David Olère was a Polish-French artist known primarily for his powerful and haunting artworks depicting the Holocaust. Born in Warsaw, Poland, in 1902, Olère survived internment in several concentration camps during World War II, including Auschwitz and Buchenwald.
After the war, Olère settled in France and began creating art that bore witness to the atrocities he had experienced. His works often depicted scenes from the camps, capturing the brutality and inhumanity of the Holocaust. Olère’s art served as a form of testimony and remembrance, ensuring that the horrors of the Holocaust would not be forgotten.
One of his most well-known works is a series of paintings and drawings depicting the gas chambers and crematoria of Auschwitz, based on his firsthand experiences. These works are particularly striking in their stark portrayal of the grim realities of the Holocaust.
Olère’s art continues to be a significant contribution to Holocaust remembrance, offering a unique perspective from someone who survived the horrors of the camps and felt compelled to document them through his art.
I did post some of his works before, the painting at the top is titled, “The Food of the Dead for the Living,” and below are more.
Admission in Mauthausen by David Olère.
The Experimental Injection by David Olère
The Oven Room by David Olère
Gassing by David Olère.
On 20 February 1943, due to his Jewish origin, he was arrested by the French police and placed in the Drancy Camp. On 2 March, he was deported from Drancy to the German Nazi Auschwitz Camp, where he was registered with number 106144. Throughout his entire stay at the camp, he worked in the Sonderkommando, a special work unit forced by the Germans to aid in the operation of the crematoriums and gas chambers.
“David Olère is the only prisoner of Sonderkommando who transferred his traumatic experiences from the shadow of the crematorium chimneys on paper and canvas.” — Dr. Piotr M. A. Cywiński
On this day in 1945, Soviet troops walked through the gates of the Auschwitz complex, and I say complex—because Auschwitz was more than one camp. What they saw, they could not believe.
Rather than going through all the horrors on this UN-designated Holocaust Remembrance Day, I have opted to show some art of those who were in the camps, like the above painting by inmate Władysław Siwek to the commission of the SS while working as part of the construction work squad.
Orchestra playing by a group of prisoners. Painted by Mieczyslaw Koscielniak. He was a Polish painter, graphic designer, and draftsman.
Already a prominent artist, he was arrested in 1941 and sent to the Auschwitz Concentration Camp. His camp number was 15261. In the camp, he drew about 300 paintings depicting the everyday life of prisoners.
Female prisoners wThe female prisoners are washing themselves in a puddle painted by Mieczyslaw Koscielniak.
Roll call during a heavy downpour. Painted by Jerzy Pazdanowski, 1902-08.1977. Painter. A graduate of the Academy of Fine Arts in Krakow.
A group of male prisoners leave camp, painted by Mieczyslaw Koscielniak.
On the way to work by Janina Tollik
When Memory Meets Art – Zahrada – The Garden – Le Jardin
The above painting is titled Boats on Rough Seas Near a Rocky Coast, painted in the mid-17th century. It was seized in June 1944 from Minna Bargeboer-Kirchheimer. Minna was born on October 7, 1867, in Nieheim, Germany.
In 1893, Minna married Dutch Jewish cattle dealer Abraham Bargeboer from Winschoten, the Netherlands, and probably lived with him in Germany. At an unknown date, they emigrated to France, where they lived in Nice in 1939. They were discovered and arrested by the German Wehrmacht at the end of 1943.
Minna was arrested and taken from Nice to the French Transit Camp in Drancy. On July 31, 1944, they transported her to Auschwitz, where they murdered her on August 5, 1944.
Abraham Bargeboer was born on August 9, 1868, in Winschoten, the Netherlands. The Wehrmacht arrested him and sent him to the Excelsior Hotel in Nice, France, near the station. In September 1943, the Nazis requisitioned the hotel to imprison the Jews arrested. Of course, when you think of a hotel, you think of a place of leisure—the Excelsior Hotel was not.
There were a few accounts of Abraham’s stay in the hotel.
Author Philippe Erlanger described the psychological state of a man who escaped from the Excelsior as follows, “He went half crazy after listening all night to the moans of the tortured prisoners.”
Dr. Drucker, who was sent from Drancy to Nice to serve as a physician at the Hotel Excelsior for three months, said, “Day and night, the largest number of those arrested required medical care. Bandages for gunshot wounds to the thighs, legs, and buttocks, lacerations to the scalp, an ear torn off by the butt of a revolver, multiple hematomas, and bruises all over the body, broken teeth, split lips, facial abrasions, broken ribs, sprained, etc.”
