The Edgar Brichta Archive (1939-1964)

Edgar Brichta was born in a Jewish family in Bratislava in February 1930. As a result of the Nazi occupation of Czechoslovakia he fled to Norway in 1939, with the assistance of the Norwegian refugee organization Nansenhjelpen. He was sent to Bergen, and was taken care of by a Norwegian couple named Normann. His foster fatherwould go on to be a member and eventually a mayor for the collaborationist NS party. However he never exposed his foster son’s Jewish background and Brichta was able to stay with them until 1943, when he fled to neutral Sweden. He survived the war and eventually went back to Bratislava in hope to find his family, though they had all been murdered earlier in the war. After leaving Czechoslovakia for good, he struggled for several years obtaining citizenship or permanent residence before finally settling in California, USA. The Edgar Brichta Archive consists of correspondence regarding Brichta’s family, his stay in Norway and regards to post-war compensation as well as some photographs. The archive gives an insight to several aspects of the Holocaust in Norway - it shows the functions and the effects of Nansenhjelpen, and it also documents the life the very few Jews who survived the war in Norway.