The Norwegian Holocaust began in Trondheim
What was it like as a Jewish Holocaust survivor returning to Trondheim, a city where many inhabitants had been involved in the genocide?
Trondheim, 17 May 1945: Dressed in their suits, traditional costumes and finest clothes, the entire city gathered in the square in Trondheim to listen to the mayor’s speech. It was time to honour the Norwegians who had fought in the war, and sing the praises of unity and the fatherland.
Some of the Jews in the city who had survived the war were probably also in attendance. At the time war broke out, the Jewish community in Trondheim consisted of around 300 people, but this number had been reduced to just 124 by 1945. The mayor’s speech made no reference to the loss of these Jews or their cruel destiny, or even the events that unfolded in Auschwitz.
It was not until eight days later that a brief article appeared in the local newspaper, Adresseavisen, with the headline “Jewish family from Trondheim murdered in German gas chambers.”
A typical example
At the same time, the Jews themselves began collating sources and documentation concerning the events that had taken place in Trondheim during the war years.
Jon Reitan. Photo: Falstad Centre
“This 17th May speech is a fairly typical example, betraying as it does a lack of understanding of the singular destiny of the Jews. At the time, I don’t believe society at large was able to grasp the magnitude of the grief, loss and trauma that afflicted those who returned home,” said Jon Reitan.
Reitan is a researcher at NTNU and head of a project that involved collecting and collating the memories of Jews who lived in Trondheim before and during the Second World War.
In total, he has collated 19 narratives describing how it felt to return as a survivor to the small Jewish community in Trondheim, a city where many inhabitants and institutions had been involved in the genocide.
The Jews were well integrated before the war.
In Trondheim, the Jewish community was an integral part of both the city and the business community. The Mosaic Community in Trondheim (as the Jewish congregation was called) had been founded in 1905 by Aron Mendelsohn and others (in Norwegian). He ran a clothing store in the city, which was one of 150 Jewish-owned businesses in the centre of Trondheim before the war.
“There is little doubt that there was a thriving and rich Jewish community in Trondheim until the outbreak of the Second World War. Jews settled in Trondheim and saw an opportunity to make a good living here,” said Reitan.
Photo: Unknown photographer/Jewish Museum in Trondheim
As a result of poverty, suffering, war and persecution, Jews from the Suwalki Gap situated along the Polish–Lithuanian border migrated to Trondheim in the late 19th century. Steamships enabled them to reach Scandinavia and Trondheim.
In 1924, the former railway station in Trondheim was acquired by the congregation and converted into an Orthodox synagogue. The world’s northernmost Jewish community gained a place where they could meet, which was also frequented by Jews living in Ålesund, Kristiansund, Narvik and Tromsø.
The Jewish community in Trondheim was small and distinct, and many had fled from brutal encounters with Nazism in Germany. One of these was Josef Grabowski (in Norwegian), a cantor and religious teacher in Trondheim.
Reitan says that, although we cannot be certain how much they talked about their experiences, it is reasonable to assume that such stories spread throughout the small Jewish community.
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War breaks out
On 9 April 1940, the Trondheim Fjord was full of German warships that put 1,700 soldiers ashore.
“Many of the young Jewish men quickly joined the Norwegian forces and took part in the Battle of Hegra Fortress. Many joined the resistance movement early in the war. Other Jews chose to cross over to Sweden by train, although most returned within a few weeks,” said Reitan.
The arrival of the German occupying forces in Trondheim on 9 April 1940. Photo: Schrøder Photography/NTNU University Library (CC BY-SA 4.0)
The conditions experienced by the Jews in Nazi Germany and Kristallnacht (Night of the Broken Glass) were already widely known, and fear and anxiety spread among residents and families.
In April 1941, the Jewish synagogue and meeting place was taken over by Nazi Germany’s Wehrmacht soldiers. They used the premises as barracks, and Aron Mendelsohn witnessed the synagogue he had helped to establish being razed to the ground.
Josef Grabowski (left) and Aron Mendelsohn (right). Both pictures courtesy of the Jewish Museum. Photo: Unknown photographer
The chandelier was used for shooting practice and swastikas were painted on the windows. Despite this, Aron Mendelsohn and Josef Grabowski kept the Jewish community alive and began holding religious services and teaching in their own homes.
Anti-Jewish policies on the rise
Later that year, in October 1941, Gerhard Flesch, a decorated SS officer, arrived in Trondheim. He had just completed a three-month Gestapo course, and became head of the Gestapo in Trondheim and was given virtually free licence.
It was after this that anti-Jewish policies began to escalate. Hitler had big plans for Trondheim, or Neu Drontheim as the city was to be known once the war had been won. The city was to be colonized and become the northernmost main base of the German fleet.
In November of the same year, Flesch set up a prison camp at Falstad: SS Strafgefanenlager Falstad. The camp served as a penal camp for political prisoners, a place of execution for Eastern European prisoners of war, and a transit camp to Auschwitz.
