Disentangling Synonyms: How Resistance to Nazism and Antisemitism Were Distinct Movements in Occupied Norway
After Germany invaded Norway on April 9th 1940, a resistance movement gradually emerged from numerous sectors of Norwegian society, including the government in exile (comprising both Norway’s Prime Minister Johan Nygaardsvold and Royal King Haakon VII), the Church, businesses and industry, political and social organizations, and individual citizens. The Homefront resistance was comprised of a range of actions, from symbolic acts, such as wearing a lapel referencing King Haakon VII, to silent sabotage in the workplace, to assisting with rescue missions to Sweden. Out of Norway, the government in exile disseminated anti-Nazi media as well as worked with other European governments to aid the war effort against Germany. The overwhelming majority of resistance was centered around resistance to Nazism, Nazification, and Vidkun Quisling’s Nasjonal Samling (NS) party.[1] The resistance had a nationalist character, encouraging a Norwegian identity and opposing that which interfered. Nazi and NS leaders tried to control civilian life and were met with criticism, refusal, and organized acts of resistance. As in all Nazi-occupied regions, the Holocaust was a central part of policy in Nazifying Norway, beginning with legal discrimination against Jewish people before escalating to the deportation of the entire Jewish population to concentration camps in 1942. Though the wider population was not aware of what deportation against Jewish people would lead to, there "had been growing indications… that severe actions were pending against all Jews in Norway"[2] and Nazi antisemitism had certainly not been hidden from the general population.
Norwegians were ultimately against Nazi antisemitism, but when compared to the resistance against other Nazification policies, such as those aimed at Nazifying Norwegian schools and churches without any focus on Jewish people, their resistance to antisemitism often displayed itself with lesser significance, dissimilar patterns, or did not display itself at all. This essay aims to answer the questions: what patterns of resistance to Nazism emerged in occupied Norway and was resistance to antisemitism a part of those patterns? Interestingly, even though antisemitism is an essential part of Nazism, resistance to Nazism and resistance to antisemitism were separate responses in occupied Norway. Resistance to Nazism was consistent and focused on short-term actions with long-term goals, whereas resistance to antisemitism was often spontaneous and comprised of actions referring to long-term finality.
By 1942, the structure of occupied Norway was finalised: Germany had total control through three institutions (the Reichskommissariat, the Wehrmacht, and the SS and police)[3], while Quisling’s fascist party governed parliament. The Norwegian resistance, which was composed of both leading political figures representing official groups such as the royal family and Church, and of individual citizens who acted voluntarily without any overt affiliation to a specific resistance group, targeted both Nazis and Quisling, often interchangeably. Compared to other occupied nations, Martin Conway described this resistance as having a "peculiarly homogenous nature", in that unaffiliated organizations acted as though they were led by a singular party with singular goals.[4] This is true more in sentiment than in action, but it does identify how the resistance movement can be defined by certain characteristics, most notably its persistent non-violent protests aimed at maintaining a distinct Norwegian identity in the face of Nazism. The "homogenous" resistance was comprised of a variety of groups: the Church and social and political groups (such as teacher organizations) led many of the large-scale protests.[5] The resistance was also defined by its appearance in London through the government in exile, in businesses and the workplace, and in the day-to-day life of individual citizens. Similarly, the resistance that was composed of different moving parts often adhered to regular patterns.
