By
– October 4, 2011
It wasn’t until 2005 that Irene Levin Berman forced herself to examine what it meant to her to be a Holocaust survivor. Even after so many years, she strongly identified as a Jew and a Norwegian, as well as a United States citizen, but not having been in a ghetto or camp, she didn’t feel “worthy” of the label “survivor.” In “We Are Going To Pick Potatoes”: Norway and The Holocaust, The Untold Story, she describes what happened to the Jews of Norway during the Holocaust, focusing mainly on her particular family; this is as much an autobiography as an account of flight and resettlement in hospitable Sweden. A child of four when she was told “We are going to pick potatoes,” she and her family embarked on a tortuously dangerous journey across the Alps to reach neutral Sweden, just missing the Gestapo roundup of November 26th for the purpose of mass arrests. It was 1942, and the Norwegian Jews who remained in Norway did not realize the danger they were in. Interestingly, in one chapter, Berman tries to excuse the Norwegian police and Norway for not emulating the excellent record of Denmark, saying that the Jews had been in Denmark for centuries, which was not the case in Norway (to which she and her family returned after the war). Although this is primarily an account of the fate of the author’s extended family during the Holocaust, it is nevertheless an important addition to the library of survivor testimony since not much is known about Norwegian Jews during this period.
Marcia W. Posner, Ph.D., of the Holocaust Memorial and Tolerance Center of Nassau County, is the library and program director. An author and playwright herself, she loves reviewing for JBW and reading all the other reviews and articles in this marvelous periodical.