In the early 1950`s police inspector Knut Rød was free of all charges after a judicial process that had lasted for more than five years. Knut Rød was in charge of what is known as “Jødeaksjonen” in Oslo, October and November 1942 where 532 Norwegian Jews were arrested and deported ...
(Show more)In the early 1950`s police inspector Knut Rød was free of all charges after a judicial process that had lasted for more than five years. Knut Rød was in charge of what is known as “Jødeaksjonen” in Oslo, October and November 1942 where 532 Norwegian Jews were arrested and deported to Auschwitz.
Nobody questioned what Knut Rød had done. In post-war Norway it was focused on the fact that he had helped the national resistance during the war, and the courts considered this help to be much more important than the lives of 532 fellow Norwegians of Jewish origins.
This paper will claim that Rød got acquitted because post-war Norway regarded the Jews as not a part of the collective “we” and national community.
A part of dr. Claudia Lenz proposal for a panel at the ESSHC 2008/ Theory and Historiography Network
Title:
“Ways of constructing the other in Norway – past and present”
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