According to Norwegian Holocaust scholar Samuel Abrahamsen, the resistance regularly communicated through paroles, contributing to the resistance’s consistency. Paroles were "directives on civil resistance during a period of holdingskamp (steadfast moral struggle)"[6], referring to periods such as wartime or occupation where citizens had to remain resilient against adversarial powers. Often the Norwegian Church leadership under Bishop Eivind Berggrav initiated these directives; one of the first Bishop Berggrav decreed was that no one could be forced to join the NS party. Nonmembership was to remain a personal decision,[7] though this would change later when the government in exile began to write provisional treason decrees.[8] These moral and practical directives were also issued by other key resistance groups, such as school organizations and the government in exile. Einår Høgard, secretary to the Schools Council for Secondary Education, spread the "four points of resistance" to teachers in 1941, which gave instructions to reject membership demands to the NS, reject NS propaganda in schools, reject orders from non-competent people, and reject participation in Nazi youth organizations.[9] The government in exile disseminated De Ti Bud for Nordmend, The Ten Commandments for Norwegians, which dictated personal moral rules on how to resist collaboration and encouraged resistance-oriented behavior.[10]
Espeli Harald defined the resistance well when he wrote that it was "predominantly a reaction or defense against the nazifying measures and attempts undertaken by the Germans and the Quisling-regime church after 25th September 1940".[11] However, these reactions were not widespread or consistent from the beginning. While some groups acted immediately, such as the government in exile, other groups took time to get started. Initially "Economic collaboration [producing goods for the Nazi government] was predominantly voluntary"[12] and the workplace was not an impactful place of resistance. However, after directives from resistance leaders emphasized the changing state of the war, as Nazis began to lose battles on both the eastern and western fronts, the "attitude to economic interaction with the Germans and working on German building and construction sites changed".[13] Prime Minister Nygaardsvold, elected leader of the government in exile, broadcasted in 1943 how "silent sabotage can be very effective when the whole people participate in it",[14] and Grimnes notes "that quite a lot of silent sabotage was carried out in the second half of the war."[15] This was mainly done through being inefficient, uncooperative, and disruptive when working for German forces, such as in industries forced to provide for the Nazi war effort.
This aspect of the Norwegian resistance is key to understanding it – once it started, it continued to occur. The confidence and ability of resistance groups grew steadily and they acted in recurring patterns. In October 1940, when teachers were told to sign a pledge of loyalty to NS and the Nazis, most teachers refused;[16] This behavior became solidified in the education sector and in 1942 when teachers were forced to join a Nazified teacher’s union, thousands refused and protested on a nationwide scale.[17] As mentioned earlier, once workers began to purposefully work less efficiently, they continued to do so in greater numbers. When the Norwegian bishops resigned in February 1942,[18] stating that "to continue the administrative cooperation with a state that exercises violence against the church would be to betray the most holy",[19] they did not work within the state system again. Quisling’s regime was incredibly poor at stopping resistance once it started, so much so that English historian of fascism Paul Hayes argued because Quisling failed to Nazify "civil servants and labor unions; legal and sports organizations; teachers, churches, and student groups" he then moved against "the small and defenseless Jewish community".[20]
In strategic terms, the resistance can be characterized as operating through small daily acts of disobedience that carry underlying long-term goals. The ideas of the movement were often bound by values of what it meant to be a Norwegian on a personal level. The church underpinned its resistance not with political liberation but by focusing "mainly on moral values: justice, humanity, and freedom of conscience."[21] As these values applied to moral conduct in their daily life, they did not manifest themselves in grand acts. Though military operations did occur, they were primarily focused on gathering intelligence for the government in exile.[22] Full-on military resistance ended when Norwegian forces surrendered in June 1940 due to forces made up of relatively few soldiers who were completely unprepared for military invasion.[23] Even in the most successful acts of resistance led by the church or teachers, the acts were never about overthrowing Nazi leaders. When the largest public protests occurred in 1942, it was in response to the Nazification of school classrooms, which forced students to pledge allegiance to the Nazi Party and learn its doctrines. The resistance focused on rejecting new policies, such as Nazi allegiance pledges in schools, rather than overthrowing the underlying forces in charge of the occupation.
By Riksarkivet (National Archives of Norway) from Oslo, Norway - Borrestevnet, sommeren 1941., No restrictions, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=43988269
Rejection or noncompliance to an NS proposal that affected civilian life would not end the occupation, but this act done every day would eventually lead to the end of that occupation. The idea of small acts with long-term goals is clearly defined in De Ti Bud for Nordmend, where it states "Thou shalt daily impress upon thy children and all thy acquaintances that they are Norwegians and must remain so".[24] In a speech broadcast by Prime Minister in exile Nygaardsvold in December 1944, he emphasized how "The important thing is not to expose oneself too much and to avoid German provocations."[25] In workplaces where the products assisted the German state, workers that labored "as reluctantly and inefficiently as possible", such as a mechanic in Oslo referenced in a study on economic collaboration,[26] were not trying to overthrow the Nazi occupation, but provide small acts which would build up over time, hoping that an inefficient war economy and an uncooperative population would help prohibit the likelihood of further Nazification.
