricatures from the Nazi era show some similarities. Common motifs such as 'Jews are evil and inhuman', 'Jews rule and exploit the world' and 'Jews hate peace and propagate wars' are repeated in more recently published drawings, as well as in antisemitic sketches from the beginning of the twentieth century. According to an ADL telephone survey of 501 people, 15% (+/ 4.4%) of the adult population in Norway harbor antisemitic attitudes and 40% of the population agree with the statement, "Jews are more loyal to Israel than to Norway", and 31% think that, "Jews still talk too much about what happened to them in the Holocaust." However, this survey has been criticized for being unreasonably simplistic in its classification of "harboring antisemitic attitudes".