By torturing the arrested Jews, the Nazis sought not only to extract confessions but also to oppress them, destroy their personalities, and humiliate them.
For this reason, some Jews, who could no longer endure the atrocities of the Gestapo, committed suicide. Such was the case of Abraham Bargeboer, who hung himself in his cell on January 23, 1944.
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The one thing that always puzzled me is that the Nazis never stole one of the most famous paintings, if not the most famous Rembrandt—”Nacht Wacht” (Night Watch).
Recently, I found out the reason.
In August 1939, it became clear that war was inevitable. The Dutch government took steps for the safety of the Dutch artworks. Even though, at the time, the Netherlands was neutral.
At the end of 1939, the government ordered building art bunkers for the national collection at Heemskerk and Zandvoort. In the meantime, the municipality of Amsterdam did not sit idle and had its small bunker built near Castricum for the Stedelijk Museum’s collection (and that of some wealthy collectors).
When war broke out in May 1940, the government art bunkers were not yet ready. Fortunately—the collections made it to safety in time, and the Night Watch took residence in the Knight’s Hall of Radboud Castle in Medemblik. Medemblik was not a military target, and the artwork here was considered safer than in Amsterdam.
The Amsterdam art bunker (completed on time in March 1940) held the paintings of Van Gogh, Breitner and Mondriaan. They were safely buried under the dune sand near Castricum (when the war broke out). Previously, this entire collection had floated in ships on the Rijpweteringschevaart. After the outbreak of war, the Amsterdam art bunker in Castricum also temporarily housed the masterpieces of the Rijksmuseum, the Boijmans van Beuningen and private collectors such as the Van Gogh family. The Night Watch was moved from Medemblik to Castricum on May 12, 1940.
It was not until November 1940 that the other art bunkers were ready. They moved the Night Watch from the small Amsterdam bunker in Castricum to the official government bunker in Heemskerk. Germany occupied the Netherlands and allowed the Dutch to have their way. The Dutch Art Protection Inspectorate was left intact by the Germans because the Germans also had an interest in protecting art treasures. After the war, the Dutch masterpieces were to be displayed at the Führer Museum in Linz.
The war progressed, and the Dutch dunes became a new war front. Here, the Germans built the Atlantic Wall to protect themselves against a possible British invasion. The dunes, once considered safe, were no longer considered a suitable place for storing the most important Dutch works of art. New homes were therefore urgently sought for the paintings.
From December 1941 to March 1942, a hermitage in the marl caves of the St Pietersberg, in Maastricht, was constructed. The Night Watch was safely moved there for its protection on 24 March 1942.
The Night Watch, while in three years of storage, was rolled up. The cloth hung on scaffolding that rotated (a little each day) to prevent adhesions. The works of art were also guarded 24 hours a day by police officers and museum staff. In this storage facility, 750 paintings were in the vault, including 43 Rembrandts, 24 works by Jan Steen and 14 paintings by Frans Hals.
Thanks to the efforts of the Art Protection Inspectorate, all important museum collections survived the war. In July 1945, the artwork, was rescued, and returned to its rightful owners.
The original Night Watch has not been in the caves of St Pietersberg for 78 years, but there is a copy for viewing. Artist Jules Sondeijker made the full-size reproduction in the early 1900s with charcoal on marl. The drawing is in the museum at the Caves Zonneberg, Maastricht, Netherlands. Today, it is a tourist attraction containing artwork and anecdotes.
The existence of the hiding place and its location were no secret. In fact, the Nazis had the vault built themselves. Their intention was to take Dutch art treasures to Germany after the war. And, of course nothing was allowed to happen to it. The Night Watch was joined in National Storage No. 9 by other famous masterpieces, such as The Street by Johannes Vermeer and The Bull by Paulus Potter. The latter painting came to Maastricht from the Mauritshuis in The Hague.
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I believe that the most powerful weapon the Nazis had during World War II was its propaganda machine. Other countries used propaganda, but not as effectively as the Nazis. Perhaps critical thinking had not been eradicated or banned elsewhere.
The Nazis often used art to spread their message. Some of their posters remind me of today’s memes. The connection between art and propaganda was probably the strongest in the Netherlands, known for its art and artists.
