AshehougAgency

Kathe - Always Been in Norway

Conscientious to a degree and in her best handwriting, fifteen-year-old Kathe Lasnik, a pupil at Oslo's Fagerborg School, completed the "Questionnaire for Jews in Norway". To the question "When did you come to Norway?" she answered "Always lived in Norway". The questionnaire is dated 16 November 1942. Ten days later, together with 532 other Jews, Kathe, her mother, father and a sister are herded on board the troopship Donau. On 1 December Kathe Lasnik was murdered in the Auschwitz-Birkenau death camp. Two of her sisters managed to reach the safety of neutral Sweden in time.

Søbye employs a biographical technique to tell the story of a perfectly ordinary girl who grew up in the Norway of the interwar years. His source-based account charts the course of Kathe Lasnik's family from the day her parents arrive in Kristiania in 1908 as refugees from Vilnius, to settle in an eastern part of the inner city, through to their persecution, deportation and eventual murder the murder of a Norwegian family. The author encounters considerable difficulties with the micro historical method he has chosen to adopt, because a determined attempt was made to wipe the family off the face of the earth, to which end all its belongings, papers and photographs were destroyed.

This heartbreaking biography is a sober and well-documented account of one of the bleakest parts of European history.

Praise for Kathe - Always Been in Norway:

"This talented, literary pedagogue manages to portray the many by telling of an individual. Kathe’s story will be the story of the Norwegian Jews. It is gripping reading (…) Søbye’s book is a worthy addition to our body of war literature"
(VG)

"A shocking and important story about an investigation where the most powerful text is the one written in the reader’s thoughts as one reads from everyday life towards the catastrophe"
(Aftenposten)

"A howl of pain (…) a powerful contribution to the monsterous story of the annihilation of the Jews"
(Dagsavisen)

"Espen Søbye’s book is a heart-rending, but thoroughly clear-headed record"
(Dagbladet)

"An exciting book about the fate of a normal person caught up in the maelstrom of history"
(Adresseavisa)

"The book is a unique record of a person’s life, a person only allowed to live for fifteen years. What’s more, its themes, methods and approach make it an unusually important addition to research into the Nazi occupation of Norway (…) An episode in the history of the occuption – the persecution of the Jews – has now been recorded and elucidated better than ever before"
(Morgenbladet)

"The reader will also be impressed by the way this superlative biography demonstrates that sources can be used stringently to portray “ordinary” people’s lives and times, not just the lives of celebrities"
(Sarpsborg Arbeiderblad)

"Søbye’s portrait of Kathe Lasnik is not just a powerful book; it is also a kind of necessity"
(Klassekampen)

"Søbye’s recounts a side to the history of the war in Norway that we have little reason to be proud of – but even more reason to learn from"
(Bergens Tidende)

"As a record of the terrible drama which unfolded in Norway that autumn, this book is truly insuperable. It lends a face and life to a drama which we are vaguely aware of, but into which we have never been given such detailed insight. (…) Thanks for this book – reading it almost makes you cry"
(Dagen)

“A convincing demonstration of what a statistic historian can achieve…Kathe Lasnik, who had always been in Norway, did not have a long stay in the concentration camp. She was taken directly off the train and into the gas chamber. Now, after all, she has got her memorial”
(Stavanger Aftenblad)

“There is no way around it: This book must be read”
(Vårt Land)

First published: 2003, Forlaget Oktober

Espen Søbye: Biography and bibliography

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