This characteristic can most obviously be seen when reading Kathleen Stokker’s "Heil Hitler: God Save the King", which focused on the widespread symbolic resistance that took place in Norway. Jokes, slogans, posters, Christmas cards and a host of other colloquial forms of media provided everyday forms of resistance. This aided in, "creating an early forum for communicating the fundamental principles of the resistance",[27] such as disseminating information, encouraging solidarity, preventing isolation, and raising morale. Jokes ridiculed Nazi and NS rules and leadership, and posters and cards shared around society would feature hidden symbols that referenced King Haakon VII . The main themes of this content were "the rejection of Nazism and desire for Haakon’s return and Haakon’s loyalty to Norway and his worthiness of the people’s veneration."[28] Symbolic acts even led to mass arrests in 1942 when flowers were worn on lapels to refer to their exiled king. Though it is an exaggeration, Stokker wrote that the symbolic honoring of their exiled king who opposed the Nazi government was "Remembered as the largest demonstration of anti-Nazi opinion of the entire occupation period."[29] These symbolic acts highlight the general nature of the resistance, similar to De Ti Bud for Nordmend, where every civilian undertakes a small act of resistance that has in itself the strategy of wearing down the occupation where eventually "a German defeat can give us our liberty again".[30]
King Haakon VII reading the Speech from the Throne to the Storting in 1950, Crown Prince Olav on his right side. By Unknown photographer - Oslo Museum: image no. OB.FS0332, via digitaltmuseum.no., CC BY 3.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=18491886
One aspect that was notably lacking from the resistance movement was disapproval of antisemitism. The persecution of Norway’s Jewish population had grown steadily after the Nazi invasion and the NS party’s placement in government. Though not in power until the occupation, Quisling had desired antisemitic policy for Norway since around 1934 when he "began to emulate Hitler, including the latter’s use of [antisemitism] as the core of his racist ideology."[31] Legislative persecution was carried out in stages; at first Jewish persons had their radios confiscated, then marriage between Jewish and non-Jewish citizens was banned; soon they were forced to have a “J” stamped on their passports. Finally, in October 1942, under orders from the Nazis, Norwegian police arrested Norway’s Jewish population, who were then deported to Poland.[32] Given that the Jewish population in Norway was so small, nevertheless the historiography on the impact of the Holocaust in Norway has produced varying conclusions. Many interpret that "the Jewish community in Norway was hit hard by the Holocaust compared to other Western European and so-called Germanic countries, with 40% of its members murdered."[33] However, a more optimistic analysis discusses how the latter’s context makes ‘the rescue of almost half Norway’s Jewish population, being brought from occupied Norway to Sweden largely by people of the Norwegian Resistance, take on added significance."[34]
By Anders Beer Wilse (1865–1949) - Galleri Nor Tilvekstnummer: NF.WF 15027 Internnr: NBR9204:21800, Public Domain, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=12817180
One might expect that the use of paroles would have been implemented to direct Norwegians to help Jewish citizens who were being persecuted. But this did not happen. Samuel Abrahamsen writes that "Jews were the only ethnic group destined for destruction that did not receive the support and potential protection afforded through the parole…"[35] Some historians have even considered that the resistance movement’s absence of protection towards Jewish people was not indifference or unawareness, but a purposeful strategy.[36] Regardless of the motivation, it is significant that in a consistent resistance movement that reacted to all other implementations of Nazification, reactions to antisemitism were uncommon. The Church, "one of the chief rallying points of popular feeling since the Germans moved in",[37] which notoriously commented on all aspects of Nazification, "with some exceptions - did not protest against the anti-Semitic propaganda of the Germans and the Quislings."[38] Torleiv Austad, a Norwegian theologian writing on the impact of the church in the resistance, concluded that "it is obvious that it took too long for the Church of Norway to recognize the dreadful consequences of the anti-Jewish policies and take action on behalf of the Norwegian Jews",[39] and this comment can be extended to most of the leaders of the resistance.
