tzilahjewishcultureandhistory:Jewish Oslo, part 1 There were several Jewish things to be seen in O
tzilahjewishcultureandhistory: Jewish Oslo, part 1 There were several Jewish things to be seen in Oslo, but as a whole it was really, really small. There is one Synagogue still in use [x], since 2004 there is a Chabad house, and there is one historical Synagogue (one year younger than the one that is still used) that has been turned into a Jewish museum several years ago. There is also the Center for Holocaust studies and Religious Minorities, which has an exhibition about the Shoah in Norway. Well…. and that was basically it. I was happy to find out the Jewish museum was an initiative by Norwegian Jews. In the future they hope to restore the Synagogue to its former glory (now most of the walls have been painted over and the ceiling has been lowered, leaving it with no women’s section), I really hope they will be able to do this! The elderly man at the museum was really nice, as a child he used to go to services in this Synagogue with his parents and brother. During the Shoah he was forced to flee with his mother and brother from Oslo through the forests to Sweden. This was of course very dangerous, the forests are completely dark at night, in the winter it is very cold and you were really dependant on other people to help you: knowledgable nature guides, people who were willing to smuggle you in the back of their car, people who allowed you to sleep over in their houses. He was trying to trace the route they travelled back then and he told me that this friday he would meet a women who remembered that her parents gave shelter to them on their way to Sweden. He also told me a lot about the Norwegian Jewish community, but I will write about that in a seperate posts… :-) -- source link