The art piece at the start of this article is from the Exhibition Art of the Front collection—displayed at the Amsterdam Rijksmuseum from 21 January–21 February 1943.
The Nazis also set up several charities, not for the betterment of the population, but really as a means of propaganda. Winning hearts and minds was essential for the Nazis. Again, art and fancy posters played an important part in this, to relay the message.
Relief work Visual arts. Nederlandsche Volksdienst (Dutch People Service) in collaboration with the Nederlandsche Kultuurkamer (Dutch Chamber of Culture). Exhibition.
A wall with posters, most likely in Amsterdam from the autumn of 1941. It includes the V-Action poster and calls for enlistment in the SS or the Volunteer Legion. One of the posters was for the exhibition in the Rijksmuseum concerning Westphalian Art of the Present.
German propaganda. Posters from the Netherlands Winter Aid Foundation said, “Your fellow citizens expect you to do your duty,” doesn’t mention the Nazis or the occupiers—but fellow citizens.
Propaganda against Bolshevism “Bolshevism is murder!” It didn’t just instil fear of loss of life, but also destruction of religion.
The NSB (Dutch Nazi Party) was intensively involved in propaganda. Posters and placards flooded the Netherlands, both before and during the war.
Propaganda poster from the NSB Photo Service “Do you want the rule of egoism? That is the freedom to use people and the community for your own personal interests or do you want everyone to have the obligation to serve people and the community? Then support National Socialism.”
Aimed at Railway Workers “Strike only brings misery to your own people!”
Aside from the art used in propaganda, the Nazis also decided an ample number of Dutch artists to be murdered.
Portrait, possible of hidden or captured Jews. (Ghetto Fighters’ House Museum)
Max van Dam Max van Dam was the son of Aron van Dam and Johanna van Dam née Leviticus. Both his parents were Jewish. He grew up in a socialist environment. His father was a certified meat inspector who became the director of the cooperative store De Dageraad, a literal translation of The Dawn, in Winterswijk, where he was on the town council for the Dutch Social Democratic Workers’ Party (SDAP). Max received art training in Amsterdam and Antwerp and attended Isidoor Opsomer’s Academy of Fine Arts.
During the war, Max van Dam went into hiding. He tried to flee to Switzerland but was captured in France and deported to Sobibor by way of the Drancy Interment Camp. During his time in the two camps, Max van Dam continued to produce engravings and paint portraits.
In Sobibor, Max was one of the ‘lucky’ ones who were not immediately murdered. He had to do paintings for the SS. The SS man Karl Frenzel testified in 1983, “He did not have to stand for roll call, and his food was brought to him by fellow prisoners. I asked him to do paintings for the SS canteen, which would not remind us of the camp or the war, they were exclusively landscapes. There was also a painting made by Van Dam of FiFi, Bauer’s dog.” Frenzel further stated, ”Van Dam had been killed in the revolt and that the paintings in the staff quarters of Sobibor were destroyed at the same time.”
The details and exact date of Van Dam’s death remain unclear. Survivors have indicated that he was killed shortly after completing his last commissioned painting in September 1943. Jules Schelvis noted that Frenzel’s assertion that Van Dam was killed in the revolt may have been self-serving. Schelvis concluded this based on statements by Alexander Pechersky, who was emphatic in his declarations never to have met Van Dam because the painter had already been killed prior to his own arrival in Sobibor on 23 September 1943.
Theodoor van Gogh Although Theodoor van Gogh was not an artist himself, he was the great-nephew of one of the most famous artists of all time—Vincent van Gogh.
Theodoor (Theo) van Gogh was born in Amsterdam. He was the uncle of the director, columnist, and opinion maker Theo van Gogh, who was murdered in 2004. Theodoor began studying economics at Amsterdam University in 1941, where joined a student resistance organisation.
He was active in the resistance on many fronts, as were many other members of his Corps fraternity. In 1943, they protested, among other things, against having to sign the so-called declaration of loyalty, which meant that you would not do anything against the Germans. If you refused to sign, you could not continue your studies. On 6 May 1943, those who had not signed had to report for the Arbeitseinsatz in Germany. Theo did not do this. He immediately helped Jews, arranged hiding places and provided identity cards, ration cards, food, etc., for people in hiding in collaboration with, among others, the Student Resistance. He supported the Domestic Armed Forces and was the central figure for a courier service. He also offered help to prisoners and succeeded in getting a number released. At the end of 1944, he housed the resistance newspaper, Het Parool, from his father’s office, and was involved in the resistance newspaper, Ons Volk. He also committed more acts of resistance, about which less has become known. Theo was arrested twice, once during a raid in 1943 and again at a train check-in in 1944. In both cases, his father’s influence was able to have him released after a few months from Camp Vught and Camp Amersfoort, respectively. An extensive group of students and others worked with him and for him. During a raid on his home on 1 March 1945, he, with many others, was arrested for the attack on SS commander Hanns Rauter.
