Norway’s Jews tell their (untold) story

"We are going to pick potatoes" by Irene Levin Berman

A new book by a Bloomfield resident and a photo exhibit at the University of Hartford uncover the untold story of Norway’s Jews – their contribution to the country’s arts and culture… and their struggle during World War II.

For nearly 45 years, Irene Levin Berman had gotten used to the questions Americans would ask about her native Norway. What happened during World War II? Did Norwegian Jews suffer? Was there even a Jewish community in Norway?

A Bloomfield resident, Berman emigrated to the U.S. from Oslo in 1960 after marrying an American medical student. She became a translator, specializing in Scandinavian languages, and brought Norwegian playwright Henrik Ibsen’s works to American audiences.

In 2005, after years of silence on the subject, Berman submitted an article to an organization that planned to publish a book on Holocaust survivors who had moved to the U.S. Hers was the only account about surviving the war in a Scandinavian country.

“The publisher called and said that, as much as they loved my chapters, they were going to cut them because Norway was such a small country,” Berman says. “I became an activist.”

Three years later, Berman published a book in Norwegian on the Jewish community of Norway, sponsored by Norway’s Resistance Museum.

Sigmund Meieran

On April 1, the Maurice Greenberg Center for Judaic Studies at the University of Hartford will host a book launch of the English translation of her memoir, “‘We Are Going to Pick Potatoes’: Norway and the Holocaust, the Untold Story,” followed by the opening of the photography exhibition “Freedom Is Never Free: Norway and the Jews.” The exhibition, which initially opened in September 2008 at the Oslo Jewish Museum, presents the history of Jewish contributions to Norwegian arts and culture, and the Jewish struggle against German occupation during World War II. It has been specially translated into English for the Greenberg Center by the Oslo Jewish Museum.

Dr. Avinoam Patt of the Greenberg Center is director of the Sherman Museum of Jewish Civilization, where the exhibition will be shown until Oct. 25. “This is one of these little-known histories where, if you didn’t have someone like Irene Berman to tell it, no one would pay attention,” he says. “While there were only around 2,000 Jews in Norway, they played an important role in that society. With World War II, there’s a tendency to think that we already know all we’re going to, and we tend to hear the same stories. But there are new stories about survival that are important to know about but get overlooked.”

Lillemor Rubinstein and son

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