‘It is the majority who are responsible for standing up for the minority’, said integration minister, Jan Tore Sanner on ‘Holocaust Day’.
‘Jewish Norwegians from all over the country were systematically persecuted, and sent to Nazi concentration,and eradication camps,’ said Sanner of Høyre (H).
The national Holocaust Remembrance took place at Akershuskaia in Oslo. There is a memorial there of 550 deported Norwegian Jews, because they were deported from there in November 1942.
‘230 families were wiped out. Of 773 Jews who were transported from Norway, only 38 survived’, Sanner said.
Sanner, a new Minister for knowledge and Integration, also emphasised schools’ responsibility to break down prejudices and build knowledge.
In addition to Sanner, Sunita Lakatosova spoke, and author Ervin Kohn of the Mosaic Confederation in Oslo also attended.
Holocaust Day was also marked in Arendal, Bergen, Kristiansand,Levanger, Narvik, Telavåg, and Trondheim.
On January the 27th, 1945, the prisoners of the concentration and extermination camps, Auschwitz-Birkenau, were freed by Soviet soldiers. In 2005, the UN General Assembly adopted the day to be an international memorial day for the Holocaust.
© NTB Scanpix / Norway Today
