When will a denial of Michelet’s claims on the home front come?

And when will an apology reach the descendants of Alf T. Pettersen?

Debate
This is a discussion post. Opinions in the text are the responsibility of the writer.

With the new book Report of a review of What Did the Home Front Know? The historians Mats Tangestuen, Bjarte Bruland, and Else B. Berggren show in an exemplary way how Marte Michelet constructs a narrative that dreadfully lacks proof of origin. The authors devote a long chapter to Michelet’s accusations against Carl Fredriksen’s Operation Transportation and leader Alf T. Pettersen.

For incomprehensible reasons, Michelet takes a particularly brutal action against the opponent who saved the lives of between 800 and 900 people by taking them to Sweden. According to Michelet, Pettersen must have left the police to expel the refugees out of sheer hunger for profit.

The new book picks up what many of us have always known: Pettersen was fired because he was not pro-Nazi enough. This can be seen in a document that is available in the police archives. This is just one of many lurid allegations against Pettersen that can be easily disproved.

Bogus sources

Some of us who reacted to the falsehoods of Michelet’s book were told that it was probably “painful” for the pedestal to topple its heroes. Of course, this has been a strain for the descendants. They grew up with parents who were strongly affected by what they were exposed to during the operation.

But the reason for the tension is that Michelet’s claims are completely false. It is not about interpreting the sources differently, but about manipulating them and omitting key information. Like when Michelet presents it so that Carl Fredriksen’s Transport people should have laundered money abroad.

Prize

What did the home front know? received the Nonfiction Award from the Association of Book Sellers. The justification states, among other things, that the book has character and ethics, and that “the requirements of responsibility and substance (s) are of great importance.”

The jury was led by Espen Søbye. In other words, a man who has emphasized the importance of someone who writes about real people by showing what is in the file. It is not what the archivist thinks about the document in question.

Isn’t it precisely this thesis that Michelet sins against? It seems obvious to me that the jury, like so many others, has swallowed a narrative that has now been emphatically shown to be riddled with false accusations and simply unethical.

When does a public denial come from authors, publishers and award winners? When will an apology reach the descendants of Alf T. Pettersen?

Hilde Vesaas has written the book Carl Fredriksens Transport.

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