Violins of Hope Read online

The National Youth were no match for the determined audience, which simply laughed loudly and booed them. One man forced himself through the blockade, slapping one of the youths in the face as he passed by. The rest of the defiant audience simply marched out the door.

  The courage of the Bergen citizens did not stop at the performance. Despite being warned against printing anything about the concert, Bergen’s Morning Paper and Evening Gazette both published editorials blasting the riot, the latter categorizing the demonstration as “regrettable” and “exceedingly unfortunate.” The actions of the National Youth, the Evening Gazette maintained, were “an assault against the music-loving public in our city.”73 The philharmonic board sent a letter to city leaders and the Norwegian Department of Public Information and Culture to protest the behavior of the National Youth. The department responded by praising the rioters for the successful demonstration and by punishing those who spoke out against it. From that point on, the members of the philharmonic board were forbidden from serving on the city council.

  Oslo

  Ernst returned to Oslo, where he continued to face anti-Semitism. In February 1941, the German occupation authorities ordered his removal from the Oslo Philharmonic. Philharmonic leaders protested, insisting that Ernst was so important to the orchestra, they would put their jobs on the line to protect him from being fired. At first, the Germans refused to relent, insisting, “A Jew cannot have an official position in Norway.”74 They ultimately yielded to pressure and announced that the question of whether Ernst could keep his job would be put off until later.

  The pressure came from philharmonic leaders as well as from Dr. Gulbrand Lunde. As the minister of the Department of Public Information and Culture, Lunde was in charge of propaganda for the Nazi regime and second in command only to Quisling himself. He was, simply put, the Norwegian equivalent of Nazi Germany’s Joseph Goebbels. Although Lunde was an ardent devotee of Nazism, he also maintained a deep respect for Ernst’s artistry and wanted him to continue performing. Like the German Nazis who oversaw the orchestras in Auschwitz, Lunde’s personal pride in supporting an outstanding ensemble overshadowed his aversion to the Jews who played in it.

  Across Norway, the oppression of Jews continued to worsen. In July 1941, all Norwegian Jews in civil service were dismissed, and Jewish lawyers and other professionals were permanently stripped of their licenses. That fall, all Jewish stores were confiscated. In February 1942, Quisling amended Norway’s constitution to reinstate a prohibition against admitting Jews into the country. This restored the exact language that had been part of the original constitution in 1814 but which had been rescinded in 1851.

  The Jews in central and northern Norway became the victims of increasingly vicious campaigns of terror. In April 1941, the Germans seized the synagogue in Trondheim, removing all of the Hebrew inscriptions and replacing the Stars of David in the stained-glass windows with swastikas. In June, the Nazis arrested Norwegian and stateless Jews in Harstad, Narvik, and Tromsø, sending them to the Sydspissen concentration camp in Tromsø. The Jews arrested in Trøndelag, Møre, and Romsdal were sent to the concentration camp that had been established in the Vollan prison in Trondheim and later to the one at Grini, near Oslo.

  In southern Norway, especially in Oslo, the Jewish community was living in relative calm. When the Germans had declared on September 25, 1940, that all religious denominations would be protected, the Jews had believed them. Some of the Jews who had fled to Sweden during the German invasion had even returned to Norway after assuming that there would be no danger. Yes, some of their apartments and homes had been commandeered by the Germans, but this had also happened to gentiles. The Jews had no reason to believe that they would be singled out for persecution.

  The period that allowed Oslo’s eight hundred Jews to live in peace came to an end on September 24, 1942, when the German security police ordered the Norwegian state police to begin making plans to arrest all of Norway’s Jews and their families for deportation.

  Ernst’s Nazi defenders immediately understood that they would not be able to protect him any longer. Jim Johannesen, a high-ranking member of the Hird, told Ernst that plans were being made for a large-scale campaign against the Jews, but that senior officials in the Quisling government did not want anything to happen to him. In his efforts to save Ernst from being arrested, Johannesen volunteered to drive him across the Swedish border in a car owned by Captain Oliver Møystad, the commander of the Hird and the acting head of the state police. Ernst refused.

