Anti-Semitism has always been here

"People need to stop thinking that anti-Semitism exists only in places like Greece," says Erwin Kohn, the president of Norway's Jewish community since 2011. He is trying to explain how widespread anti-Semitism is in his country.

Most of the usual explanations for a prevalence of anti-Semitism do not apply in Norway. The economy is excellent, but the anti-Semitism index is 15 percent. In Sweden, the closest country to Norway (geographically, culturally, and economically), the anti-Semitism index is only 4 percent.

There are countless "Free Palestine" posters hanging in the streets of Oslo. They can be seen mainly in Muslim areas, but they are elsewhere as well, sometimes with an added insult directed at Israel: "Baby killers."

But this inherent hostility cannot be attributed solely to the anti-Israel Muslim population.

"Only one of 500 respondents in the [anti-Semitism index] poll were Muslim. The participants were mainly native Norwegians," Kohn says.

Despite what many may think, the Muslim population in Norway is relatively small -- less than 2.5 percent of the population. Most of the country's Muslims are from Pakistan and tend to show little interest in the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. It is not the Islamization of Norway that has prompted anti-Semitic sentiments. Anti-Semitism has simply always been here.

"Norway is proof that there can be anti-Semitism even if there aren't any Jews," Kohn says. According to recent estimates, only some 1,500 Jews currently live in Norway. Several hundred of them belong to the community in Oslo, and the rest have independent communities or do not belong to any community.

***

Samuel Steinman cannot keep from crying during the interview, but the tears do not come at the point that I expect them to. He is one of 25 Norwegian Jews who survived Auschwitz -- out of the 900 who were taken -- and returned, and is the only one still living. He is still a physically impressive, strong man. He welcomes me at his handsome home, overlooking the Oslo fjord, where he was born about 200 meters (650 feet) from his current home. He wears a pendant with the Hebrew word "Hai" ("Life") engraved on it. It is even bigger than the pendants one sees in Netanya.

Steinman doesn't cry when he talks about the day they came to get him. He was taken by tram to the port, where he embarked on a German ship -- the "Donna" -- that took him to Auschwitz. He doesn't cry when he describes his dashed boyhood dream of becoming a farmer. He doesn't cry when he talks about the two years he spent at Auschwitz. He doesn't even cry over the circumstances of the death of his brother Harry, who was murdered at the camp in January 1943.

Harry worked on the railroad tracks. A rod fell and injured his leg. Steinman managed to visit his brother in the prisoners' hospital. During his visit he was told that "anyone who doesn't recover and return to work within a week is exterminated."

In the confusion of the dispersal of survivors after the war, Steinman ended up in Denmark with five of his friends. There, they were met by the Norwegian consul. The five were invited to a meal.

"It was Norway's national day, May 17," he recalls. "Someone sat down at a piano and played the national anthem."

It is then that he bursts into tears. He recites a line from the anthem: "Yes, we love this country."

Asked if he is crying out of anger toward his countrymen or out of love for his country, he replies: "Love."

After several days, Steinman's ship docked in Oslo.

"It was a beautiful day, like today. And let me tell you something: At that moment I swore that I would never marry a Jewish woman. I swore that my children would never experience this fate."

For some strange reason, one of the Norwegian soldiers took him to see Vidkun Quisling -- the Norwegian leader who collaborated with the Nazis -- in his prison cell. Steinman looked through the peephole in the door, but Quisling never raised his head.

Ultimately, Steinman did marry a Jewish woman, and they had three children, all of whom remained in Norway. His wife died young, but today he has six grandchildren and seven great-grandchildren. He has been a loyal member of the Jewish community, serving as its treasurer for 25 years.

I ask him about the anti-Semitism in Norway today.

"There are between 1,200 and 1,500 of us in the community," he says. "There are 100,000 immigrants from Pakistan and 60,000 from Poland -- and they also don't like Jews. We are nearly imperceptible. I have never encountered an ounce of anti-Semitism. When I was a child I was cursed by a group of kids, but that was it."

He shows me a bouquet of flowers that arrived at his house that morning. A high school student who attended one of his lectures sent him flowers and a thank-you note for his moving tale.

In the name of openness

Rabbi Shaul Wilhelm, a Chabad emissary to Norway, is often asked strange and disturbing questions, such as: "Are there anti-Semites who don't know that they are anti-Semites-" or "Are there good anti-Semites-" One thing has to be said about Norway: In many respects -- helping the weak, modesty, education, among others -- Norwegian society is truly exemplary.

