In October 1939, seven-year-old Berthold Grünfeld arrived in Norway from Bratislava with around 34 other Jewish children, on a train via Berlin. They were received by representatives of the Nansenhilfe Relief Organization for Refugees and Stateless People and the Women’s League for Peace and Freedom.
Berthold Grünfeld initially lived with a Jewish family in Trondheim but was put into the Jewish children’s home in Oslo after the German occupation of Norway in 1940. He lived there until October 1942, when Jews began to be arrested.
Helpers managed to take the children to Sweden, where they stayed until Norway’s liberation in 1945. After that, Berthold Grünfeld returned to the Jewish children’s home in Oslo. After the war, he learned his mother had been murdered in Sobibor extermination camp.
Berthold Grünfeld went on to work as a doctor, psychiatrist, forensic expert, and professor of social medicine at the University of Oslo.
Rescued boys from the Oslo children’s home after their escape to Sweden, presumably at their place of refuge, an old mansion in Alingsås, around 1943. Source: Privatbesitz/Private
The rescued children after returning to Oslo, around 1946. Back row, left to right: Fritz Schreier, Siegmund Korn, Olga Feldtmann, Josef Fenster, Edith Kriser, (Ruth Tennenhaus?), Otto Erster, Norbert Korn, Alfred Fink. Front row, left to right: Henri Raphael, Gudrun Karlsen with her son Steiner, Edith Stettner, Berthold Grünfeld. Source: Jødisk Museum i Oslo