It is important to discuss the exceptions to this, within the church and other areas of society. While it was uncommon, resistance to antisemitism did occur. Rescue missions were the most impactful acts, but there were exceptions where the general resistance movement reacted to Jewish persecution. When confiscation of property and deportation began in October 1942, the church did respond with one of its letters of protest to Quisling. However, not only was it "the only public protest against the detention and deportation of the Norwegian Jews",[40] but it also was written in November, after the mass arrests had already happened when intervention was no longer possible. The government in exile, mainly Prime Minister Nygaardsvold, did make some comments regarding Jewish persecution. On 23rd October 1941, he sent a message to the Jewish Chronicle stating his hope "that after we have overthrown Nazism, with its vile conceptions of racial discrimination, we shall be able to establish a peace in which understanding and good relations will prevail between all nations and communities irrespective of race or creed."[41] However, similar to the church, the general vague messages of this kind are exceptions, and while Nygaardsvold was certainly against Nazi antisemitism it was never a priority.
It was not common nor expected for the church, social organizations, or general civilians to openly protest against antisemitism. This is not wholly surprising when considering that the Jewish population was only around 2,000 and "there was also antisemitism within Norwegian society, expressed not as an articulated ideology but rather as a vague dislike".[42] However, it is surprising when considering that the resistance was consistent in its resistance to all other areas of Nazism. Members of the church frequently responded to other areas of society, such as Nazi involvement in schools, but only at odd moments did they choose to protest the policy towards Jewish citizens.
The resistance that was present mostly consisted of reactionary responses to antisemitic policies, but they also often carried a semantic finality that suggested long-term intentions. When teachers protested a new initiative, it was a short-term act aimed at stopping the new initiative, but not to reverse the underlying foundations with the ultimate goal of liberation. However, when protests against Jewish persecution occurred, they always appeared with suggestions of long-term actions, even if they were never realistically sought after by the resistance. The church’s protest against deportation, Hebreerbrevet [The Letter to the Hebrews], pleaded to completely stop "the persecution of [Jewish people] in Norway."[43] Similarly, Nygaardsvold explained he wanted to restore total equal rights, even falsely claiming that there was never any antisemitism in Norway.[44] These statements were unrealistic and we cannot be sure that those who spoke them believed in the possibility of achieving them, but what they do show is the desire for all persecution to stop immediately, regardless if Norway was still under occupation.
Norwegian teachers imprisoned in the Falstad concentration camp, near Trondheim, for their refusal to participate in the Nazi Teachers Association in the spring of 1942. — US Holocaust Memorial Museum, courtesy of Unknown Provenance https://medium.com/memory-action/why-did-norwegian-teachers-wear-paper-clips-during-world-war-ii-5a9aa379e293
The most pragmatic way resistance occurred was through assisting people flee from Norway to Sweden. Assisting fleeing persons "followed various patterns, both organized and spontaneous."[45] Members of organized resistance groups did plan action to assist targeted groups,[46] especially when mass arrests of a certain group took place such as when thousands of teachers and students were arrested in 1942.[47] But the spontaneity of individual citizens also played a large part in helping people flee. When the mass arrest of Jewish citizens took place, many police officers gave warnings in advance. Robert Savosnick was warned by his city’s police sheriff of his arrest the day before and when a police officer came to arrest Savosnick he purposefully gave him a blatant opportunity to flee.[48] Though some police officers did help Jewish citizens – notably the Norwegian police inspector Knut Rød who organized the arrests and claimed to have given information to the resistance movement[49] – it would be a mischaracterization to suggest police officers were organized in their assistance to rescue missions. Like many citizens, their help was spontaneous and separate from the formal aspects of the resistance that was frequently led with directives.