Wilhelm is the only Jew walking down the streets of Oslo who looks entirely Jewish. He is an Israeli native, but spent his youth in London and Brooklyn. In Norway he has encountered public hostility toward intrinsic Jewish issues: circumcision and kashrut.

"I performed a brit for a family in the north," he recalls.

"The ceremony was held in Trondheim, and I brought a mohel from London. The boy's parents had non-Jewish relatives, and it was really hard for me because they were really angry at their family, and at me a little as well.

"When the ceremony began, they walked out in protest. For heaven's sake, this is 2014! The Norwegians can go to Google and see that there is no correlation between a brit and female circumcision. They can see that [former U.S. president] Bill Clinton invested tens of millions of dollars in performing circumcisions in Africa to combat AIDS. The British royals are circumcised."

Many Norwegians don't even know that legislative efforts to outlaw circumcision were struck down in parliament.

"A local council told me not to perform a brit in a building owned by the council because it was an 'illegal activity'," the rabbi says. "Even a doctor at a hospital told me that circumcision was illegal. They are ignorant on this issue. But I don't accept it. There is a limit to how unaware you can be in 2014."

Then there is kashrut. Norway not only forbids kosher slaughter, it also imposes tough restrictions on the import of kosher meat. When the first law against kosher slaughter was passed in Norway in 1929 it was defined as forbidding "Schachtningr" -- Jewish slaughter. It was only later that the terminology was amended to reflect its supposed animal rights spirit.

"Really-" Wilhelm asks. "In a country where puppy hunting is actually a sport? In one of the only two countries [along with Japan] that still hunt whales? You will never see this much lack of openness in the name of openness."

For the last six years, Internet rumors have declared that the last remaining Jews are leaving Norway.

"This is nonsense. I've answered about 700 emails on the topic. I am at a point where I just copy-paste," says Wilhelm. "No. Absolutely untrue. When we circulate rumors we cripple the war against anti-Semitism. You can't disseminate ridiculous rumors in a serious debate."

Q: Have you encountered families that have left-

"Very few. There was one family with an Israeli mother married to a Norwegian. Everything was fine for them until one summer their son went to swimming lessons for the first time. Here, in Norway, they are big on bodies being natural. The children made fun of him because he was circumcised, so the mother decided that the family had to leave."

What is the nature of anti-Semitism here? Is it anti-Israeli? Anti-Jewish-

"Norway is a very secular country. If you ask me, it is also very tribal. There is a sense of 'You are welcome here, but leave your culture and native language at the airport.' I have encountered third-generation Norwegians, of, say, Somali or Palestinian descent. Their parents were born here, but they will not call themselves Norwegian."

Wilhelm also gives credit where it is due. "During my years in the U.S., I never heard one positive word about socialism. But Norway changed my mind. It really is a culture that helps its weak."

"During Operation Protective Edge," he says, recalling the recent Israeli campaign in Gaza, "I didn't send my children to school one day. It is a public school. The principal called me to make sure it didn't have anything to do with the war. My wife and I found the gesture very moving."

How much is Israel linked to anti-Semitism here-

"Sure it is linked. But many times Norwegians don't understand that it is anti-Semitism. I tour many high schools, and for most 18-year-olds, I am the first Jew they have ever seen. They heard about the Holocaust, but the reality they know does not distinguish between Judaism and Israeliness. I always tell them that I will talk about being a Jew in Norway. If they want to talk about Israel, it will be a different lecture. In my opinion, the very separation of the two is an educational act."

Is anti-Islamism good for the Jews here-

"God forbid. There was a report here about a possible al-Qaida attack. Within a day people were demonstrating outside a mosque where a group of Bosnians were praying. They had nothing to do with anything. It reminded me of something that a Jew here once told me. His grandfather had survived the Holocaust, and he told him, 'When they need to find us, they will find us within a day.'"

You are living in a kind of desert, without a social setting for an Orthodox Jew. Isn't it hard for your children-

"My wife Esther and I think about it a lot. We experience pangs of guilt over the fact that the children may not even know how hard it is for them. But we were in London several months ago and we heard our daughter bragging to relatives how good it is in Norway. She proudly described the skiing and the ice-skating. It made us feel a little relieved."

