Ellinors house
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Ellinor's house tells the story of the deportation of Jews through the history of 5-year-old Ellinor Meiran. Ellinor grew up in downtown Oslo and was 5 years old in 1942. On November 26, 1942, Ellinor was arrested and taken down to Oslo's quay. There awaited the cargo ship Donau. In the first painting, we see the moment Ellinor was arrested. If you look in front of Ellinor's feet, you'll see Ellinor standing in front of the stumbling stones in memory of Ellinor, her father, and her grandmother. Vebjørn Sand has mixed time and space when he painted Ellinor in front of her own memorial. Now you can continue around the corner of the house. Ellinor was one of 529 Norwegian Jews crowded onto the cargo ship Donau that day; from there, it was a four-day journey to Stettin in today's Poland. In the next painting, we see the arrival in Stettin, and we see Ellinor in her red coat, inspired by the movie Schindler's List. From the boat, they were crammed into cattle cars and sent on a 24-hour train journey to the Auschwitz-Birkenau concentration camp. The prisoners arrived at the camp in the early hours of December 1, 1942. Here they were sorted into two groups: those who could work on one side and those who could not on the other. Little 5-year-old Ellinor could not work and was therefore sent straight to the gas chamber the same night she arrived at the camp. This is the day when the most Norwegians were killed during World War II. The next painting shows the pile of all the prisoners' belongings. Upon arrival at the camp, they were stripped of everything they owned. Those sent on to work had their hair shaved off and were tattooed with a prisoner number. The prisoners were deprived of everything that made them human and everything that made them individuals; all human rights were stripped away. Now you can enter Ellinor's house. It's a bit dark, so it may take some time to adjust to the light. This room is inspired by a poet named Nelly Sachs. She was a Jewish writer who tried to accomplish the impossible task of writing beautiful poetry based on the Holocaust. In her poem "Chorus of the Abandoned Things," she describes the smoke rising from the crematorium ovens with the quote, "Ashes sleeps itself anew, into the shape of stars". Here we see the painting called "Ash sleep". It is painted with ash in the paint, and the black background is painted with the element carbon. The painting depicts the final sleep and transition to stardust, which in turn becomes new life. Now you can turn around; here is also 5-year-old Ellinor in her ash sleep.