Marte Michelet responds to the authors of the “counter-book”: We could have been allies

Much of the “opposite book” reinforces my conclusions, not the other way around.

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

Blow hard around my book What did the home front know? currently, two years after the assault prior to the resistance movement’s response to the persecution of the Jews. But much of the “opposite book” reinforces my conclusions, not the other way around.

Elise B. Berggren, Bjarte Bruland and Mats Tangestuen state in their “counterbook” that they have found so many “serious and demonstrable errors” that the conclusions in What did the home front know? must fall one by one. Is not correct. The authors contribute relevant nuances and additions. But most of all, the book makes well-known arguments, such as that Gunnar Sønsteby “must have remembered incorrectly”, and that advance warnings about Jewish action “were not concrete enough”.

The interesting thing is that Report of a review of What Did the Home Front Know? It has also brought to the surface new documents and sources that reinforce my conclusions.

New and interesting fonts

I think the starting point of your project is a bit myopic – it’s about finding fault. But in close collaboration with the Home Front Museum, the authors have been able to cover much more than I alone could. Therefore, they have found many new and interesting sources.

I am in the process of writing a lengthy article for the professional magazine Prosa in which I am going to contradict their central accusations, in a comprehensive and detailed manner. The 300-page “counter book” naturally requires a more comprehensive answer than the newspaper format allows. There I will also carefully review everything that has to do with Alf Pettersen, Carl Fredriksen’s Transport and the economy in flight, as several have requested.

I agree that my book could have been better at this point, and I will return to that in more detail. In this round, I must limit myself to commenting on a few points that the authors have highlighted as particularly serious.

The resistance leadership’s warning response

When Berggren at Dagsnytt 18 was asked on Thursday, November 19, to point out a specific “very serious mistake,” she pointed to my mention of student action in 1943.

It refers to a small section of the penultimate chapter of the book. There I describe how German anti-Nazi officer Theodor Steltzer announced his contacts on the home front, Arvid Brodersen and Tore Gjelsvik, about an upcoming action against the students in Oslo. What was interesting to me was the efficiency and speed with which the resistance leaders came together to spread this warning, urging the students to take cover and mobilize the escape device.

It’s relevant because it stands in stark contrast to the way the same people reacted to the early warning of Jewish action, which also came from Steltzer. While Brodersen and Gjelsvik were able to explain in detail how they set heaven and earth in motion to warn students of what to expect, they never said a word about what they did to warn Jews. Because they did nothing.

Interpretation not wrong, but different

This contrast is completely omitted from the “counter book”, and rather is answered with a calculation. They have found that approx. 350 students fled to Sweden in the first month after the student action, and he notes that this corresponds to the number of Jews who fled to Sweden in the first month after the Jewish action.

With this, they try to show that the escape device was as good / bad for transporting Jews as students, and use it as “proof” that there were no anti-Jewish attitudes in the escape device.

I think this is a strange test, partly because Jews and students were in completely different situations. While Jews had fled to Sweden as the only way out and fought for the next “export”, many students preferred to go with relatives and friends in the country where they could live as farmers until the war was over.

So this is not a “bug” in my book. This is a comparison and interpretation that I disagree with, and that doesn’t take away my point.

The students who were arrested were sent to “retraining” in Germany, while the Jews were sent directly to their deaths.

Sønsteby and the refugee route

According to the authors, the second example of a “serious and proven error” applies to what I write about the closure of Sønsteby to Jewish refugees. They have taken this seriously in various media and have asked me to deny it.

The starting point here is an archival interview with Sønsteby from 1984. In a longer part of this interview, Ragnar Ulstein asked him about various messages sent between Sønsteby and Stockholm (the so-called reports) and about various cases related to the Jewish flight . (The events on the Halden train on October 22, 1942, the Feldman case, and border conditions when the mass arrest of the Jews began.)

Among the topics Ulstein addresses at this party is a report that Sønsteby sent to his contact person in Stockholm, Daniel Ring:

Here is a report from you from 10/26/1942 in which you deeply regret that some women are being exported to Sweden with their families. You blame women, it’s extremely dangerous and difficult, great danger of getting caught. Should export opportunities be reserved for those in danger? “

Sønsteby answers yes and explains that this is the route over Kongsvinger, a route that he considered vital to his business.

The report was found

Naturally, I asked for this report from the Home Front Museum archive when I was working on my book and was told that it had not been preserved. But I discovered that a small group of Jewish women fled on Kongsvinger in the days before this telegram was sent. Based on that, based on other statements by Sønsteby, and based on the context of the Ulstein interview, I concluded that this report was about Jewish refugees.

The Home Front Museum has now found Sønsteby’s reports in its archive, according to the authors, they are “easily accessible”. Maybe the museum and I got on wrong. In any event, it turns out that this particular report is about some non-Jewish civilians that Sønsteby does not believe have a reasonable reason to flee. Ergo, must I have been completely wrong?

No men. It is not so simple.

Don’t shake the conclusion

In another report, which Ulstein has obviously brought with him to the interview, it is explicitly about Jewish refugees. A short time later, on November 4, 1942, a report from Ring was sent to Sønsteby. This is a new, never published document that the authors submit to prove that I have an incorrect source reference. Here, Ring writes the following, among other things:

“The route is probably safe enough [sic], but we must do everything possible to prevent such people from crossing K. If any of them are caught there, obviously there will be a very strict guard in the area where our routes go and that will not help us any more. That she understands that we would like to help her and her relatives, now it is more than usual a great pity for them, but send these people with routes in completely different areas and let other people take care of it. Don’t take any unnecessary risks on that guy. “

Of course, I will change this font reference in my book. But, as I see it, it does not remove the conclusion: the Sønsteby route was closed to Jews, at a critical moment, just after the mass arrest of Jewish men on October 26, as hundreds of Jews desperately sought a way out of the country. .

It was precisely this approach that made refugee opportunities for Jews so rare that there were so many who thought “let other people handle it.”

In another interview with Ulstein, Sønsteby was quite candid about why he prioritized as he did when it came to fleeing the Jews: “We were going to fight. We were not going to help the people. We should get something positive out of the liberation of Norway. So we really didn’t get into this and it didn’t seem right to do so either. “

This finding from the Daniel Ring report is both interesting and important, and reinforces my findings that the acute and unique plight of the Jews was not seen as a matter for central resistance fighters. It was an “unnecessary risk”, so to speak, with Ring.

It’s not about moral judgments

Finally, a necessary observation, which I also wrote in What did the National Front know?Taking a closer look at what prominent opponents like Sønsteby, Gjelsvik and Brodersen did is not about condemning them. Neither are the other inconvenient findings that I have presented about making moral judgments about the people of that time from the understanding of the present.

It is about understanding the preconditions for the extermination of the Jews, from the perspective of the Nazis, to be so exceptionally successful in Norway. The degree of help and sympathy from the majority population, and the degree of active support from Nazi opponents, is a prerequisite that is legitimate and highly relevant to examine. These honest polls have gone much further in other countries, such as Denmark, the Netherlands and Poland, also there with great controversy.

My book is not a fierce accusation. It’s a quiet, rather dry attempt to map aspects of the Holocaust investigation that we have not yet addressed in Norway. No more no less. And in exploring this issue, Berggren, Bruland, Tangestuen, and I could have been allies. I find it incomprehensible that they prefer to look for errors.

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