***

The countries that ranked lowest on the European anti-Semitism index (that is, the most anti-Semitic countries) -- Greece and Poland -- are nearly bereft of Jews. So if Jews need not be present for there to be anti-Semitism, how can it be combated? Lisa Paltiel believes it all has to do with ignorance.

Seven hours north of Oslo by train feels like the end of the earth. One train line ends in Trondheim, and anyone continuing beyond that point is almost certainly a tourist or someone in the natural resources industry. The natural resources that have granted Norway its legendary wealth are fishing and oil. It is here that one can find one of the world's most northern synagogues.

One of Samuel Steinman's best friends was Julius Paltiel, Lisa's grandfather. They survived Auschwitz and Buchenwald together. After the war, Paltiel returned to Trondheim and taught an entire generation of locals. He would go from school to school and talk about the Holocaust.

"He was revered because he educated people and taught them to forgive," Lisa Paltiel says of her grandfather.

Also a teacher, she gives tours to school children who arrive almost daily at the synagogue.

"We also show them the houses that once belonged to Jews and shops from before the war," she says.

The Jewish community in Trondheim in tiny. But they celebrate holidays, honor Shabbat and even have a "cheder," a traditional Jewish school for children. All but one of the families have intermarried. Children who aren't Jewish often learn Jewish texts at the cheder.

"After the war, they thought that our community wouldn't last. But we did," Paltiel says.

She habitually encounters her environment's prejudices.

"Sometimes one of the children will say something about a Jewish nose. One child asked me if I had a gold coin in my pocket because he had heard that all Jews have gold coins in their pockets," she says. The comments are reminders of older anti-Semitic stereotypes.

I ask her whether there are other possible explanations for the hatred toward Jews, and whether Nazi ideology exists in Norway.

"There is a small group," she confirms. "They hate immigrants, and they are also Holocaust deniers."

What about Israel-

"Anyone who isn't familiar with the situation sees only the pictures," she says. "Israel has a much stronger army than its enemies, and most of the casualties are on the other side. Since many in the community have never been to Israel, they get their information mainly from the media. There was a big debate over the years whether the community should support Israel politically. Today we have an unwritten law: We don't talk about Israel as a community because the opinions are just too different."

It turns out that it doesn't matter all that much whether the Jews killed Jesus. Religious hatred is barely relevant in this secular country. On the contrary, if there is any support for Israel within Norwegian society, it is from the Christian organizations.

Rabbi Lynn Feinberg shows me a picture from her childhood. A preschool full of Nordic blondes, with one dark-haired curly girl among the yellow-haired bunch. Feinberg is the rabbi of a liberal-progressive Jewish community in Oslo. Her father and her great grandfather were leaders of the community and she says that Jews have it "easier today, because before the waves of immigration to Norway, we were the only immigrants."

Her father, who also survived Auschwitz, never spoke of the Holocaust. He told her that the number tattooed on his arm was a phone number. But one day, by chance, Feinberg heard him speaking on the radio about what happened there. Norway waited way too long before apologizing for its role in the Holocaust, but it did welcome its Jews back. When Feinberg's father returned from Auschwitz, he found a stranger living in his home. The man was friendly, understood the situation, and asked to be given until noon the following day to leave.

After going through some difficult experiences herself, Feinberg lived in Israel for two years and studied pottery in Jerusalem. She refuses to describe herself as a reform Jew.

"They are stuck, just like the rest," she says. "The past has a voice, but no veto power," she quotes one of her teachers.

As a radical and a woman she feels the pain of being relegated to the women's section, where her voice cannot be heard. At first she convened women's meetings. Ultimately she gained the courage to establish her own congregation.

Feinberg argues that hostility toward Jews stems from the fact that "anything religious or spiritual is seen as bad here." Real anti-Semitism, she says, exists only among extremist Muslim groups.

"Among Norwegians, it is more ignorance. I lecture to religious figures and they think that Jews live by the laws of the Bible. I have to explain to them that the Talmud and the rabbinical texts changed Judaism entirely."

In a book she wrote, Feinberg translated some of the Talmud into Norwegian.

***

At age 18, Tura Andre Gronly's mother told him that she had been born Jewish in Hungary, and that she had been imprisoned at Buchenwald. She told him of the horrors she had experienced.

"You're smart," she said. "You would have found out anyway." She asked him not to talk about it with her ever again.

"My two brothers, even my father who was a colonel, know now," he says. "But they won't do anything. They are cowards. They don't want to rock the boat."