As a reprisal for the attack, on 8 March, the Nazis executed 263 political prisoners, including Theodoor at age 24, by a firing squad in southeast Amsterdam. The spot became known as Fusilladeplaats (execution place).
Calendar design for November, drawing, 1930–31: “On wings of storm winter approaches.”
Willem Arondéus Willem Arondéus was a Dutch artist and author who joined the Dutch anti-Nazi resistance movement during World War II. He participated in the bombing of the Amsterdam public records office to hinder the Nazi German effort to identify Dutch Jews and others wanted by the Gestapo. Arondéus was caught and executed soon after his arrest. Yad Vashem recognized Arondéus as Righteous Among the Nations.
When Nazi Germany occupied the Netherlands during World War II, Arondéus became a member of the Dutch resistance movement. He used his artistic skills to forge false identity papers and other documents to help people escape persecution.
With a small group of confidants from the art world, including Gerrit van der Veen and cellist Frieda Belinfante, Arondéus started in 1942 by counterfeiting identity cards for Jewish people in hiding so that they could perhaps survive the war without the “J” on their identity cards. A plan was devised to blow up this register to prevent the occupier from checking the numbers of the forged identity cards in the administration of the Amsterdam population register.
Under the leadership of Willem Arondéus and Gerrit van der Veen, the resistance group committed an attack on this population register on the night of 27 March 1943. A few days later, Arondéus and almost everyone else involved were arrested. On 1 July 1943, 12 resistance fighters, including Arondéus, were shot dead in the dunes near Overveen.
I am passionate about my site and I know you all like reading my blogs. I have been doing this at no cost and will continue to do so. All I ask is for a voluntary donation of $2, however if you are not in a position to do so I can fully understand, maybe next time then. Thank you.
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This post will contain little text. Instead, it has drawings by those who lived through the Holocaust.
Above is “Arrival into the Auschwitz Camp.” Just behind the backs of the prisoners and to their left is the guard tower at the main entrance to the camp. (Illustration by Władysław Siwek)
Next we see the entrance to the Krankenbau, or camp hospital, courtyard. We see prisoners who have come to the hospital seeking, if nothing else, a brief respite from the killing work. Those too ill to work were killed by phenol injection to the heart, or sent to the gas. Here prisoners are whipped onto a truck for transport to the gas chamber. (Illustration by Jerzy Potrzebowski)
The above drawing shows a kapo (prisoner official) in charge of the block, a Blockeltester, kicking and beating prisoners into bed, if one can call it that. They had endured another day of slave labour with insufficient food rations. (Illustration by Jerzy Potrzebowski)
“Before Selection,” by Halina Olomucka
Loading selected prisoners for the gas chambers, by Jan Komski
I am passionate about my site and I know you all like reading my blogs. I have been doing this at no cost and will continue to do so. All I ask is for a voluntary donation of $2, however if you are not in a position to do so I can fully understand, maybe next time then. Thank you.
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Toby Gotesman Schneier is an American Expressionist artist best known for her unique ability to transform objects, people, scenes, & events into jarring and provocative works of art.
Her compassion for the human condition, and tenacious belief in a higher power, are conspicuous throughout the work and noted frequently. Her art evokes a poignant sense of nostalgia and sentiment, even a longing with the viewer, as the pieces appear laced with familiarity, ethnicity, and a heightened sense of irony & collective injustice. Her unabashed and highly unusual use of colour, shape, texture and astounding lack of conventional art mores gives her a keen ability to SHOCK the viewer into a type of action with her bold and direct imagery. Especially her narration of the Holocaust through her art is captivating and evocative. She has gleaned her enormous notoriety throughout the International Art Community.
As so many others, including me, want to tell the story of the Holocaust, we are often silenced on social media by those who don’t want the stories told. In Toby’s case, Facebook stopped her from spreading her work.
View her imagery on Instagram, Linkedin and her website. Uses the links:.