That same autumn, the Administrative Office (Forvaltningskontoret) in Trondheim was also set up, led by National Socialist party official Reidar Landgraff. This office was tasked with seizing the businesses, homes, capital and assets of Jews.
Many of the city’s institutions were involved in this task, not just the Administrative Office. “Ordinary people’s” workplaces, such as the tax authorities, banks, insurance companies and auction houses, all played a part in the seizures. In other words, local people contributed to the financial liquidation of their Jewish neighbours.
“In February 1942, a Nazi came in in full uniform. He arrived with the intention of seizing all the stores, and it was a guy I knew […]. He had been in my brother’s class at school […].
Sarah Ragle, contemporary witness
Documents sent by the SS leader to Berlin reported good collaboration between the German and Norwegian police forces. During the post-war interrogations, Reidar Landgraff said there were “no difficulties with any of the banks.”
Reitan stressed that it was the financial stages of the genocide that led to the process being different in Trondheim compared with the corresponding process in Oslo.
“Gerhard Flesch played a key role during the Holocaust. Against a background of widespread terror, violence and greed, the destruction of the Jewish community in Trondheim took place earlier than elsewhere in Norway,” Reitan said.
Escalation and state of emergency
In the early morning of 6 October 1942, a train arrived from Oslo. On board was Nazi Germany’s Reichskommissar in Norway Josef Terboven.
Facsimile av the front page of Adressavisen, the Trondheim newspaper, from 6 October 1942, announcing an immediate state of emergency in Trondheim.
On the same day, an immediate state of emergency was declared in Trondheim, along with summary justice. The Norwegian police contributed to the process and introduced a curfew.
A number of dramatic days followed. In Falstad, prisoners were unlawfully executed without trial. In Trondheim, the police arrested every Jew over the age of 15. The men were transported to Falstad, while the women and children were interned in apartments in Trondheim.
On 25 November, the Jews were reunited at the railway station in Trondheim. They were put on a train to Oslo. However, the train was delayed, which meant they were unable to reach the cargo ship Donau, which departed from Oslo on 26 November, with 529 Jews on board bound for Auschwitz.
How surprising the Jewish action in Oslo really was, considering what had already been happening in Trondheim since early October, is a question that Reitan thinks deserves more research.
More is known about what happened to the Jews in Oslo
“We currently know little about how the experiences in Trøndelag were perceived and interpreted in the capital. Previous research has probably focussed more on what happened to the Jews in Oslo during the Second World War. This is where the vast majority of Jewish Norwegians lived, and it was from here that the deportations took place,” said Reitan.
The prisoners from Trondheim were transported to Bredtveit prison in Oslo and remained there until 25 February 1943. On this day, the steamships that originally enabled the Jews to flee to Scandinavia and Trondheim took them back to Eastern Europe and their ultimate destination of Auschwitz, this time with their children and grandchildren in tow. On board were 158 Jews from the Jewish communities of Trondheim, Narvik, Tromsø, Kristiansund, Stavanger and Bergen.
“Following this operation, Norway was depleted of what were known as ‘deportable Jews’,” added Reitan.
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Emptiness and loneliness, fear and dread
“I remember that we were supposed to go back to Trondheim, but I didn’t want to go back there any more. I wanted to stay in Sweden, I didn’t want to go back to our house. Because I had a bad feeling […]
Sarah Mahler Uthaug, contemporary witness
Many of the contemporary witnesses Reitan spoke to recounted their experiences of the liberation and the post-war era.
“Recurring themes are descriptions of emptiness and loneliness, fear and dread that other people would not understand what they had been through or, worse still, not believe the story they had to tell. At the same time as dealing with the traumas they had been through, they also had to rebuild both their own lives and their religious community,” Reitan said.
Peace finally broke out in the summer of 1945. Oskar Mendelsohn, the son of Aron Mendelsohn, assumed responsibility for leading the efforts to rebuild the Jewish community in Trondheim. The plan was to restore the synagogue, revive the religious community and establish a memorial.
“It is difficult to imagine a greater contrast with the joy of liberation that was sweeping through most of the majority community,” said Reitan.
The memorial in the Jewish cemetery was unveiled and dedicated on 13 October 1947. On the same day, Reidar Landgraff, the head of the former Administrative Office, was sentenced to 15 years’ forced labour.
“It is worth noting that it was the Jews who erected the first memorials to the Holocaust in Norway. Most people were probably more concerned with pulling themselves together, looking to the future and rebuilding the country after the long, hard years of war. I doubt that the people of Trøndelag felt any sense of guilt or shame about Norway’s part in the Holocaust at the time,” said Reitan.
He points out that, without the efforts of the Jews in Trondheim during the post-war years to collate sources and documentation – while the rest of the country was focused on stories of patriotic heroes – the Holocaust would have been a blind spot in Norway’s collective memory.
Source:
Reitan, J. (2024). Holocaust i Trondheim. Agora. vol. 42(1-2) (in Norwegian)
