Exclusion by Ignorance: Lawmakers’ Lack of Attention to Norwegian-Jewish Needs in Restitution Legislation 1945–1947

Abstract

As earlier research has uncovered, Norwegian post-war policies on the return and compensation of property that was lost or damaged as a result of the Second World War were disproportionally unfavorable to Norwegian Jews, who had unique restitution needs because of the Holocaust. Taking these findings as its starting point, this thesis examines why the lawmakers designed the central restitution laws in a way that had such adverse consequences for the restitution of Jewish property. By examining these laws and the preparatory works in the period 1945–1947, this thesis has uncovered that the lawmakers did not take Norwegian Jews into account in the legislative process, meaning that they did not address their situation and that they made no effort to adapt the laws to meet their needs in a more satisfactory manner. Furthermore, the legal framework and the principles the restitution was based on did not favor an outcome where Jewish restitution needs were met. Importantly, the lawmakers had an underdeveloped understanding of the genocide. How the lawmakers conceptualized the war and its victim groups – the conceptual categories they applied and their understanding of the war-time events – was unsuitable for discerning the Jews’ war experiences as something in need of special attention. The laws were exclusionary not because they created new discrimination, but because they failed to address previous discrimination and persecution. The laws’ unfavourability to Norwegian Jews was the result of exclusion by lack of active inclusion. The lawmakers passed up the chance to redo some of the damage inflicted by the Nazi regime and missed the opportunity to alleviate Norwegian Jews of some of their post-war burdens. This illustrates that Norwegian Jews have not only been disadvantaged by persecution and harassment but also by inactiveness and inadequate attention and that the latter could be just as harmful as the former.