Art can be a powerful medium when expressing emotions or illustrating life as experienced. Artist Bedřich Fritta who was born Fritz Taussig expressed his experiences of the Holocaust via art.
Fritta was captured and deported on 4 December 1941 to the Theresienstadt ghetto. His wife and son followed in 1942. Fritta and other illustrators in the ghetto worked as technical artists. Because of their access to the tools, they illegally drew expressionist sketches of life in the overcrowded ghetto. Leo Haas, Otto Ungar and Ferdinand Bloch were arrested and interrogated. The artists hid their drawings before the arrest.
The Gestapo convicted Bedřich Fritta and his colleagues Leo Haas, Otto Ungar, and Ferdinand Bloch of atrocity propaganda. 17 July, the artists and their families were delivered and incarcerated in the Small Fortress—the Gestapo Jail. Soon after, Fritta’s wife, Johanna, died of typhus in February 1945. Next stop, Bedřich Fritta and Leo Haas went to Auschwitz. Fritta died of exhaustion there in November 1944. Leo Haas survived the war, and he and his wife, Ema, adopted Fritta’s son Tomáš.
Accommodation for Men in the Sudetenkaserne 1943; pen and inkBefore the Transport, 1943/44A throng of people leaves the ghetto for the station of Bauschowitz (Bohušovice), 2.5 km away. From there, trains went to the death camps in the East. Starting in June 1943, rail tracks reached directly into the ghetto.Facades for the International Commission, Theresienstadt
For his son, Tomáš’s third birthday, Fritta had made an album of colour drawings. Cheerfully illustrated moments of the little boy’s life inside Terezín in a more dynamic and pleasant as well as colourful style.
To me, the drawings below are the most heartbreaking because it is about a father desperately trying to keep his son happy and to try to create a level of normality in a crazy world.
Ruth Maier is often referred to as Norway’s Anne Frank, I don’t agree with that. I think it takes away the value of the words of both women. Their circumstances and lifestyles were completely different. Even the way they were murdered was different. The only thing they had in common was that they were both Jewish.
Ruth Maier was born on 10 December 1920, in Vienna. She and her sister Judith, who was 1½ years younger, spent the first years of their childhood in Vienna-Döbling, in the attic apartment of an apartment building on Peter-Jordan
Starting in 1930, the municipality of Vienna built a large residential complex nearby – along Gersthofer Straße – in which the family moved into a spacious apartment on the 3rd floor (staircase 1, door 14; entrance Hockegasse 2). On the floor above, the father, the chairman of the Austrian postal union and secretary of the International Trade Union Federation of Postal, Telephone and Telegraph employees PTTI, Ludwig Maier, had his office.
Ruth liked to sit and read in her father’s study, with whom she had a close relationship. She was just 13 years old when her father died of bacterial dermatitis. Mother Irma and Grandmother Anna tried to give the two girls a happy childhood.
On her 18th birthday, Ruth witnessed the violent excesses of the Nazi mobs during the November 1938 pogrom in Vienna: Ruth Maier, who had previously had no connection to Judaism, began to confront her identity in her diary. Judith managed to escape to the United Kingdom, via the Kindertransport. Ruth was able to find refuge in Norway. She was too old for the Kindertransport.
On 30 January 1939, a family from Lillestrøm took Ruth Maier into their home: the telegraph operator Arne Strøm, an acquaintance of Ruth’s father, had vouched for the Norwegian authorities that the young refugee would not be a financial burden to the state. In August 1939 Ruth Maier was admitted to the Frogner School in Oslo, she became fluent in Norwegian within a year, completed her final exams, and befriended the future poet Gunvor Hofmo at a volunteer work camp in Biri. The two became a couple, finding lodging and work in various places in Norway.
Ruth was also one of the models for the statue “Surprised”, by Gustav Vigeland. It is on permanent display in Frogner Park in Oslo. Vigeland began work on the sculpture in about 1904. The model for the face of the sculpture was Inga Syvertsen; the sculpture was completed in 1942. Ruth was surprised by another person entering the room while she was modelling for Vigeland, and she tried to cover her naked body, which shows in her posture. The statue was eventually cast in bronze in 2002.
