Norwegian Government-in-exile Protests Deportation of Jews from Norway

The Norwegian Government-in-Exile today issued a comprehensive report describing the persecution of Jews in Nazi-occupied Norway. At the same time it published the full text of the protests against the deportations of the Norwegian Jewish population adopted by the churches in Norway and in Sweden.

“Anti-Semitism in Norway is a sheer invention of the Gestapo and the Quislings,” the statement of the Norwegian Government-in-Exile declares. “The people of Norway ceased to think of Jews as such after voiding all anti-Jewish restrictions in the country 91 years ago.”

The Swedish radio today broadcast a joint protest of twenty-one leading women’s organizations in Sweden condemning the deportation of the Jews from Norway. The organizations represent practically all the women of Sweden. “The persecution of people of a different race is contrary to the Nordic conceptions of justice,” the protest emphasizes.

The Swedish radio last night broadcast an official announcement from Oslo. Norway. that the German steamer on which Norwegian Jews were deported to an unknown destination “has reached a German Baltic port after a stormy voyage.” The announcement of the pro-Nazi Norwegian government stated that “the ship carried only 532 Jewish passengers” Private reports said that more than 1,000 Jews were on the prison ship which had been feared wrecked in a storm.

The official announcement from Nazi-occupied Norway also reported that not more than 200 Jews remained in the country. There were about 1,400 Jews in Norway prior to the Nazi occupation. (A Swedish broadcast heard today by the Federal Communications Commission in Washington stated that the Quisling police have assembled another 124 Jews at a concentration camp in Oslo for deportation to Nazi-held Poland. The ages of the group. consisting of Jewish men, women and children, range from one year to eighty. the Swedish report said.)