A Norwegian Grey Zone: Knut Rød, Victor Lind and“The Crucial Year, 1942”

This article uses Primo Levi's concept of “the grey zone” to explore Knut Rød's involvement in the transfer of 532 Norwegian Jews from Oslo to Auschwitz in 1942. Rød, the police chief in charge of the operation, was subsequently exonerated of any crime on the grounds that he had simultaneously used his position to help members of Milorg – the Norwegian Resistance. The legal and moral basis of this verdict has been questioned by the artist Victor Lind in a series of artworks, including his “countermonument” The Perpetrator (2005).