Jewish orphanage in Oslo

The Jewish Children's Home in Oslo was established in 1939 under the auspices of Nansenhjelpen, a humanitarian organization established by Odd Nansen, the son of Nobel Peace Prize laureate Fridtjof Nansen. It was intended as a safe haven for Jewish children under the Holocaust, yet all the children eventually had to flee to avoid deportation when Norway itself was occupied by Nazi Germany.

The first director, Nina Hasvold (née Hackel), was recruited by Norwegian psychiatrist Nic Waal after they had become acquainted in Berlin while attending the Kinderseminar (Seminar on Children) run by Wilhelm Reich. Nansenhjelpen board member Sigrid Helliesen Lund was also active in establishing the home.

The first inhabitants of the home were Jewish refugees from Vienna (known as Wienerbarna, "the Vienna children"), who had arrived in June 1938 on the pretext of a summer vacation with the Norwegian Jewish community. After some time at the Jewish community's cabin at Skui in Bærum and in foster care, they moved into rented facilities in Industrigaten and finally into a building the Jewish community had acquired at Holbergsgate 21 in Oslo.

Through the work of recently arrived psychiatrist Leo Eitinger and Nina Lustig (who was later detained and deported, and immediately murdered in Auschwitz) from Brno, Nansenhjelpen applied on humanitarian grounds to admit 100 Czech Jewish children who otherwise faced a grim future under the Nazi regime. The ministry of justice only reluctantly approved the application for a few (among them the noted psychiatrist Berthold Grünfeld), on the grounds that it would be "difficult to get rid of them."

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Wikipedia