Rescue missions were quite impactful; contrary to most of the judgements about the resistance movement, some historians have suggested that because of the short period of dramatic persecution, that nearly half of Norway’s Jewish population escaped was impressive.[50] One might wonder how antisemitism was not a priority of the resistance when 50% of Jewish civilians perished. However, contextualizing this statistic with the number of how many Norwegians crossed the border into Sweden diminishes its initial significance. Abrahamsen estimates that during the occupation over 50,000 Norwegians escaped or were rescued over the border into Sweden.[51] This means that the 925 Jewish citizens who crossed the border were less than 2% of all Norwegians who did so. While this is proportionally more than the Jewish population out of the total population (around 0.04%), Jewish people were the only group to be targeted wholly without pretext. Though teachers, students, and church officials were targeted, it was usually in response to their resistance to Nazification. We should not dismiss the fact that 925 Jewish citizens were saved, but we also should not suggest that they were saved by a focused response to antisemitism. The resistance lacked formal responses to persecution; the "correspondence between the Norwegian Government-in-Exile and the Home Front does not cover the many anti-Semitic actions in Norway during the occupation, or make any mention of policies to be followed to rescue Jews or assist those in hiding."[52] Considering this, historian of European migration and minorities Christhard Hoffman asks in retrospect "Why did [the resistance movement’s] leadership not explicitly call upon its members to help Jews?"[53] This essay cannot answer Hoffman’s question, but the way out of his paradox is to analyze these contradictions and suggest from them that the response to antisemitism was distinct from the response to Nazism.
Approaching this topic from two converging angles appears to create a contradiction. Holocaust historian Dan Stone writes that "historians are in more or less unanimous agreement that the Third Reich was dominated by its racial worldview"[54], including in the occupation policy of Germany: "nazification of the Norwegian people with the help of Quisling’s party".[55] As the resistance in Norway responded to all other aspects of Nazism and Nazification, it seems contradictory that the resistance movement would not respond in equal measure to the Nazi’s racial policy. Rescue missions did save 925 Jewish citizens and there are sporadic examples of protest from different sectors of the resistance movement, but these examples are often spontaneous, non-recurring, and have semantic meaning referring to finality and long-term actions. This contrasts with the overwhelming majority of how the Norwegian resistance functioned, led by formal directives that encouraged steadily recurring short-term acts with underlying long-term goals.
What this suggests is that resistance to Nazism and resistance to antisemitism were different responses, even when they were often undertaken by the same leaders, groups, and individuals. This represents a split in worldview between the perpetrators of occupation and the victims of occupation. The Nazi and NS party had an antisemitic and racist worldview ingrained within them – to them, there was no possibility of separating Nazism and antisemitism. Norwegian society did not have the same worldview. Though there was antisemitism in society, it was not the same as what was rampant in Nazi Germany; Norwegian antisemitic propagandists even "regularly complained that Norwegians did not recognize the significance of "the Jewish question",[56] referring to the antisemitic debate over what should be done to remove Jewish people from European society.
For Norwegians, Nazism centered on the Nazification of their Norwegian identity, and that Norwegian identity was represented to them via its representation of the majority, which Jewish culture and people were not a part of. Hence, though Nazism and antisemitism are often in effect synonymous, the resistance movement in Norway was able to separate the ideologies, creating two different streams of resistance that followed contradictory patterns and goals. These patterns and goals are not absolute and exceptions occurred. However, viewing the resistance through the lens of these patterns allows us to analyze how the resistance grew and responded to fascist occupation. Through this analysis we can disentangle the history and historiography of the Norwegian resistance into two distinct responses, offering a solution to the conflicting and contradictory patterns we find.
End Notes
[1] Vidkun Quisling founded the Norwegian fascist party Nasjonal Samling in 1933, which received incredibly poor support during national and local elections over the next seven years. His party was decreed as the only Norwegian political party after Nazi occupation, though still under the jurisdiction of Nazi officials. For more see Oddvar K. Høidal, “Vidkun Quisling and the Deportation of Norway’s Jews”, Scandinavian Studies, 88, no. 3 (2016): 270-294.
[2] Høidal, “Vidkun Quisling and the Deportation of Norway’s Jews”, 278.
[3] The Wehrmacht was the armed forces of Nazi Germany, comprised of an army, a navy, and an air force. They were the main force in the invasion of Norway and were stationed there to defend it. The Reichskommissariat was the political institution set up to govern Norway and control the Norwegian fascist party. It was controlled by Reichskommissar Josef Terboven. The SS was the special paramilitary Nazi police force that regulated civilian life. For more see Ole Kristian Grimnes, Norway in the Second World War: Politics, Society, and Conflict (London: Bloomsbury Academic, 2022), 55-92.
