Norway Holocaust Compilation

Introduction

This material was collected from the record group in Yad Vashem on Norwegian Jewry.  It is not clear where Yad Vashem received the material.  It is important to remember that the Norwegian Jewish community was a very small and young community, numbering under 2,000 souls when the Nazis invaded Norway.

This material was gathered from multiple lists.  Each original list contained somewhat different amounts of information about each person.  Some names appeared more than once on a list, and some appeared on multiple lists.  We have used alphabetic letters "A" thru "K" to identify on which lists a name appeared.  The key to these letters is as follows:

Glossary

The following glossary of terms, provides some clarification among the lists as well:

Bredveit prison

Prison where the male Jews of the Oslo region were concentrated according to a Nazi order of October 26, 1942.  These were sent to the camp Berg outside Tonsberg over the next two weeks.  Many were later sent to the "Donau".

"Donau" ship

On November 25, 1942, at least 530 Jews, among them men sent from the Berg camp and Jewish women and children who had been arrested that morning, were loaded on this ship.  On November 30 the ship arrived in Stettin, Germany (today: Szczecin, Poland).  Men and women were separated into separate trains, and transported to Auschwitz.  Few survived.

"Monte Rosa" ship

Similar to the "Donau", this ship left Oslo with deported Jews, who arrived in Auschwitz on December 9th 1942.

As is well known, much of the Norwegian Jewish community was saved by a concerted effort of the Norwegian underground, which took them to neutral Sweden.  This saved around 900 Jews.  About 800 of the Jews who were in Norway before the war were murdered.

Notes from the Data Transcription Team Coordinator

According to the official information — and the newly erected monument in Oslo commemorating the Jews deported from Norway — there were a total of 767 Norwegian Jews deported to the concentrations camps.  Only 30 survived and 230 families were wiped out.

If all the persons listed in this material are counted, the number far exceeds the "official" number.  This could be because the monument only includes "Norwegian Jews", but from other sources that number was lower (often set to 625).  Furthermore, based on knowledge about Scandinavian Jewry, families, naming traditions, geography and the like, it is quite evident that many of the persons on these various lists are duplicates (sometimes even triplicates).  Let me just give one example: The GRÜN family in Denmark (and Norway) is very well documented, and Johan Grün, of Copenhagen Denmark, has confirmed that there was only one Helga Ellisabeth Grün, his aunt, in Norway.  So the two Helga GRÜNs on the two lists are definitely one and the same.

Thus the lists have been merged, based on much analysis and evaluation.  This had to take into consideration persons that it was thought with great probability are identical.  There are some that were more doubtful but presumed to be identical.  After this merging and evaluation there are 893 records or persons.  If the doubtful are merged also it gives a total of 783 — much closer to the official number.

"Place of birth" is sometimes written LITHUANIA, sometimes LETHONIA (or LETHUANIA)!  Whether the latter is a typing error for Lithuania OR – more likely!? – a name for LATVIA (which in Norwegian is "Letland"!) is unknown.  Maybe LETHUANIA is a typing error for Lithuania, whereas LETHONIA could be a wrong translation of Latvia!?

The list identified with the alphabetic letter I is a list of deported Jewesses.  However, there are eight persons listed with male names!

Sometimes corrections on the original lists were made by typing over.  These corrections are therefore not clearly legible and where possible both "versions" have been entered in the field in question.

In some cases it is not clear whether the name is a double surname or double given names.  In those instances the names in question have been entered in both fields.

Acknowledgements

The information contained in this database was indexed as part of the data sharing agreement between Yad Vashem and JewishGen.  Thanks to Zvi Bernhardt and the Hall of Names staff, the data was provided from the files of Yad Vashem (file 027/26).  This information is accessible to you today, thanks to the efforts of the following JewishGen volunteers who are responsible for the transcription of this file: Elsebeth Paikin (coordinator) and Anatolio Kronik.

Searching the Database

This database is searchable via both JewishGen's Holocaust Database and the JewishGen Scandinavia Database.