"But I left no doubt about the fact that if the peoples of Europe were again only regarded as so many packages of stock shares by these international money and finance conspirators, then that race, too, which is the truly guilty party in this murderous struggle would also have to be held to account: the Jews!"
- Adolf Hitler, My Final Political Testament
In 1929, three years before Nazi Germany, Norway banned shechita, the ritual slaughter of mammals and birds according to Jewish dietary laws. While shechita was only banned during the Nazi period, it remains banned in Norway, which is one of only a handful of countries imposing such a prohibition in the world outside the Islamic world. Compassion for animals does not explain the ban on shechita, since hunting is permitted and popular in Norway -- hunted prey often suffers a much slower and more painful death than in Jewish ritual slaughter. Whaling is legal in Norway and you can go watch whales suffer for up to an hour struggling and bleeding to death while Norwegian whalers stand by on YouTube. Seal clubbing is one of the most popular sports in Norway and seal fur is so popular that the country has to import pelts from Canada because it just doesn’t have enough baby seals to club to wear to clubs. Oh, and of course, Muslim ceremonial slaughter, hallal, is permitted in Norway. Can anyone think of any reason other than anti-Semitism in the land of tolerance, diversity, tolerance, and multiculturalism for the ban on shechita other than anti-Semitism? Bueller?
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| Seal clubbing in Norway! So much fun! But, dem Jooooooos...... |
For those that screaming bloody murder about Sarah Palin shooting wolves to cull the population in order to reduce the number and the effect on other livestock the silence is absolutely deafening. Can I get an Ashley Judd in a PETA wrap?
By the end of the 1930s, there were approximately 2,173 Jews living in a country with 3 million people, with 530 being refugees from the European continent and were not Norwegian citizens. In other words, .0033% of the Norwegian population was Jewish. In 1942, 750 Jews were deported to Auschwitz, of whom only 25 survived. The remainder of the Norwegian Jewry escaped to Sweden, where they lived as refugees until the end of the war. Over 100 Jews served in the Free Norwegian Forces, mostly stationed in Britain.
Today, there are a mere 1,300 Jews living in a country of 5 million people.
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| Poland, 1938 (Propagandowy Kalendarz Poznan; a propaganda calendar from the city of Poznan) |
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"Under the Jewish Pressure" (caricature by Inge Grødum, Aftenposten, 5 December 2001)
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Is it possible to be both an international leader in educating people about the evils of the Holocaust and simultaneously spend $20 million to honour a dead Nazi? It is, if that leader is Norway! The Norwegian government thinks that such moral relativism is normal.
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| Norway's Man of Honour, Knut Hamsun, bows to Der Furher |
The honoured Nazi in question is the novelist Knut Hamsun, who welcomed the brutal German occupation of Norway during World War II. He also offered his Nobel Prize in Literature as a gift to the Nazi propaganda minister, Joseph Goebbels. Hamsun later visited Adolf Hitler, whom he admired, in Bavaria.
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| Knut Hamsun |
According to the New York Times, in February 2009, Norway’s Queen Sonja opened the “year-long, publicly financed commemoration of Hamsun’s 150th birthday called Hamsun 2009…the queen spent a highly specific half-hour with Hamsun family members at the National Library. Together they viewed the author’s handwritten manuscripts. There is more than one layer of significance to this. First, a Labour party-dominated government rehabilitates an admirer of Hitler and the National Socialists. Second, the Queen participates in this event, as if the royal family did not flee abroad when the Germans conquered their homeland in 1940. Second, a month later, Norway became head of the Task Force for International Cooperation on Holocaust Education, Remembrance, and Research, whose stated purpose is to place political and social leaders’ support behind the promotion of Holocaust education, remembrance and research.
This Norwegian schizophrenia and hypocrisy is difficult for a reasonable, rational, and morally balanced person to understand. For those that believe politically correct ends justify morally relative means, it is probably much easier. Norway's Queen Sonja visited a mosque where she met the imam who supports suicide bombings and, a few weeks later and at very short notice, King Harald V visited the Oslo synagogue - the first royal to visit any Jewish place of worship or interest in the 150 years since Jews were first allowed to immigrate to the country. Crown Prince Haakon attended the opening of the Jewish Museum in Oslo in September 2008. During an interfaith service, the Islamist Mohammed Ali Chisthi spoke and made anti-Semitic remarks. His speech had been submitted to the organisers earlier so it wasn't exactly a shock to anyone. In a photo in Aftenposten, the Crown Prince is shown listening intently to Chisthi while seated in the front row.
"I never thought I would live to see anti-Jewish riots in the Norwegian capital." - Eirik Eiglad
In 2002, Martin Bodd, a representative of the Jewish community in Oslo reported at an international conference of the Anti-Defamation League, that there had been more harassment of Jews in the preceding two years than at any time since 1945. In 2003, in an interview, Irene Levin, Professor of Social Work at Oslo University College said, “Some Jewish children were told they would not be allowed to attend a birthday party because of Israeli actions. When there were anti-Semitic incidents at school, Jewish parents discussed this with some school principals, who supported the aggression. One told a Jewish girl to remove her ‘provocative’ Magen David."
In 2007, King Harald V decorated German-born Finn Graff, an infamous, award-winning, anti-Semitic caricaturist, as a Knight First Class of the Royal Norwegian Order of St. Olav. His work has been featured in Morgenposten, Arbeiderbladet, Dagbladet, exhibited in the National Gallery, and abroad, as well have received prizes in Norway and elsewhere. In 2000 and 2005, the Norwegian Media Businesses' Association awarded him the Newspaper Caricaturist of the Year award. Graff's caricatures are extremely violent and grotesque even by Norwegian standards. He commonly attacks the United States, Israel, and the Norwegian Right while comparing Jews (not Israelis, but Jews) to Nazis in ways that no other cartoonist would imagine doing. Unlike Kurt Westergaard, Lars Vilks, Molly Norris, and the Jyllands-Posten 12, it doesn’t take any courage to take the road most traveled and honour men that publish anti-Semitic trash.
Below are two cartoons by Finn Graff in Dagbladet showing, respectively, Ariel Sharon in 2002 and Olmert in 2006 as Nazis. The latter is modeled on an image from the movie Schindler's List”:
2 comments:
In fact, Norwegians managed to smuggle roughly half of their admittedly small Jewish population to safety while under German occupation in WWII. Prominent Norwegian churchman, such as the cursty confessionalist Ole Hallesby, urged their countrymen to non-cooperation with Quislin's anti-Semitic measures.
Modern Norway's anti-Semitism seems to be a function of its post-Christianity and socialism more than anything else.
I tend to agree with you. When I first started to research the project, I didn't know whether it was a long standing anti-semitism or post-Christian/socialism/Islamist appeasement that has led Norway to this point.
Frankly, I was quite surprised to learn about the entire issue. Norway was always a favourite of mine when I was a child. Of course, it is far from alone. I'm from the UK and anti-semitism is ripe there, as is Islamist appeasement.
Note: I do not use Islamic and Islamist interchangeably.
Thanks for your comment and insight.
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