Christine Meibeck

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National Archives in Oslo

The Norwegian representative of the American-Jewish humanitarian organisation Joint Distribution Committee (JDC) and the chairman of the Jewish Aid Association, Marcus Levin, emigrated to the USA after the war, so his estate is now kept in the JDC archive in New York. The JDC’s files on Norway are kept in the same archive: these are also relevant to my research, since the JDC worked closely with the Norwegian Jewish Aid Association from New York, also providing financial support. Meanwhile the archives of the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum (USHMM) in Washington, D.C. contain files from the Stockholm office of the JDC, for which Marcus Levin also worked from 1941 onwards after fleeing from Norway to Sweden.

This office supported Jews who were forced to flee to Sweden after the start of the German occupation of Norway, including a large number of German-speaking refugees. Most of them only fled in the face of imminent deportation at the end of 1942 and were smuggled across the green border to Sweden with the help of the Norwegian resistance. The Jews who remained in Norway between November 1942 and February 1943 were deported to Auschwitz and murdered. The USHMM archive also holds several collections of former Jewish refugees, including estates, correspondence and memoirs.

In the holdings of the immigration authorities, I was able to gain crucial insights into the authorities’ approach to processing immigration applications, especially in terms of how they dealt with Jewish refugees. While the government created special regulations for the entry of politically persecuted persons, the files repeatedly contain clear instructions that Jewish applications should always be rejected.

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Winter landscape near Oslo

Based on what I have learned to date, only people who were able to present a visa and travel documents for onward travel to a third country were granted a temporary stay of a few days. In order to obtain a long-term residence permit, Jews required a guarantee from a Norwegian relief organisation, which provided full financial support and organised their entry. I am not aware of any cases in which individuals were allowed to enter the country without a visa or a guarantee from a relief organisation. As such, the state of Norway took neither moral nor practical responsibility for persecuted Jews, instead passing this responsibility on to non-governmental relief organisations, which were mainly financed by donations.

The most important relief organisations involved in supporting Jewish refugees were Nansen Relief and the Jewish Aid Association. The Nansen Relief files have not survived, as its members destroyed all their documents when the Wehrmacht invaded in April 1940 in order to protect themselves from persecution. However, evidence of their activities is to be found in the files of the immigration authority, including numerous immigration applications submitted to the authority by Nansen Relief on behalf of Jews from the German Reich.

I was able to view the correspondence files of the Jewish Aid Association in the archives of the Oslo Jewish Museum. Little is known about the extent of its activities as they have not yet been the subject of extensive research. The clear focus to date has been on the history of political exile, the most prominent representative here being the later German Chancellor Willy Brandt. In the relevant research papers, the Jewish Aid Association is only mentioned in passing, if at all. After an initial review of the surviving files, however, I was able to establish that the Jewish Aid Association’s involvement was far greater and much more proactive than previously assumed.

My viewing and initial analysis of the holdings have given rise to new questions which I now intend to pursue in my further research. I would like to find out what role or position in society the Jewish members of the association claimed for themselves through their involvement, and also to what extent their activism can be interpreted as a demonstration of belonging to the Norwegian state and as the manifestation of a genuine and distinctive Norwegian-Jewish identity. I would also like to investigate the action they took to help Jewish refugees and their stance in opposition to the government’s immigration policy: in the context of Jewish self-assertion and resistance to anti-Semitic discrimination and persecution, this policy can clearly be seen as anti-Semitic.

The holdings of the US relief organisation JDC which I was able to view in New York are also highly relevant to pursuing this line of enquiry and answering these research questions. The correspondence files of the Jewish Aid Association already indicate that it was in contact with European and international Jewish communities and organisations in order to acquire funds to look after refugees in Norway, but also to be able to provide proactive help in individual cases, enabling persecuted individuals to find safe refuge in Norway.

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Sognsvann Lake by Oslo

Since the main focus of my research will be on the experience and perspectives of the Jewish refugees themselves, it is especially important to me to locate and analyse first-person documents, i.e. diaries, letters, memoirs and other personal records. Researching these sources is much more time-consuming and requires more preparatory work, as they were not handed down as a complete package and handed over to a central archive as in the case of official files, but are scattered; the survival of such sources is very random and locating them is often ultimately a matter of luck.

During my research stays in Norway and the USA, I was able to view several such collections and estates, but my research in this regard is not yet complete as I am still looking for relevant sources. These personal records are of great importance to my project, in particular in that they provide authentic, personal insights into the experience of displacement and exile, contrasting with the documents of the immigration authorities, where individual destinies are dealt with in a very rational, matter-of-fact way.

In addition to researching the archives, I was also able to establish important contacts for my future academic career during my research stays. In Norway I met the director of Bergen Maritime Museum, for example, who is conducting research into the history of Norwegian-North American migration and was able to give me valuable tips and ideas on the subject of transmigration. As yet there is no record of the numbers of Jewish transmigrants and refugees who passed through Norway on their way to the USA between 1933 and 1940, nor has this topic been researched in the context of Norway’s history of exile.

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Left: C.Meibeck in front of the Capitol
Right: View from the museum of African American Culture

In Oslo I was able to meet the director of the Jewish Museum, who worked on the flight of Jews from Norway to Sweden after the German occupation of Norway, including some 200-300 German-speaking refugees. He was able to provide me with important information and contacts in Swedish archives, which will certainly be helpful for my future research.

All in all I can say that my research stays in the USA and Norway were consistently positive. The generous Knapp Scholarship funding provided by the DAAD-Stiftung enabled me to carry out research for my PhD project in Norway and the USA and establish contacts with scholars which will be very important in terms of my future academic career. For my work as a historian, it was informative and interesting to familiarise myself with new archives and learn how archives work in other countries.
I found the Norwegian archive system to be much more flexible and amenable than in Germany, so this made research work more straightforward and efficient.

On a personal level, it was also a particularly memorable experience for me to visit the USHMM in Washington, D.C., one of the largest museums and archives on the history of the Holocaust. I always find it constructive to engage with foreign historical perspectives, in this case the US perspective, not least since it gives me the opportunity to critically question my own views.

In addition to my research activities, I also had plenty of opportunity to visit sights, landmarks and museums, and the museum landscape in Washington, D.C. is particularly impressive. In Oslo, I especially enjoyed the scenic beauty. Walks and hikes in the surrounding area were a welcome and relaxing change from day-to-day work in the archives. It was also fascinating to gain an everyday impression of places that I had previously only experienced as a tourist.

My research at the National Archives in Oslo is not yet complete since the source material is more extensive than initially estimated and accessing the files more time-consuming. This applies in particular to the immigration authority files. By acquiring research funding, I will be able to undertake further research trips to Norway in 2024, and also travel to Sweden for this purpose for the first time.