The Prime Minister's speech at the International Holocaust Remembrance Day

Translated from Norwegian. Checked against delivery

Your Royal Highnesses, President of the Storting, survivors, friends,

First, thank you to the young people here today for the testimonies and stories you have read for us.

It is important to commemorate this day – when we remember the Holocaust in all its brutality, with these individual stories – to ensure that we never forget.

We must learn from history.

We must honour the victims of an inhumane regime and an ideology completely devoid of any moral compass.

In our turbulent world – where previously accepted norms are being challenged – this is more important than ever. But I would like to begin by saying that we must not give up hope that norms can continue to apply. We must not give up hope that rules can be maintained. And we must not accept the narrative that everything is falling apart. We have a solid foundation to build on.

Remembering the Holocaust is about more than the past. It is about the path we take now, our own compass as we move forward.  

We know what it was: a crime against humanity, a genocide, an industrial-scale plan aimed at total annihilation.

We are here to show our respect, to put words to the unthinkable – the unthinkable that nevertheless happened – and this must be retold:

In November 1942, 529 Jews were deported from this quay aboard the cargo ship Donau. The well-known photo is a bit hard to distinguish, but we can see that it is taken here on this quay, which many of us walk past every day. Three months later, the Gotenland ship set sail from here with 158 Jews on board.

The destination for both ships was the Auschwitz-Birkenau concentration camp. Only 37 Jews survived. Some 230 Jewish families from our country were wiped out.

Last year, on this day, I was at Auschwitz with His Royal Highness Crown Prince Haakon. We were attending the commemorative event to mark the 80th anniversary of the liberation of the camp.

There we met Chana Aberman, a Holocaust survivor, who is now in her late 90s and lives in Trondheim. She lost 50 family members in the Holocaust. ‘It is a miracle that I am alive,’ she told us. Chana has devoted much of her life to rebuilding the Jewish community in Trondheim.

Here in Oslo and in many other places in Norway during the war years – and it is painful but important to say this – there were a large number of Norwegians who readily helped the German occupying power, meticulously registering Jewish people, locating them and transporting them to this quay. It was Norwegians who drove the cars down here that morning.

There were many here in Norway who shared the Nazis’ ideology and view of humanity.  The Jews were to be removed from the country, and their belongings and property could simply be taken from them.

Here in Norway, we have spent decades trying to understand and confront what took place – and to learn – and pass these lessons on to new generations. A task that we will never be finished with.

The Holocaust – the genocide of six million Jews – and the murder of other groups including the Roma, gay people, people with disabilities, the mentally ill and those with differing political views – remains the lowest point in the history of humanity.

There are eight chairs here at this memorial, ordinary dining‑room chairs from the 1940s.

They represent families, a newly-wed couple, individuals.

But the chairs have no seats. These empty chairs speak of loss – of lives lost.

Note, too, that the chairs face away from the fortress, from the city, from the society that turned its back on them – the society that failed them.

Friends,

We are also here today to be reminded that we – the Royal Family, the Storting, the Government, the City of Oslo, the Police, the Armed Forces – as institutions entrusted with power – must lead the way. It is our responsibility to do so.

We are living in a time when our Jewish community – and other minorities – in our country once again feel unsafe.

When hate speech and conspiracy theories supplant knowledge and facts.

When language oversimplifies and distorts.

When authoritarian regimes around us – and sometimes among us – are gaining ground.

We must uphold human dignity, equality, diversity and the rule of law – by means of legislation, norms, and through our attitudes – and by fostering a culture of kindness and compassion between people.

We must protect our national minorities. How we – the state, the city, the people – treat our minority groups is a key test for any society.

We must ensure that ours is a society where there is no ‘them’ and ‘us’, only ‘we’ – because we, in Norway, are the sum of all our minorities.

We must be vigilant – and take action – when we see signs of discrimination, harassment, racism, or threats. And we must ensure that the threshold for speaking up is low.

We must act when someone feels unsafe simply because of who they are.

We must fight – young people especially, and I would like once again to acknowledge those who are already doing this, the young pathfinders – fight against prejudice and indifference, and against historical ignorance and distortion, against those who seek to diminish or relativise the Holocaust.

We must do this together — the state, the city, civil society, religious communities, our schools — all of us, as responsible citizens and fellow human beings.

It is in our shared sense of community that we find strength, mutual trust, and wisdom — and a conviction that we must never forget.

We will remember the empty chairs, and what they represent — what they tell us about how we must continue to build our society today, and every day.

Thank you.