  Johannesen was an accomplished violinist who had even been the concertmaster in Bergen for a while. He was also known for inventing fantastical stories. Like other Jews living in Oslo, Ernst was blissfully ignorant of the full extent of the Nazis’ evil plans for the Jews. He decided not to take Johannesen’s warnings seriously. He did not even bother to tell his family, as he felt that there was no reason to worry them.

  To convince Ernst of the severity of the situation, Johannesen took him to see Minister Lunde, who welcomed Ernst warmly. Lunde confirmed that the Jews were in jeopardy. He encouraged Ernst to find refuge in Sweden, promising that this would only be a temporary measure. Ernst would be welcome to return home once the war was over and the Norwegian government regained its autonomy from Nazi Germany.

  Ernst appreciated the sentiment, but insisted that he could not leave his children and parents.

  “Yes, we can fix that,” Lunde replied. “We could put the children in Telemark. Isn’t that where Quisling is from?”

  The very thought came as a terrible shock to Ernst. “And what about my parents?” he asked.

  Lunde assured him that arrangements could be made for them, as well. Ernst remained unconvinced. As with his father four years earlier in Germany, Ernst simply could not believe that he and his family would really be in danger in their own country.

  Within one month, all of that changed. At nine o’clock on the evening of Friday, October 23, the state police started planning a massive operation that would result in the arrests of all Jewish men in Norway between the ages of fifteen and sixty-five in one day. They scheduled the campaign for Monday, October 26, and spent the weekend hastily compiling a list of male Jews.

  The plot was supposed to be a secret, but there was a mole in the office of Nikolaus von Falkenhorst, the German general who had led the invasion of Norway and who had remained in the country to command the occupying troops. That secret agent was Theodor Steltzer, an officer in the German army who had never been sympathetic to Nazism. Near the end of the war, Steltzer would be called back to Berlin, arrested by the Gestapo, and sentenced to death for his role in the failed attempt to assassinate Hitler on July 20, 1944.

  In 1942, Steltzer was secretly working with the Norwegian resistance movement. He often met with his underground contacts in the home of Wolfgang Geldmacher, a German businessman who was married to a Norwegian. When Steltzer notified Geldmacher of the impending arrests, Geldmacher quickly mobilized his contacts in the resistance movement and urged them to help their Jewish compatriots escape to Sweden. Their campaign was a remarkable success. By the beginning of 1943, the heroes of the Norwegian resistance movement would help 850 Jews—more than half of all of the Jews living in Norway before the Holocaust—flee to safety in Sweden. Yad Vashem would later declare the members of the movement “Righteous among the Nations” for risking their lives to save the Jews.

  Sweden was an ideal destination for Norway’s Jewish refugees. It shares a thousand-mile border with Norway, allowing for numerous passages through the Scandinavian mountain range. Sweden was also politically convenient as one of only five European countries that managed to remain neutral during World War II. Most important, the country welcomed Jewish immigrants. By receiving thousands of Jewish refugees from twenty-seven countries, Sweden became the only European country to double its Jewish population during the Holocaust.

  Geldmacher’s associates in the Norwegian resistance included pianists Robert Riefling and Amalie Christie, who b
oth paid Ernst a visit on October 25, 1942—the day before the arrests were to take place.

  “We’re not leaving this apartment until you agree to leave,” they told him. They had already made plans to hide Ernst and his family.

  Ernst and Kari remained in Oslo, secreted in the apartment of the famous Norwegian architect Magnus Poulsson. The children stayed with family friends in the coastal town of Moss. Ernst’s parents were sent to a guesthouse owned by a sister of the Norwegian pianist Mary Barratt Due, but were later relocated several times.

  The next morning, Ernst and Kari called the couple who lived in the apartment below the one they had abandoned. The neighbors confirmed that Ernst and Kari’s apartment had been raided. Once the Norwegian police officers had established that nobody was home, they had moved on. The two policemen who had visited the Glaser apartment were one of sixty-two pairs of state policemen, Oslo policemen, and members of the German SS who had gathered that morning at five thirty. Each set of partners had been given an envelope with the names of ten Jews whom they were to hunt down and arrest.

