A Forgotten Heroine of the Norwegian Resistance
by Norman Berdichevsky (August 2012)
The Left is Seldom Right (New English Review– June, 2011 and FrontPage Oct. 31, 2011) deals with three outstanding women journalists and writers who were once saluted by the political Left internationally only to be later abandoned and then subjected to invective which the Left traditionally uses to castigate turncoats and traitors. Their record of integrity and courage deserves to be better known. Last month’s article looked at Catalan journalist Pilar Rahola and her staunch defense of basic rights for women, children, Jews, Gypsies and animals amidst a hostile Spanish culture.
She read the great classics of Shakespeare, Chaucer, contemporary British authors such as Jane Austen and the Bronte sisters as well as the great Scandinavian writers, Ibsen, Strindberg, and George Brandes, acquiring the university level education that had been denied to her. She published her first work at age 22 and twenty-two years later was awarded the Nobel Prize for Literature!
She gave her Nobel Prize money away, 156,000 kroner, part of it going to a foundation established to help families with mentally disabled children. Later in 1940 she also sold her Nobel medal, giving the money to the relief effort for Finnish children after the outbreak of the Winter War between Finland and the Soviet Union. Her books had long been banned in Germany for her outspoken criticism of Nazism and active defense of the Jews. After the death of her son Anders, she joined the Resistance movement but was strongly advised by Norwegian authorities to flee the country. After her departure, the Germans occupied her home and chopped up her writing desk.
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