MAI 2018
Artifact of the Month for May 2018
Ludvig Holberg’s «Jewish History»
Mendel Bernstein (1890 – 1987)
Mendel Simon Bernstein was a Norwegian-Jewish businessman and councelor for Jewish affairs. He was born in Malmö as one of five children to Dora (b. Bagranski) and Levin Bernstein. The family settled in Norway towards the end of the 1890s. Mendel was an early participator and contributor to the Jewish organizational life of the capital. In 1909 he was one of the initiators of the Israeli Youth Union (from 1934 Jewish Youth Union, shortened JUF). Mendel later joined the leadership of the Mosaic Confederation and became their first leader after the merger with the Israeli Congregation in 1939. The first years after the war he also served as chairman of the Norwegian section of the World Jewish Congress. He was married to Elise Kazerginski (born 1890 in Kristiania).
During the campaign against Jewish men in October 1942, Mendel Bernstein was in hiding at Ullevål Hospital. From here he was rescued to Sweden at the beginning of December that year. A son, Ernst Sigmund (born 1919), was deported and killed in Auschwitz in 1943. Two of Mendel's brothers Abraham (born 1882) and Abel (born 1885) were also murdered in the Holocaust.
In 1948, Mendel Bernstein was instrumental in erecting a memorial for Jewish victims of the Shoa in Norway. He and his wife also established a fund for students after the war, in memory of their son Ernst Sigmund. Mendel Bernstein died in Oslo in the spring of 1987, 97 years old.
Ludvig Holberg's "Jewish History" from 1742, has belonged to Mendel Bernstein and is a gift to the Oslo Jewish Museum from Mendel's grandchild, Sidsel Levin.
Photo: Mendel Bernstein as a young conscripted soldier, Oscarsborg 1912