But even during this period, Maier repeatedly found herself overcome by a sense of loneliness and of being misunderstood, feelings which became particularly strong once the German Wehrmacht occupied Norway. They eventually led to a nervous breakdown, and in early 1941, Maier had herself committed to a psychiatric ward. Gunvor Hofmo’s visits were the only ray of hope during the seven weeks she spent there. In fact, it seems that Hofmo was the only person in Norway who cared about Maier.
Below are some excerpts from Ruth Maier’s diary.
Saturday, July 20, 1940, Lillestrøm “Lillestrøm is unbearable now. You come across German soldiers at every turn. They wink at the young girls with the same self-confidence, and the girls always smile back, bewitched by the uniform sore.”
In early January 1941, Biristrand “I can’t tell you how warm I am with Gunvor. I love her deep eyes very much. I love her way of speaking about things subtly”
Ruth’s ast note to Gunvor Hofmo
“I believe that it is good that it has come to this. Why should we not suffer, when there is so much suffering? Do not worry about me. Perhaps I would not want to trade with you.”
Norwegian police officers entered the Engelheim boarding house for girls and young women in Oslo on November 26, 1942, and took Ruth Maier away. The arrest is said to have been violent. Maier was dragged into a car and forced to board the “Donau,” a prisoner transport ship, on the very same day.
Five days later, she was murdered in the Auschwitz extermination camp along with 187 Jewish women, 42 children, and 116 men from Norway who were unable to work.
Jan Erik Vold, the editor of her diaries writes about the last hours before her deportation:
“The raid in which she was arrested took place on November 26. 300 men, members of the police, Quisling’s stormtroopers and the Gestapo took part in the operation. Taxis that had been confiscated were used to transport the arrested persons. Nunna Moum lived in the Same boarding school as Ruth. She says that the arrest happened quietly. Two Norwegian police officers led the Austrian down the stairs into the street to a waiting car. She was told to sit in the back seat, where two tearful girls were already sitting. The girls in the boarding school woke each other up and watched the scene. Someone said, ‘We can watch your gold watch until you come back.’ Ruth replied, ‘I’ll never come back.’ “
Gunvor Hofmo kept Ruth’s diaries and much of her correspondence. She approached Gyldendal to get them published in 1953 but was turned down. After she died in 1995, Jan Erik Vold went through her papers and came upon Ruth Maier’s works. After editing them for ten years, they were published in 2007. Vold was highly impressed by the literary value of the diaries, comparing Ruth Maier’s literary talent to that of Hannah Arendt and Susan Sontag. The book was translated into English by Jamie Bulloch in 2009
Gunvor Hofmo never got over the loss of her girlfriend. This traumatic experience was probably one of the reasons for the crisis Hofmo went through in the 1950s, which caused her to become a long-term patient at the Gaustad mental hospital in Oslo for two decades. In the immediate postwar period, Hofmo had suffered from obsessions which became increasingly intrusive. She heard voices and was afraid of “radiation” in her head.
In a speech issued on 27 January 2012 on the occasion of International Holocaust Remembrance Day Prime Minister of Norway Jens Stoltenberg issued an official apology for the role played by Norwegians in the deportations. As reported on the official website of the Norwegian Government, Stoltenberg delivered his speech at the dock in the capital Oslo where 532 Jews boarded the cargo ship Donau on 26 November 1942, bound for Nazi camps. Stoltenberg said:
“The Holocaust came to Norway on Thursday 26 November 1942. Ruth Maier was one of the many who were arrested that day. On 26 November, just as the sky was beginning to lighten, the sound of heavy boots could be heard on the stairs of the boarding house “Englehjemmet” in Oslo. A few minutes later, the slight Jewish girl was seen by her friends being led out the door of Dalsbergstien 3. Ruth Maier was last seen being forced into a black truck by two big Norwegian policemen. Five days later the 22-year-old was dead. Murdered in the gas chamber at Auschwitz. Fortunately, it is part of being human that we learn from our mistakes. And it is never too late. More than 50 years after the war ended, the Storting decided to make a settlement, collectively and individually, for the economic liquidation of Jewish assets. By so doing the state accepted moral responsibility for the crimes committed against Norwegian Jews during the Second World War. What about the crimes against Ruth Maier and the other Jews? The murders were unquestionably carried out by the Nazis. But it was Norwegians who carried out the arrests. It was Norwegians who drove the trucks. And it happened in Norway.”
I don’t agree with the line of the speech “Fortunately, it is part of being human that we learn from our mistakes” The unfortunate truth is that we don’t, we should, but we don’t.
History of Sorts 
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