The Kennedy Center’s fabulous month of Nordic Cool has come to an end, leaving those of us who were able to experience it, inspired by the exhibits and other displays of Nordic talent in art, music, dance, and literature. One of the exhibits that inspired me was Icelandic photographer/artist Rúrí’s “Archive-Endangered Waters.” This brilliant...
Read more →Attendees to events at the Kennedy Center’s “Nordic Cool” festival find their eyes drawn upward to the colorful glass migrating birds created by artist Trondur Patursson who lives in the Danish Faroe Islands (which are closer to Iceland). Trondur Patursson’s Migrating Birds
Read more →Finland’s Kaarina Kaikkonen’s wonderfully colorful, flowing and floating ship of shirts fills the Kennedy Center’s Hall of States. Viewable from many angles this sculpture gives a whole new meaning to recycling and staying afloat. As the accompanying sign explains, Kaikkonen used 1000 shirts which symbolize people working together. Check out the photos!
Read more →“Nordic Cool,” a month-long festival opening on Tuesday evening, February 19, at the Kennedy Center in Washington, DC, celebrates the cultures of the Nordic countries: Norway, Sweden, Denmark, Iceland and Finland through music, theater, dance, literature, design, sculpture, film, and cuisine. The website http://www.kennedy-center.org/programs/festivals/12-13/nordic lists the smörgåsbord of events being presented and the sumptuous...
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Norway continued its tradition of annually gifting a Christmas/Jul tree to Washington, DC, and the people of the United States with a tree-lighting ceremony at Union Station on December 4. The preparations gave Washington Post columnist John Kelly an opportunity to meet Urd Milbury from the Royal Norwegian Embassy’s Culture and Information Department. And...
Read more →In my previous post, I spoke about the November 14 program at George Washington University with Irene Levin Berman, author of “We are going to pick potatoes”: Norway and the Holocaust, the Untold Story. After my welcome, I introduced Linken Nymann Berryman, Counselor for Press and Culture, at the Royal Norwegian Embassy in Washington, DC. The text of her talk follows:
On behalf of the Royal Norwegian Embassy in Washington, thank you all for joining us for this very important event. As we will learn this evening, the story of Norway and the Holocaust marks a very dark and very difficult chapter in our nation’s history. The Nazis confiscated all property owned by Jewish people in Norway. During the course of the war, 772 Norwegian Jews and Jewish refugees were arrested and deported. Only 34 survived.
This is a subject that Ambassador, Wegger Strommen, cares passionately about. In the late 1990s, Ambassador Strommen played a key role in the Norwegian government’s decision to pay restitution collectively and individually, for the economic liquidation of Jewish assets. By so doing Norway accepted moral responsibility for the crimes committed against Norwegian Jews during the Second World War.
Ambassador Strommen regrets that he is unable to join us as he is traveling with visiting [Norwegian Government] Ministers in Texas, but he has, with the help of Dr. Walter Reich, prepared a video in which he shares his thoughts regarding both the Holocaust in Norway and the state of anti-Semitism in Europe today.
Dr. Reich is the Yitzhak Rabin Memorial Professor of International Affairs, Ethics and Human Behavior, and Professor of Psychiatry and Behavioral Sciences, here at The George Washington University. He is also a former Director of the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum, and has written and lectured widely on the Holocaust and genocide. He is the author of numerous books and articles on the topic, and recently edited the forthcoming title, Escape from the Holocaust: The Fate of Jews in Finland During World War II.
Here to properly introduce the video message, please allow me, and help me, welcome Dr. Walter Reich.
Regrettably I don’t have Dr. Reich’s remarks, but I can say he is a “mensch.” He volunteered to interview the Ambassador because he is a long admirer and because of his deep interest in the subject. The video interview speaks for itself: Interview with Ambassador Wegger Chr. Strommen and Dr. Walter Reich OR TRY THIS
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mbHTiWT_5nc
I have written in other blog posts about author Irene Levin Berman and her book, “We are going to pick potatoes”: Norway and the Holocaust, the Untold Story. Irene’s book is “not only a narrative about the Holocaust but a remembrance of growing up Jewish in Norway during and after World War II.” Irene...
Read more →Until I attended Hostfest 2011, I did not know about author Lauraine Snelling. (Okay, so I live under a rock.) I was impressed by the number of fans who lined up to get her books but even more so by her “entourage”–that is her family and a family of friends who accompany her annually...
Read more →I greatly admire Astrid Karlsen Scott—a fabulous woman who is a prolific writer/author, producer/director, and lecturer, and a household name among Norwegian Americans. Born in Oslo just before WWII, she spent her early childhood in Nazi-occupied Norway, saw it liberated in 1945, and as a teenager immigrated to the United States with her parents...
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