  Meanwhile, Geldmacher and Riefling were trying to figure out what they could do with Ernst. While all of the Jews in Norway were in danger, they knew that Ernst would be under particular scrutiny. He had been in the spotlight ever since the incident with Ole Bull’s Violin in Bergen. It was quite possible that he would be singled out for persecution.

  Still not fully comprehending the magnitude of his danger, Ernst continued about his business by attending a philharmonic rehearsal that morning. Then he did something reckless. He went to visit Lunde to ask whether the minister would keep his word about protecting his family. He was unable to get in. Ernst learned that Lunde and his wife had died earlier that day when their car had fallen off a ferry dock. It was—and still is—suspected that the bizarre accident was really an assassination by Germans who wanted a minister whose views were more closely aligned with their own.

  Ernst finally realized that his life was in jeopardy. He also understood that with Lunde gone there was no longer anyone who would protect him. He had no choice but to disappear quickly. But he was still determined to play the concert that evening, which was also to be broadcast over the radio. The Norwegian painter Henrik Sørensen got on his knees and begged Ernst not to show up to the concert, but Ernst remained resolute. He would perform, even if it meant appearing in a very public venue where the Nazis could be waiting for him.

  Ernst played the concert. He was on pins and needles the whole time. The program featured a modern work by a Finnish composer. There were several violin solos, but Ernst found it difficult to focus on the music. Preoccupied with the dangers he faced, he came in late on one of his solo entrances.

  “Too late, too late,” the Finnish conductor Georg Schnéevoigt admonished him in their shared language of German.

  “That doesn’t sound good,” Ernst thought to himself, nervously wondering if the same could be said for his delay in leaving the country.

  Fortunately, it was not too late. After the concert, Ernst escaped into a car that was waiting for him by city hall and vanished. He was taken to meet Søren Christian Sommerfelt, who worked in the Ministry of Foreign Affairs. Sommerfelt gave Ernst some money and told him to hide with an accomplice in Oslo and await further instructions. He would be taken out of the country as soon as possible.

  Other Jewish men were not as fortunate. On October 26 and 27, 260 of them were arrested and taken to the Bredtveit Prison, just outside Oslo. From there they were transported by train to the Berg concentration camp, where they were joined on October 28 by 350 other Jewish men. The prisoners spent the next month suffering from starvation, inadequate medical care, and an absence of clothing and bedding in a facility that lacked water and sanitation.

  The first Jews to arrive in the Berg concentration camp were trumpeter Herman Sachnowitz, his four brothers, and their father. The Sachnowitz family had been contemplating leaving Norway ever since the German invasion, but the four oldest males were continually arrested by the Nazis. Knowing that whichever Sachnowitz was being held captive at any given time would be shot if any of the others fled the country, the family had no choice but to stay. All five male members of the Sachnowitz family were arrested at four thirty in the morning on October 26 and taken to Berg.

  On November 26, 1942, the Sachnowitz men and around 275 other prisoners from the Berg concentration camp were transported on a special train back to Oslo, where they were reunited with 562 Jews, including women, children, and elderly people. Among them was one of Herman’s sisters. They had all been arrested the night before as the final stage of a campaign to round up not just the males but every Jew who remained in Norway.

  Jews who held citizenships in England, America, Central and South America, neutral countries, and countries allied with Germany were spared from deportation. The remaining 532 were put on the German troop ship Donau, sailed to Stettin—the same Polish seaport from which Germany had embarked for its invasion of Norway in 1940—and loaded into cattle cars bound for Auschwitz. There 186 able-bodied men were put to work in Birkenau and Auschwitz III, while 346 women, children, and elderly people were sent directly to the gas chambers.

  On March 3, 1943, 158 Jews who had been interned in the Bredtveit Prison after missing the first deportation arrived in Auschwitz. From this second transport, thirty-eight were put to work while 120 Jews of ages ranging from fourteen months to eighty years were sent to their deaths.

