– Is it real? I’m here now? Inger-Lise walks across the small gravel road towards a cream-coloured house. The air is humid in Sigdal on this November day. She takes a break. Stops and looks, with wide eyes and a wide smile. It is completely silent. The forest is green and protective around the house. In there, behind those very walls, Inger-Lise was kept safe by two strangers when she was a baby. She walks a little closer. Small steps towards a big answer. – I wish I had remembered. I can’t say that I do. But my feelings remember. And they tell me: This is where I was. Further down you can see the moment. She was right: There was someone out there who knew. Throughout her adult life, Inger-Lise Rothschild Grusd (80) has struggled to find out who took care of her when her parents had to flee the extermination of the Jews. At the end of October, news told the story about her. A story that started in a Nazi-occupied Oslo during the Second World War. Towards the end of 1942, all Jews in Norway were to be arrested and sent to German death camps. Inger-Lise’s father had to flee to Sweden in October. When the mother had to do the same in December, she was refused to take her ten-month-old baby on the refugee transport. It was too dangerous. One whimper, and everyone could be killed. The mother had to trust that someone would take care of little Inger-Lise. She must have understood that this was the only thing that could save them both. After six months, little Inger-Lise and her parents were reunited in Sweden. Where the girl had been, they never found out. But they knew that she had had the cover name Eva. news went out of its way to help Inger-Lise. Online, in Søndagsrevyen, on national radio and local radio. In addition, Inger-Lise is in the news series Last: Jøder. Many readers, viewers and listeners have become involved. Someone got in touch with information that just needed to be checked further. The neighbor After Gunnar Strand saw Inger-Lise’s story on TV, he could hardly sleep. It sparked a memory in him. At the start of the 90s, his neighbour, Anna Solberg, had told him something. She and her late husband Nils had taken care of a little Jewish girl during the Second World War. The girl had an alias. Eve. Anna had read about Inger-Lise’s story in the weekly magazine Hjemmet: The issue was published late in 1992. Exactly when Anna read it, nobody knows. But she wanted Gunnar’s help in contacting Inger-Lise, he tells news. Gunnar looked up the number in the telephone directory and gave it to Anna. But Anna never called. Why? It is uncertain. Anna died in March 1993, just months after the weekly was published. – I have been thinking about this for over 30 years, says Gunnar. Grandnevøen Just after the conversation with Gunnar, an e-mail ticked into news’s inbox. The email came from Kjell Strandbråten from Åmot and had a short text and a picture. He did not write the names of the great-aunt and the great-uncle, or where in the country they were talking about. When news called to find out the name and place, Kjell replied: – Anna and Nils Solberg. Sigdal. He did not know that we had received the same tip from Gunnar Strand. Anna and Nils ❤️ Anna and Nils Solberg lived at Skogly in Sigdal. In a house with a large garden surrounded by forest. Before the war, the couple is said to have lost a child. In the years after that, they took in several little ones who needed a safe place. The family has speculated whether, during the war, Anna was on a list of women who could contribute as a foster mother. Nils was known for being a game maker – a favorite with the children. Anna was kind and careful. Her hobby was sewing. She is said to have sewn a dress from a velvet curtain for a little girl who moved in in 1942. Eva. This agrees with much of what Inger-Lise herself learned from her mother before she died: her mother had heard that little Inger-Lise was possibly to be placed with a seamstress who had recently lost a daughter. The place should have been Lier, and Inger-Lise therefore spent several years looking in the wrong place. She should have headed further northwest. Although Anna Solberg from Sigdal is described as careful, she must also have been tough like few. Exactly that is easy to believe when we now know what she did during the war. Although the relatives only learned in the post-war period that the girl was Jewish, they are absolutely certain that Anna and Nils knew it from day one. Being caught looking after a Jewish child could end in death. Rumors People in the village must have started to wonder when the couple suddenly bought so much milk at the shop. The ones that were just two? Eventually the villagers learned that a baby had moved in. Many were curious, both acquaintances and people in close family. But Anna and Nils said little. Once, when one of the relatives asked roughly who the girl really was, Anna is said to have become furious: “Shut up – it’s war now”. People must have taken the hint and understood that Anna and Nils had to be protected from rumors and gossip. After half a year, the little girl disappeared. Many were probably shocked. At least Åsne did. She remembers little Eva at Skogly. Where did she go? Anna had a sister with three daughters. Donkey is one of them. She was five years old when the baby moved into Skogly. Now Åsne Vik is 85, and on her way with her walker towards the cream-coloured house. Against Inger-Lise. Donkey reaches out his hand. – I am Donkey. And you are Eva. Inger-Lise laughs. Åsne has wondered all her life who the little baby was. She who suddenly appeared at her aunt’s and uncle’s during the war – and disappeared again. – I really wondered where she went. Who