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Norway: Knut Hamsun Center: Hey Let’s Talk About It……!

International pressure
causes concern in Norway

Director of Hamsun Center BODIL BØRSEN: We understand that our devotion to Norway’s most famous Nazi lover, Knut Hamsun, is cause for concern abroad, especially since we currently chair the International Holocaust Task Force, so we are ready to talk with the Simom Weisenthal Center, Manfred Gerstenfeld and Ephraim Zuroff about any misgivings that they may have, ….but it’ll have to wait till next year.Here’s a weak Google translation of the original Norwegian article from the Aftenposten. KGS

Let’s talk about it!

In the last few days have the opportunity in the Task Force for International Cooperation on Holocaust Education, Remembrance and Research (ITF) on its first plenary meeting under Norwegian auspices come criticism from various Jewish communities of Norway through the Hamsun-anniversary weakens the international efforts to promote knowledge about the Holocaust.

The criticism from, among others Manfred Gerstenfeld and Ephraim Zuroff said that the government, with the 150-year mark for Knut Hamsuns birth, exercising the ignorance and lack of political and moral consciousness.

But the ongoing debate about Hamsuns political standpoint, to have received so much space in the public domain in the centennial year of shows that just the opposite is the case.

Knut Hamsun wrote magnificent literature Sult, mysteries and Nobel Prize novel Markens grøde. The same Knut Hamsun wrote Adolf Hitler obituary. He was one of our greatest authors, and at the same time sympathizer with an unsavory Nazi regime that we have zero acceptance. How should we respond to it? Can we reconcile us with that?

Hamsun Center will invite a dialogue with the background in this. We invite more than happy Wiesenthal Center and the Foreign Ministry to work together on a conference on Hamsun Center activities next year.

BODIL BØRSEN
Director, Hamsun Center

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