Ernst Abrele arrived in Norway with his wife Gertrud in 1939, just before the start of Second World War, and settled in Lillehammer.
From: Aberle, Ernst and Møller, Arvid. 1980. Introduction to: ”Vi må ikke glemme” – (We must not forget). Oslo: Cappelen.
Translated from Norwgian: Ingvild Begg”I did not really believe that there were any Jews still alive”. The words were spoken by a surprised German guard at Grini in 1943, when he discovered that the prisoner Ernst Aberle was a Jew. The German knew that the Jews were gassed to their death.
Aberle avoided being sent to the extermination camps in Germany with other Jews from Norway – because he was married to a non-Jew – and survived the war.
There is a long perspective in the history of Aberle. He is born in Berlin in 1898 where he grew up. During the 1st World War he served as a soldier in the German army. After the war, in the 1920ies, he experienced the animosity towards the Jews, increasing vandalism and “mob-rule”. In 1929 he moved to Czechoslovakia and in November 1939, just before the war broke out, he became the last Jew to leave Czechoslovakia for Norway.
When I now present my own story and the history of my faith, it is to tell the young ones what racism and dictatorship may lead to and are still leading to, he says.
From: Abrahamson, Samuel. 1983. The Holocaust in Norway. In: Contempory Views of the Holocaust. Ed. Braham, Randolph L., pp. 109-142. The Hague: Kluwer Nijhoff Publishing.
None of the Scandinavian Jewish communities suffered such staggering losses during World War II as did the Jews of Norway. Forty-nine percent of her Jewish population was murdered, a percentage higher than that of France (26 percent) Bulgaria (22 percent) or Italy (20 percent). (p. 109)
Having suffered defeats in the attempted nazification of Norway's organized associations, legal and sports organizations, labor unions, teacher and student groups, churches, and civil servants' unions, Quislings and the Nazi leaders turned their undivided attention towards a defenseless group – the Jewish communities in Norway. (p. 118)
The arrested Jews were transported first to Bredtvedt, a detention camp outside of Oslo, and then to Berg cocentration camp near Tønsberg. Ernst Aberle, a refugee from Czechoslovakia arrested in his home at Lillehammer (about 150 miles north of Oslo), gave a detailed description of those events. He recounts that the Berg camp was under Norwegian administration, with Major Eivind Wallestad and Lieutenant Leif Lindseth in command. The camp was totally unfit for human habitation. There was no water and no toilet facilities at all. (p. 127)
“Exception are made for women and men married to persons not having J in their passports, ...” About 55 persons of mixed marriages were interned in Norway until May 1945, at which time they were safely moved to Sweden. (p. 129)
