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JEWISH HERITAGE EUROPE
An Online Resource Centre
NORWAY NEWS PAGE
On 22 August the Villa Grande in Oslo opened as the new home of the Centre for Studies of Holocaust and Religious Minorities in Norway (known as the HL-Centre), established in 2001. The Villa Grande was occupied during the Second World War by Norwegian Nazi collaborator Vidkun Quisling.
The new facility will mount exhibitions and sponsor research on the Holocaust and on the persecution of other minorities. Odd-Bjoern Fures, director of the Centre, told the Norwegian newspaper Aftenposten, 'We will try to focus a spotlight on racist policies towards different groups'.
Quisling was executed by Norway after the Second World War for leading a government that collaborated with the German occupation. Under German protection, he proclaimed himself 'minister president', and moved into Villa Grande with his wife in 1941. His puppet regime allowed the deportation of Norwegian Jews and the confiscation of their property.
Fures also told Aftenposten 'that the Norwegian NS regime had begun planning "a Jewish solution to the Norwegian gypsy question" ', and that its plans to deport Norway's Romany people is an area not previously discussed in Norway's national history.
The Norwegian government donated Quisling's 43,000-square-foot house and surrounding 5-acre estate to the centre as part of a 1999 package adopted by parliament as compensation for Norwegian Jews. This settlement, worth over 55 million Euro, compensates Jewish families for property stolen by the Nazis and funds community projects such as this.
For further information about the centre and its opening see:
'Unique Holocaust centre: Norway's new centre for Holocaust Studies is opening now, housed in Villa Grande, the former home of Vidkun Quisling in Bygdøy, Oslo', Aftenposten, 23 August 2006.
http://www.aftenposten.no/english/local/article1432343.ece
'Oslo opens Holocaust study centre', BBC News
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/europe/5282326.stm
'Nazi mansion turned around', Associated Press
24 August, 2006
http://www.washtimes.com/world/20060823-095832-7276r.htm
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