[4] Martin Conway, Europe in Exile (Oxford: Berghahn Books, 2001), 260.
[5] Nicola Karcher, “A National Socialist school for Norway: concepts of Nazification during the German occupation of Norway”, International Journal of the History of Education, 56, no. 5 (2020): 677.
[6] Samuel Abrahamsen, Norway’s Response to the Holocaust (New York: Holocaust Library, 1991), 9.
[7] Abrahamsen, Norway’s Response to the Holocaust, 76-77.
[8] Baard Herman Borge & Lars-Erik Vaale, “Stretching the rule of law: how the norwegian resistance movement influenced the provisional treason decrees of the exile government, 1944-1945”, Scandinavian Journal of History, 46, no. 1 (2021): 105-124.
[9] Tessa Dunseath, “Teachers at war: Norwegian teachers during the German Occupation of Norway 1940-1945”, History of Education, 31, no. 4 (2002): 375.
[10] The commandments stated: 1) Thou shalt obey King Haakon whom thou thyself hast elected. 2) Thou shalt detest Hitler and all his works, and never forget that, without a declaration of war, he made his co-assassins fall upon peaceable people. 3) Thou shalt remember forever how the German Nazis, without military reason, made their aviators wipe out Norwegian farms, villages and towns, in order to satisfy their blood-list and spread terror. 4) Thou shalt despise any form of treason and remember that its punishment is death. 5) Thou shalt regard as traitor any Norwegian who, as a private individual, keeps company with Germans or Quislings at home, in the streets, or in restaurants. 6) So, too, thou shalt regard every member of the Storting who votes in favor of deposing our gallant King and our legal Government, who are the only ones who are able, in free and independence, to work for the liberty of Norway. 7) Thou shalt take note that a Government of German lackeys will be judged by the whole world as a Government of rebels and bring upon us universal contempt. 8) Thou shalt daily impress upon thy children and all thy acquaintances that they are Norwegians and must remain so. 9) Thou shalt remember that only a German defeat can give us our liberty again. 10) God save the King and Fatherland. For more see Halvdan Koht, Norway: Neutral and Invaded (London: Hutchinson & Co., 1941), 145-146.
[11] Harald Espeli, “The German occupation and its consequences for the composition and changes of Norwegian business elites”, Jahrbuch für Wirtschaftsgeschichte, 51, no. 2 (2010): 113.
[12] Espeli, “The German occupation and its consequences for the composition and changes of Norwegian business elites”, 112.
[13] Grimnes, Norway in the Second World, 126.
[14] Johan Nygaardsvold, “Speech broadcast from London to Norway on Tuesday 26th December, at 18.30 B.S.T. by the Norwegian Prime Minister, Hr. Johan Nygaardsvold”, December 1944.
[15] Grimnes, Norway in the Second World War, 127.
[16] Dunseath, “Teachers at war”, 374.
[17] Grimnes, Norway in the Second World War, 82.
[18] Arne Hassing, “The Resignation of the Bishops” in Church Resistance to Nazism in Norway, 1940-1945 (US: University of Washington Press, 2014), 119-129.
[19] Hassing, “The Resignation of the Bishops”, 125.
[20] Paul Hayes, Quisling: The Career and Political Ideas of Vidkun Quisling (London: Newton Abbot, David & Charles, 1971), 288.
[21] Abrahamsen, Norway’s Response to the Holocaust, 141.
[22] Ian Herrington, “The SIS and SOE in Norway 1940-1945: Conflict or Co-operation?”, War in History, 9, no. 1 (2002): 95.
[23] Torleiv Austad, “Church Resistance against Nazism in Norway, 1940-1945”, Kirchliche Zeitgeschichte, 28, no. 2 (2015): 278.
[24] Koht, Norway: Neutral and Invaded, 146.
[25] Nygaardsvold, “Speech broadcast from London to Norway”, December 1944.
