Holocaust. Norway's oil capital hides a dark secret. 22 of 24 arrested Jews was deported by Stavanger police to concentration camps in Hitler Germany in October 1942. The German occupation force used the Norwegian police not to wake up and get people to react.

A total of 22 Jews from Rogaland were deported and no Rogaland responders responded. The only Jew rescued in the county was a doctor at Strand. He was rescued by an NS member. The Fein, Becker and Joseff families never returned to Stavanger's cobbled streets.

- I argue in the book that what happened in Stavanger was a genocide. If you look at how the police in Stavanger carried out the orders, I think there is coverage in the UN genocide definition so that these incidents can be defined like just this, says Kjersti Dybvig to Ny Tid.

Kjersti Dybvig is current with the book Jews and police in Stavanger – the convenient ease of oblivion (Pax Publishers). She believes it is time for Norway to recognize that the Holocaust is also part of Norwegian history.

- In our understanding, anti-Semitism is not about us, but about the others in Europe. This even though it was alive and well here in Norway as well.

Dybvig believes that the Norwegian story of the Second World War is characterized by a brilliant image we have been raised on. She thinks we still pretend that all Norwegians were resistance people.

- There has been a money laundering of our own responsibility. No other group of Norwegians is similarly separated from war history. We must break through these myths to create a realistic view of ourselves, and Norwegians' efforts during World War II, says Dybvig.

"The 22 names of Jews from Rogaland that the rabbi has just read. One by one with a prayer. Seventeen of them were Norwegian citizens. As many were from Stavanger. And I'm thinking: Who were they? What really happened to them? How could everyone be arrested? And how can it be explained that this genocide has not been remembered? Can I find, almost seventy years later, some of the reasons why this happened? "

Our time

On Festningskaien by the port of Oslo, on January 27, the official Norway apologized for the first time for the deportation of 532 Jewish Norwegians to Auschwitz:

"The killings are without a doubt the work of the Nazis. But it was Norwegians who arrested. It was Norwegians who drove the cars. And it happened in Norway. I find it right today to express our deep regret that this could happen on Norwegian soil ", said Prime Minister Jens Stoltenberg at the celebration held on International Holocaust Remembrance Day.

The Prime Minister also pointed to our time: “70 years later, it pains me to say that the ideas that led to the Holocaust are still alive. All over the world, we see individuals and groups spreading intolerance and fear. They cultivate violent ideologies that can lead to anti-Semitism and hatred of minorities. To drive their attitudes out of the darkness, with the light of knowledge, is a responsibility incumbent on each of us.

Dybvig also wants to point to our time with his book.

- The new anti-Semitism is based on our own prejudices that we are all brought up on. We think everything was so different in Norway. This is about now and about us, about how we convey the story of the fate of the Norwegian Jews, says Dybvig.

- What can we learn from this perspective on World War II?

- With a realistic view of what Norwegians did during World War II, the understanding of how we act today can also change. How we have a restrictive asylum policy, how we throw children out of the country. We are surprised that the terror accused is a monster, but we as a nation have also never taken a thorough settlement with the Norwegian Holocaust, says current book Kjersti Dybvig.

Always multicultural

An important point for Dybvig is the one-dimensional understanding of Norwegian culture. How Norwegian nationalism and cultural understanding are based on the idea that the Norwegian people share one common cultural heritage.

- We are raised to believe that we only have one cultural heritage. But the truth is that we have a lot of people, says Dybvig.

She points out how Norwegian history is built around an us, which is included, and a those, who are outside. In the period 1814-1905 in particular, it was important to build up a homogeneous cultural heritage.

- The truth is that we have never been a homogeneous group, but have always been very complex. Before we recognize that we have not only one cultural heritage, but many cultural heritage, we will continue to put some outside.

She draws parallels between the Jews and today's integration debates. The Jews in Norway were Norwegian, but suddenly experienced not being there anymore.

- People come to Norway today and work, study and start a family, they take part in society. They think they are Norwegian, but at a given time they are suddenly not one of us.

The book ends with the following:

«In the address books for Stavanger we can follow the families Fein, Becker and Joseff, as well as the other Jews, from the time they arrived in the city until the 1942 edition. In the 1943 edition, everyone is gone. In 2010, the names returned to the city. Then on the memorial stone for the Jews from Rogaland who were killed in the German concentration camps, because no one warned them when the arrest warrants came. " ■

Rescued in Paris Mosque

War history is also a theme in a film that on Saturday and Sunday at 17 can be seen during the festival "Arab Film Days" at Filmens Hus in Oslo. Director Ismaël Ferroukhi shows another side of the documentary Free Men, there et a more nuanced picture emerges from the official French version of the resistance struggle during World War II. The film tells the true story of how hundreds of Jewish Frenchmen in 2 fled to the Grand Mosque in Paris (Grande Mosquée de Paris). Behind the walls of the mosque, many Jews are saved from certain death in the German gas chambers.

Feroukkhi's film shows that one does not have to go far back in time to find examples of how Muslims and Jews have extended helping hands to each other during wartime. The film Free Men has Tahar Rahim as the main character, and it has both Jewish and Muslim contributors.

According to the American San Francisco Chronicle, the film has been shown successfully in Abu Dhabi, Israel and Iran. The Paris Mosque was built in 1926, as a thank you from the French state to the Muslim minority after 100.000 Muslim French people sacrificed their lives for the Allies in the fight against Germany during World War I. ■

(This is an excerpt from Ny Tid's weekly magazine 20.04.2012. Read the whole thing by buying Ny Tid in newspaper retailers all over the country, or by subscribing to Ny Tid -click here. Subscribers receive previous editions free of charge as PDF.)