Monument in memory of deported Jews

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Text from the monument:

From this site on 26 November 1942, 529 Norwegian Jews were put on board the ship Donau and deported to the death camp at Auschwitz. On 25 February 1943, a further 158 Jews were sent from Filipstad Quay on the Gotenland. Other transports brought the total number of Jews deported to 773, of which 35 survived. Altogether 230 families were exterminated.

This monument commemorates the Jews who were deported and killed during this dark chapter in Norwegian history.

Artist: Antony Gormley

Brief background

Prior to World War II approximately 2,100 Jews lived in Norway. Following the German occupation of Norway in 1940 they were subjected to increasing restrictions and persecution which finally culminated in mass arrests and deportation in the autumn of 1942 and the spring of 1943.  

After the war it took a long time before the Norwegian Jews received their rightful compensation. In 1997 a restitution process was initiated, the first of its kind in Europe. In 2012, on 27 January, International Holocaust Day, Prime Minister Jens Stoltenberg held a speech on this site and apologised for the injustices that were committed against the Jews on Norwegian soil during the occupation.

A place of remembrance

The Monument

In October 2000 the monument was commissioned as a gift from the Norwegian government. Outside the walls of Akershus Fortress, looking out across the fjord from which the Jews were transported, eight chairs stand, arranged singly or in pairs.

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The British artist Antony Gormley was awarded the commission to design the sculpture. He described his proposal as follows:

“The Holocaust cannot be represented. I want to make a place to remember, to make a bridge between the living and the dead in order that these events and their implication should not be lost. The site is very evocative with the most minimal intervention. The presence of the excluding walls of the fort and the sea are already very powerful imaginative catalysts. The trees act as a witness to time and its passing.”

The location of the sculpture, outside the walls of Akershus Fortress, has powerful symbolic significance: under Nazi rule, the Jews were excluded from Norwegian society. The chairs are copies of a type that could be found in many Norwegian homes in the 1940s; but these particular chairs afford no rest, as they have no seats. They are arranged singly or in pairs, thus representing individuals, couples and families. The chairs face outwards towards the fjord from which the deported Jews embarked on their journey towards extermination.

 

Gormley's work represents a historical narrative of exclusion and abuse of power, of loss of human dignity and human life – but perhaps also one of hope, reflected in the beauty of the location, with the tall trees and the fjord offering a place for reflection and contemplation.