  Herman Sachnowitz’s father and sister were selected for death immediately upon disembarking at Auschwitz in November 1942, as were both of Herman’s remaining sisters when they arrived in March 1943. Herman and his four brothers were among those from the first transport who were sent to work at Auschwitz III. Herman’s three older brothers would die in Auschwitz III within four months. Herman’s little brother would later die in Josef Mengele’s infamous experimental block.

  Herman’s own life was spared in August 1943. That was when he was accepted as a trumpeter into the newly formed orchestra at Auschwitz III, an ensemble with which he performed until the camp was evacuated on January 18, 1945. He was transferred to Buchenwald and then to Bergen-Belsen, where he was liberated on April 15. He traveled back to Norway as quickly as possible and returned to his home. It was empty. Herman was the only member of his entire family who had survived.

  The Sachnowitz family was certainly not the only Norwegian family to be completely erased during the Holocaust. Of the 762 Jews deported from Norway, all but twenty-three died in German concentration camps.

  Flight to Sweden

  On October 27, 1942, while Herman and more than six hundred other Jewish men were being taken to the Berg concentration camp, Ernst was secretly taken to see Lise Børsum, a key figure in Geldmacher’s circle who was later arrested for her role in the Norwegian resistance. It was in Børsum’s house that Geldmacher had met with and mobilized forty members of the Norwegian resistance movement two days earlier. And it was Børsum herself who would arrange Ernst’s escape to Sweden. Børsum informed Ernst that he would have to leave Kari and their daughters behind in Norway. At the time, nobody guessed that the Nazis would come for the Jewish women and children one month later.

  Ernst was given shelter by a man named Hasselberg, whose wife was out of town. While he hid at Hasselberg’s house, Ernst had two tasks: to cook dinner and to avoid being seen through the windows. On his second day at Hasselberg’s house, Ernst received a visit from Kari. She informed him that he would be leaving that day. She gave him a series of complex instructions from Børsum. The cloak-and-dagger plot to get Ernst out of Norway sounded like something out of a spy novel.

  Ernst would be picked up by Berit Poulsson, who was disabled and who was therefore allowed to drive wherever she wanted. Poulsson would drive him to the train station, where he was to wait for Amalie Christie. When Christie arrived, Ernst would pretend to ignore her, as if she were a total stranger. He would follow her as she boarded the train. Through a secret
signal, she would draw his attention to a luggage compartment that would contain a backpack full of items he would need for his journey.

  Ernst did as he was instructed. He even had Kari cut off all of his hair in the hopes that nobody would recognize him. It was raining, so he was able to shield himself from view underneath a large umbrella. Since holding a violin case would ruin his disguise, Ernst left behind his personal violin—an excellent instrument made by the eighteen-century violinmaker Giovanni Battista Guadagnini that his father had bought for him. While Ernst was waiting for Christie at the crowded train station, Børsum showed up. She brought with her a letter that she explained was a coded message. She instructed Ernst to take the document with him to Sweden. “Of the group with which you are going, you seem to be the most sensible,” she said. “So please keep this with you and deliver it to the Norwegian legation in Stockholm.”

  Ernst boarded a train that would take him toward Hamar, seventy-five miles north of Oslo. His disguise seemed sufficient until he heard someone calling his name. A young man whom Ernst did not recognize told him to get off the train.

  Ernst was relieved to see that the young man was accompanied by Christie. The young man pushed something into Ernst’s hand. It was Swedish kroner, to give Ernst a little extra money. Then he gave Ernst his final instructions from the Norwegian resistance movement in Oslo. Until then, Ernst had not been informed of his destination, out of fear that he would be arrested and tortured into betraying details about the escape routes being cultivated by the resistance movement. Now that he was safely on board the train, Ernst was told to disembark at Romedal, the last station before Hamar, and find a taxi driver named Thorleif Bronken.

  Once the train was finally under way, Ernst hid his face behind a newspaper. Despite his efforts to travel incognito, a young woman on the train recognized Norway’s most famous living musician.

  “Aren’t you Mr. Glaser?” she asked.