Violins of Hope (17 page)

Before things could get too far out of hand, Heide leapt to the podium and quickly instructed the orchestra to strike up the Norwegian national anthem.

The entire orchestra rose. As soon as the audience and the National Youth heard the opening chords, their patriotism obliged them to stop what they were doing and sing along. The fighting ceased, with the exception of a few minor skirmishes at the back of the hall that were caused by the state police's removing Hans Stormoen and other counterprotesters. The ejected audience members were released later that evening with the flimsy explanation that they had been detained for their own protection during the angry demonstration. The members of the National Youth were never even questioned for their role in the fracas. Instead, they were praised by the German authorities for their passion.

When the orchestra finished the national anthem, the audience spontaneously launched into the Norwegian royal anthem, which begins “God save our gracious King.” (It is sung to the same melody as Britain's “God Save the King/Queen” and America's “My Country 'Tis of Thee.”) By singing the royal anthem, the audience was thumbing their noses at the Nazis by brazenly displaying their allegiance to King Haakon VII.

Norway's first king after the country gained independence from Sweden in 1905, Haakon had fled Oslo during the German invasion on April 9, 1940. He and his government had retreated to the town of Elverum, where they had laid the legal groundwork to continue the war against Germany from outside the country. Since fleeing to England on June 7, 1940, the king-in-exile had become an international symbol of Norway's resistance to the Nazi occupation. Despite several attempts both before and after Haakon's escape to pressure him to use his constitutional authority to legitimize the Nazi regime, the defiant king had steadfastly maintained that he would abdicate rather than support the appointment of the Quisling government. In an inspirational address over the BBC on July 8, 1940, King Haakon had announced that he would maintain Norway's sovereignty until the country was liberated.

Throughout the national anthem, the National Youth had been compelled to stand at attention, extending their right arms in the Nazi salute. While the rioters had stood motionless, Heide had made sure that Ernst and Ole Bull's Violin were safely escorted out of the hall. Members of the Nazi Party had been waiting for him outside the main doors to the concert hall, but were fortunately too naive to realize that an artist would leave by the backstage door.

By the time the royal anthem started, the National Youth realized they had been tricked. “Close the doors!” they shouted as they ran to block the exits. “Get the Hird here!” they cried.
⁷²

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.

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 both 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.