Haaretz: By honoring novelist and Nazi-sympathizer Knut Hamsun, Norway has damaged the international Holocaust education drive that it has recently been appointed to head, campaigners against anti-Semitism told Haaretz. Yet, the leader of Norway’s Jewish community disagrees.
In March, Norway assumed chairmanship of the 26-nation Task Force for International Cooperation on Holocaust Education in the midst of celebrating the 150th anniversary of the birth of Knut Hamsun, the country’s once celebrated author who was shunned for supporting Norway’s Nazi occupation regime during World War II.
The government has honored the novelist with celebrations, a commemorative coin and is allocating millions of dollars toward building a cultural center in the Nobel Prize laureate’s hometown, which is to open in August.
Hamsun, who died impoverished at the age of 92 in 1952 (the government stripped him of his property) once gave his Nobel Prize medal in literature as a gift to Nazi propaganda minister Joseph Goebbels. He also met Adolf Hitler in Bavaria. The author of masterpieces like “Hunger,” Hamsun is cherished by readers in Norway and around the world.
Read more haaretz.com
0 responses so far ↓
There are no comments yet...Kick things off by filling out the form below.
You must log in to post a comment.