April 9: Saving Jews in Norway

Sigrid Helliesen Lund, a Norwegian peace activist, burned the entire list of Czech Jewish refugees taking refuge in Norway on this date in 1940, including 100 child refugees in the Jewish Children’s Home in Oslo, which Lund had helped establish the year before. The Nazis and the Quisling government eventually became aware of it and began expelling the children to Nazi-occupied lands, and by the time the Nazis ordered the deportation of all Norway’s 1,700 Jews in November, 1942, only fourteen children remained in the Home. All of them were helped to escape to Sweden by a group of seven adults, named as “Righteous Gentiles” at Israel’s Yad Vashem: Caroline Waal, who orchestrated the escape with friends and family; Nina Hasvold, the director of the Home; Gerda Tanberg, who hid the children in her apartment; Martin Solvang, a taxi driver who drove them; Ola Rauken, who hid them on his farm and walked them 17 kilometers to the border; Ola Breisjoberget, who took them across the border; and Lund, who planned the escape and arranged for provisions. As of the summer, 2007, all fourteen of the children were still alive. Lund had to flee to Sweden in 1944, but returned to Norway and joined the Oslo Quaker community in 1947. She lived to 95 and wrote an autobiography, Always on the Way.

“Sigrid Helliesen Lund received early warnings from the Norwegian police on 25 October and 26 November 1942 and was able to alert probably more than 100 Norwegian Jews in Oslo. J.F. Mykleburst, a policeman in Oslo, realized that the actions toward the Jews were a prelude to dreadful crimes. He accordingly warned Jews, as did colleagues throughout the country.” —William Thomas, “Norwegian History and Culture”