SARA AND JAKOB CAPLAN
A JEWISH COMMUNITY IN NORTHERN NORWAY
More than seven decades after Jakob was rounded up with his family in their hometown of Narvik, Norway, Harry Caplan of Salem returned to the northern Norwegian town of his birth last June at the invitation of the mayor to witness the installment of “snublestein,” or stumbling stones, in remembrance of the members of Caplan’s family who perished in Auschwitz and to say a very emotional kaddish.
Caplan’s grandfather Daniel had moved to Norway from England in the 1920s to establish a small chain of stores, Caplan Magasin, and the family was quite well known in the area.
Caplan, born in 1939, was three years old when his family was transported to the camps. The “cost” for the transportation was the family’s estate, and the stores were taken over by Nazi sympathizers.
His father, Jakob, grandfather, Daniel, and three uncles perished in Auschwitz.
More than seven decades after he was rounded up with his family in their hometown of Narvik, Norway, Harry Caplan of Salem returned to the northern Norwegian town of his birth last June at the invitation of the mayor to witness the installment of “snubblestein,” or stumbling stones, in remembrance of the members of Caplan’s family who perished in Auschwitz and to say a very emotional kaddish.
Harry, his brother, Sammy, and his mother, Sara, were sent to Bredvedt, a prison camp in Oslo. With the help of a sympathetic German officer, they evaded transport to Auschwitz and escaped to Copenhagen, where Sara, a Danish Jew, had been raised.
There, with assistance from the Danish resistance in fishing boats, they were able to escape again, this time to Sweden, where they lived in refugee camps until the end of the war. Afterwards, the family lived for a time in Copenhagen and Narvik, but settled in Sweden when Sara remarried.
Caplan’s path took him to Israel as a young adult, where he met his wife, Diane, who is originally from Chelsea. In 1965, the couple moved to the U.S., living first in Chelsea, then in Swampscott and now in Salem. Prior to the invitation from Narvik’s mayor, Caplan had only visited the country of his birth once before, in 2000.
According to Caplan, Norwegian author Henrik Broberg (Broberg’s book, “The Village was Silent” is about the Jewish population of northern Norway) told Narvik’s mayor about a German artist, Gunter Demnig, who creates small, brass cobblestone-sized memorials for individual victims of the Nazis.
The stones are set into the pavement of sidewalks in front of buildings where victims once lived or worked, and are engraved with the name, date of birth, and place of death of an individual.
There have been over 48,0000 memorial stones laid in several European countries. Demnig was asked to create stones for Narvik’s Jews, including the Caplan family, and Caplan and other family members were invited to witness the laying of the stones last June.
Caplan, an optician who works in Brookline, visited Norway for 10 days with his wife, Diane. The couple has two children, Yakov who lives in Los Angeles with his wife, and Ahmi of Peabody.
The experience was an emotional one for Caplan. In addition to saying kaddish for his family, he was able to reconnect with other family members who were present, including a cousin from Norway that he discovered was alive.
“It was very touching to meet part of the families that we missed,” Caplan said, adding that he also met the other Jewish families who were there to witness the laying of stones for their relatives.
“I found out that their relatives were very close friends with my family and shared Shabbat dinners, went skiing and played soccer together on the local town teams and myriad other social events. It was bittersweet and very emotional for me to think about all the things in my life that were missed and what my life might have been.”
Much of Narvik was destroyed in the war, and though he was very young during the war, Caplan remembers the noise of the bombing. Out of approximately 2,000 Norwegian Jews living there at the time, 760 perished and only about 900 survived, a group that includes Caplan, his mother and brother. Caplan points to the handmade 5’’ x 5” squares with engraved brass plates on top as a way to stop and remember those that were lost.
“When people are walking in the street and see the brass plates, they stop and look at them,” Caplan said. “It gets people to think and to remember.
The experience was an emotional one for Caplan. In addition to saying kaddish for his family, he was able to reconnect with other family members who were present, including a cousin from Norway that he discovered was alive.
“It was very touching to meet part of the families that we missed,” Caplan said, adding that he also met the other Jewish families who were there to witness the laying of stones for their relatives.
“I found out that their relatives were very close friends with my family and shared Shabbat dinners, went skiing and played soccer together on the local town teams and myriad other social events. It was bittersweet and very emotional for me to think about all the things in my life that were missed and what my life might have been.”
Much of Narvik was destroyed in the war, and though he was very young during the war, Caplan remembers the noise of the bombing. Out of approximately 2,000 Norwegian Jews living there at the time, 760 perished and only about 900 survived, a group that includes Caplan, his mother and brother. Caplan points to the handmade 5’’ x 5” squares with engraved brass plates on top as a way to stop and remember those that were lost.
“When people are walking in the street and see the brass plates, they stop and look at them,” Caplan said. “It gets people to think and to remember.
Jacob was arrested early morning of June 18th, 1941. One month later Harry turned two years old and would never see his father again.
Published with kind permission
Author Amy Forman
Previously published in Boston Forward
Previously published in Boston Forward
