The Holocaust in Norway - Deportation and Mass Murder

Deportation and Mass Murder

See also: Jewish deportees from Norway during World War II

• The first group deportation of Jews from Norway was on 19 November 1942 when the ship Monte Rosa left Oslo with 223 prisoners, of which 21 were Jewish.

• The original plan was to ship all remaining Jews in Norway in one cargo ship, the SS Donau, on 26 November 1942, but only 532 prisoners boarded the SS Donau that day. Coincidentally with the departure of the SS Donau the same day, the MS Monte Rosa carried 26 Jews from Oslo. The Donau landed in Stettin on 30 November. The prisoners boarded cargo trains at Breslauer Bahnhof, 60 to a car and departed Stettin at 5:12 pm. The train journey to Auschwitz took 28 hours. All the prisoners arrived alive at the camp, and there they were sorted into two lines. 186 were sent to slave labor in the Birkenau subcamp, the rest - 345 - were killed (within hours) in Auschwitz's gas chambers.

• The remaining Jewish prisoners that had been en route to Oslo on 26 November for the departure of the Donau were delayed, possibly as a result of delaying tactics by the Red Cross and sympathetic railroad workers. These were imprisoned under harsh conditions at Bredtveit concentration camp in Oslo to await a later transport.
• On 24 February 1943, the Bredtveit prisoners, along with 25 from Grini, boarded the Gotenland in Oslo, altogether 158. The ship departed the following day, also landing in Stettin, where they arrived on 27 February. They traveled to Auschwitz via Berlin, where they stayed overnight at the Levetzowstrasse Synagogue. They arrived at Auschwitz on the night between 2 March and 3 March. Of the 158 who arrived from Norway, only 26 or 28 survived the first day, being sent to the Monowitz subcamp of Auschwitz.

There were smaller and individual deportations after the Gotenland's voyage. A smaller number of Jewish prisoners remained in camps in Norway during the war, primarily those who were married to non-Jewish Norwegians. These were subject to mistreatment and neglect. In the camp in Grini, for example, the group that was harshest treated consisted of violent criminals and Jews.

Altogether, about 767 Jews from Norway were deported and sent to concentration camps under German control, primarily Auschwitz. 26 of these survived the ordeal. In addition to the 741 murdered in the camps, 23 died as a result of extrajudicial execution, murder, and suicide during the war; bringing the total of Jewish Norwegian dead to at least 764, comprising 230 complete households.

The death toll among Jews from Norway constituted about 0.013% of the total death toll of European Jews in the Holocaust.