was taking care of her? I haven’t received an answer to that, until now. She is absolutely sure that Inger-Lise had a good time in the small house in Sigdal. But why did the Jewish girl from Oslo end up there exactly? The puzzle Inger-Lise has long known that a woman named Elise Iversen first took care of her when her mother had to flee to Sweden. But no one has known who this Elise Iversen was. There were many namesake sisters in the Oslo area during the war. Now we know who she was. Elise Iversen, or “Flisa” as she was called, was 39 in the autumn of 1942. She was the friend of Inger-Lise’s aunt. She lived in an apartment block on Grünerløkka in Oslo. The address was Fagerheimgata 9C. Elise and her husband Johannes had no children. But they had a very hospitable home for other people’s children. During the war, the Iversen couple helped several refugees. Perhaps they were a sort of intermediate station before the refugees traveled on. Little Inger-Lise was one of those they helped. And they had connections to Sigdal. Johannes’ father had, among other things, been a teacher in the village. news has, via the Iversen couple’s relatives, tracked down an album that belonged to Elise. Many of the photos are from Green farm in Sigdal. Elise Iversen (right) stands at Green farm in Sigdal. The picture was taken in 1954. Elise Iversen (left) sits on the steps of a storehouse in Sigdal in 1954. Picture of Green farm in Sigdal from 1933. Elise and Johannes Iversen sit together during the war, with the blinds drawn down. In the album there is an overview picture from the same farm. At the very top of the picture, just at the edge of the forest, we see a house along a road. It is Skogly, where Anna and Nils Solberg lived. The lady who came by bus Inside the family of Anna and Nils, it was said that “a nice lady from Oslo” came to Skogly to pick up Inger-Lise. She must have come by bus to take her to Oslo. It was said that the girl was going on to Sweden, where her parents were. Maybe the nice lady was Elise Iversen. What Inger-Lise has known for a long time is that it was 25-year-old Asbjørg Rørvik who, in all probability, picked her up in Oslo. Asbjørg is said to have taken a train and bus to Ørje to meet borderless Olaf Kasbo. Together, they are said to have taken the girl across the border to Sweden. They must have handed her over to Marie Andersson, who arranged for further transport a few kilometers north of the village. On 17 May 1943, Inger-Lise was finally reunited with her parents. In adulthood, she has tracked down, met and thanked the descendants of Asbjørg, Olaf and Marie. Earlier in November, she finally got what she had wanted for so long: gratitude Inger-Lise got to see the place where she was kept hidden and was safe for six months. And she got to thank the family members of those who took care of her there. – I feel an infinity of relief to know that it was here. I didn’t think this was possible. She has been waiting for the hug with Åsne and the other relatives all her adult life. Åsne Vik and Inger-Lise Rothschild Grusd look into each other’s eyes. Both are touched, having seen each other for the first time in 80 years. In the back you see Anna and Nils’ great-nephew, Kjell Strandbråten. Photo: Sverre Lilleeng / news Inger-Lise is grateful to all those who helped her escape Hitler’s extermination camps. A very small puzzle was needed. – Without the good Norwegians, there would be none of us left. That was the plan. But I’m here. Sources Some of the factual information and retellings in this article come from relatives, neighbors and other acquaintances of the deceased we refer to. In addition, we have obtained documentation from state archives and several books written about the extermination of the Jews in Norway. Holocaust in Norway In October and November 1942, the Norwegian police launched the largest police action in Norwegian history. Anyone with a J in their passport, J for Jew, was to be arrested. First the men were taken. A month later it was the turn of the women and children.Holocaust: Hitler’s “final solution” 773 Jews were sent from Norway to German death camps in 1942 and 1943, as part of Hitler’s plan to exterminate all Jews in Europe. This happened with the clear help of Norwegian police officers and the Nazi regime of Vidkun Quisling.Holocaust: View of humanityHitler and Quisling were anti-Semites who believed that Jews were subhuman. At the same time, they alleged that the Jews were behind a conspiracy to rule the world. The German Nazis created extermination camps to kill as many Jews as possible, as quickly as possible. Holocaust: The deportations The largest deportation of Jews took place on the cargo ship MS “Donau” on 26 November 1943. Three months later, on 24 February 1943, 158 Jews , many of them children, women and the elderly, sent with the cargo ship MS “Gotenland”. Over half of the registered Jews in Norway were deported.Holocaust: The extermination The death camps made the genocide easier for the aggressors to cope with, because here German soldiers were free to shoot Jews and place them in mass graves. Instead, the prisoners were put to do the worst jobs in, for example, Auschwitz. Less than 40 of the Jews from Norway survived the time in the death camps.Holocaust: After the war In 1946 there were around 560 Jews in Norway. They had lost both their families and their possessions. They struggled to get back what was theirs. In 1999, the Storting gave NOK 450 million in compensation. Today there are Jewish congregations in Oslo and Trondheim.
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The pieces are in place for Inger-Lise Rothschild Grusd – news Trøndelag
