The Holocaust in Norway - Confiscation and Arrests

Confiscation and Arrests

Both German and Norwegian police officials intensified efforts to target the Jewish population in the course of 1941. The concentration camp at Falstad was established near Levanger, north of Trondheim. Jewish individuals, particularly those who were stateless, were briefly detained in connection with Operation Barbarossa. The first Jewish Norwegian to be deported was Benjamin Bild, a labor union activist and mechanic, who ended his days in Gross Rosen. Moritz Rabinowitz, was probably the first to be arrested in March, 1941 for agitating against Nazi antisemitism in the Haugesund press, and sent to Sachsenhausen where he was beaten to death on 27 December 1942.

German troops occupied the synagogue in Trondheim on 21 April 1941, vandalizing the premises. The Torah scrolls had been secured in the early days of the war, and before long the Methodist church in Trondheim had provided temporary facilities for Jewish religious services. Several Jewish residents of Trondheim were arrested and detained at Falstad. The first such prisoner was Efraim Koritzinsky, a medical doctor and head of Trondheim hospital. Several others followed; altogether eight of these were shot in the woods outside of the camp that became the infamous site of extrajudicial executions in Norway On 24 February, all remaining Jewish property in Trondheim was seized by Nazi authorities.

As the brutality of the Terboven regime came to light through the atrocities at Telavåg, Martial law in Trondheim in 1942, etc., persecution against Jews in particular became more pronounced.

After numerous cases of harassment and violence against individuals, orders were issued to Norwegian police authorities on 24 and 25 October 1942, to arrest all Jewish men over the age of 15 and confiscate all their property. On 26 October, several Norwegian police branches and 20 soldiers of Germanic-SS rounded up and arrested Jewish men, often leaving their wives and children on the street. These prisoners were held primarily at Berg concentration camp in Southern Norway and Falstad concentration camp in central parts of the country; some were held in local jails, while Jewish women were ordered to report in person to their local sheriffs on a daily basis.

On the morning of 26 November, German soldiers and more than 300 Norwegian officials (belonging to Statspolitiet, Kriminalpolitiet, Hirden and Germanske SS-Norge) were deployed to arrest and detain Jewish women and children. These were sent by cars and train to the pier in Oslo where a cargo ship, the SS Donau was waiting to transport them to Stettin, and from there to Auschwitz

By 27 November, all Jews in Norway were either deported and murdered, imprisoned, had fled to Sweden, or were in hiding in Norway.