He traveled to Israel and lived there for seven years. He is as Norwegian as Norwegian can be, but he challenges his peers.

"My wife is a journalist," he says. "When I defend Israel everyone freaks out. She begs me not to do it."

He fights Israel's war on Facebook in efforts to expose Norwegian liberalism.

"Wait," he writes about Israel's clash with Hamas. "Do we support the side that kills homosexuals or the side that holds pride parades-"

And how do people react-

"Sometimes they are shocked. Like, 'No. It can't be. There is no pride parade in Tel Aviv.' But there is, and it is easy to prove."

He says that "everything changed for the worse after the First Intifada. It was less than 15 years after we saw the U.S. rape Vietnam, and learned the power of pictures. It was always the same picture: A 12-year-old boy, an M-16 rifle. For the Norwegians, it fits right into the image of the Jew who wants more than he deserves. The descriptions in the media are always rife with anti-Semitic symbolism. Mean turns of phrase like 'Look at what the chosen people have done.'"

Is it coming from the Fascist Right or the Left?

"There is no Right here. Both parties agree on 97 percent of the budget."

He encounters countless anti-Semitic incidents.

"There is a professor, a native Norwegian, who works at the 'Peace Center' in Switzerland. He quotes the Protocols of the Elders of Zion as fact. And reporters quote him. The national network [NRK] ran a story about how the U.S. media is Jewish and that is why it does not criticize Israel's crimes. The reporter was lightly reprimanded by the network for it."

He himself has received his fair share of anti-Semitic remarks. One of his superiors at a travel agency he once worked at used to say, "I am going to empty the Jew" before going to the bathroom. Gronly promptly quit that job.

He asserts that if there is anything that could threaten the Norwegian way of life it is the Muslim immigrants.

"We imported hundreds of thousands of uneducated people," he says. But he gives a surprising analysis that is a far cry from anti-Islamism: "Hatred of Muslims isn't good for anyone. Here, too, there is ignorance. Norwegians don't know what a Sunni or a Shiite is, or why there is conflict in Iraq. But there was a news story about a Muslim man who applied for 400 jobs and didn't get hired for any. We send a message to the Muslims that they won't achieve anything here."

When eastern Europe collapses and accusations suggesting "Jewish manipulation of the banks" fall on attentive ears, in Norway, the sky is as blue as always. This begs the question: Are anti-Israeli or anti-Semitic sentiments driving this hatred-

Here is a story I heard: During Operation Cast Lead in 2008-2009, an Israeli businessman was asked to leave an apartment he was renting in Oslo. The cause for the eviction was a law stipulating that a tenant can be evicted if a close relative of the homeowner needs the housing. Later, it turned out that it was just an excuse, and the man asked the landlord whether he wanted to be rid of him because of the war.

"Not at all," the landlord replied. "I never thought to blame you for the atrocities committed by Israel."

The memorial statue commemorating Lisa Paltiel's grandfather was designed by an Israeli architect, Dan Zohar. He studied in Trondheim and set up shop in Oslo. His partner is his wife, a Norwegian-Israeli who also grew up in Israel. In all his years in Norway, he has always presented himself as Israeli.

Zohar doesn't equate criticism against Israel with anti-Semitism. He claims that the coverage of the latest war between Israel and Hamas was biased against Israel in Norway's two leading newspapers.

"When there was the story with the Marmara [the Gaza-bound aid ship on which Turkish activists were killed in a clash with IDF commandos in 2010] I asked Norwegians: If the flotilla is a humanitarian effort, where are the flotillas to aid Syria? Many answered that they held Israel to a higher standard, that of a country that sees itself as a part of the European culture. And no one can compete with pictures of dead children."

Zohar tells a story that underscores the issue of foreigners in Norway. There were some vacant buildings at his daughter's school, and the authorities decided to provide schooling for mostly Muslim immigrant students in the empty buildings. There was no consultation between the immigrants and the school's original student body.

"There was an outcry on behalf of the parents," Zohar recalls. "Finally, a compromise was reached. The immigrants would use the building, but they would not have recess at the same time. So these two groups of children were adjacent, but the white Norwegian children never saw the immigrant children, who were mainly Muslim. The Norwegians donate a lot of money to crisis-stricken zones around the world. They feel that their conscience is clear. They will pay a lot of money to prevent people from coming here."

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