[26] Hans Otto Frøland & Martin Steffensen, “Legitimate or improper economic collaboration? The struggle about the past after the German occupation of Norway” in War and Semiotics: Signs, Communication Systems, and the Preparation, Legitimization, and Commemoration of Collective Mass Violence (UK: Routledge, 2020), 265.
[27] Kathleen Stokker, “Heil Hitler: God Save the King: Jokes and the Norwegian Resistance 1940-1945”, Western Folklore, 50, no. 2 (1991): 184.
[28] Kathleen Stokker, “Hurry Home, Haakon: The Impact of Anti-Nazi Humor on the Image of the Norwegian Monarch”, The Journal of American Folklore, 109, no. 433 (1996): 299.
[29] Stokker, “The Impact of Anti-Nazi Humor on the Image of the Norwegian Monarch”, 292.
[30] Koht, Norway: Neutral and Invaded, 146.
[31] Høidal, “Vidkun Quisling and the Deportation of Norway’s Jews”, 272.
[32] Abrahamsen, Norway’s Response to the Holocaust, 79-127.
[33] Nicola Karcher, & Braut Simonsen, “Antisemitism without Jews: the impact of redemptive antisemitism in Norway before the Nazi occupation”, Scandinavian Journal of History, 49, no. 2 (2023): 197.
[34] Abrahamsen, Norway’s Response to the Holocaust, 1-2.
[35] Abrahamsen, Norway’s Response to the Holocaust, 9-10.
[36] Christhard Hoffman, “A Marginal Phenomenon?: Historical Research on Antisemitism in Norway, 1814-1945”, in Antisemitism in the North (Boston: De Gruyter, 2019), 170.
[37] C. E. Black, “Quisling’s Norway”, Current History, 2, no. 8 (1942): 129.
[38] Austad, “Church Resistance against Nazism in Norway”, 291.
[39] Austad, “Church Resistance against Nazism in Norway”, 291.
[40] Austad, “Church Resistance against Nazism in Norway”, 292.
[41] Johan Nygaardsvold, “Message from Prime Minister Hr. Johan Nygaardsvold to the Jewish Chronicle”, London, 23rd October 1941.
[42] Grimnes, Norway in the Second World War, 5.
[43] Austad, “Church Resistance against Nazism in Norway”, 292.
[44] Johan Nygaardsvold, “A Message from the Norwegian Prime Minister Professor Nygaardsvold”, The Jewish Bulletin, no. 13, September 1942.
[45] Abrahamsen, Norway’s Response to the Holocaust, 16.
[46] Abrahamsen, Norway’s Response to the Holocaust, 9.
[47] Grimnes, Norway in the Second World War, 82
[48] Hans Melien & Robert Savosnick, Jeg Ville Ikke Dø (Norway: Cappelen Damm, 2022), [Audiobook] [25:00].
[49] Bjarte Bruland & Mats Tangestuen, “The Norwegian Holocaust: changing views and representations”, Scandinavian Journal of History, 36, no. 5 (2011): 591.
[50] Hoffman, “A Marginal Phenomenon?”, in Antisemitism in the North, 169.
[51] Abrahamsen, Norway’s Response to the Holocaust, 2.
[52] Abrahamsen, Norway’s Response to the Holocaust, 136.
[53] Hoffman, “A Marginal Phenomenon?” in Antisemitism in the North, 169.
[54] Dan Stone, Fascism, Nazism and the Holocaust: Challenging Histories (New York: Routledge, 2021), 64.
[55] Abrahamsen, Norway’s Response to the Holocaust, 71.
[56] Karcher & Simonsen, “Antisemitism Without Jews”, 210.
Ashton McGarvie
Ashton McGarvie is a graduating student from Victoria University of Wellington in New Zealand. He studied a Bachelor of Arts majoring in History and minoring in Linguistics and English Literature. In 2025 he will be starting postgraduate study with an honours course at Victoria University. He has a great passion for the history of both Aotearoa New Zealand and Europe, and has focused most of his undergraduate research on the period of the early 20th century, ranging from Kīngitanga leadership in New Zealand to WWI border settlements between Denmark and Germany.