Norway's controversial decision to honor novelist and Nazi sympathizer Knut Hamsun was harshly criticized this week by the international foundation for Raoul Wallenberg, a Swedish diplomat who disappeared after saving tens of thousands of Hungarian Jews from the Holocaust.
Hamsun supported the Nazi occupation regime in Norway during World War II and even gave his Nobel Prize in Literature medal, which he won in 1920, to Nazi propaganda minister Joseph Goebbels. But because the celebrated author was born 150 years ago, Norway's government has declared 2009 "Hamsun Year" and is planning to open a museum in his honor next month.
"It now remains up to the Norwegian government to put an end to this offensive vindication of Nazism and live up to the standards the world has come to expect from it or live with the consequences of such unacceptable behavior," said Nicholas Tozer, one of 15 board members of the International Raoul Wallenberg Foundation.
In his letter of protest, Tozer joined prominent Israeli campaigners against anti-Semitism, who told Haaretz last month that by declaring 2009 "Hamsun Year," Norway has damaged the international Holocaust awareness drive it was recently appointed to head, as chair of the 26-nation Task Force for International Cooperation on Holocaust Education.
The Norwegian Foreign Ministry responded that the Hamsun commemoration will also focus on his Nazi past, and will thus serve as an educational tool.
