Dear Ms. Berman,

On behalf of the President of Thanks to Scandinavia, Laurie Sprayregen and the Thanks to Scandinavia Board, we would like to thank you for the wonderful job you did at the TTS/MJH event on Wednesday April 14th.

Your beautifully told story is an invaluable contribution to the relatively unknown destiny of Norwegian Jews and we are truly grateful [to you] for making it available to us.  We hope your book will be read by many and that it will be a source of reflection!

We had a very attentive audience, thanks to you, and we are very pleased with the positive feedback!

Thank you again for making the event a success!  I have attached a beautiful photo taken at the reception.

With kind regards from all of us at TTS!

Liv Tchividjian Grimsby

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Irene, I am writing to tell you again about how wonderful your presentation was this past weekend.  Many attendees approached me to tell me how much they enjoyed your presentation.  You are a true scholar and an eloquent spokesperson for your cause.  Everyone in attendance learned about the plight of Norwegian Jewry and the impact of the Holocaust on Scandinavian Jewish communities.  Your lecture was as appropriate and compelling as any I might have chosen for the Shabbat prior to Yom Hashoah.  I pray for your success as you work tirelessly to inform and to educate.  I look forward to your return to the sanctuary of our congregation.

Rabbi Yitzchok Adler

Beth David Synagogue

West Hartford, Connecticut

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Dear Irene:

Wednesday evening, May 12, at the Town & County Club in Hartford was a very special event.  There was not a place left for one more person in the dining room.

Your presentation and narration of the story of the Jews in Norway from 1940 to 1942 and post-wartime was both horrifying and poignant.  One could have heard a pin drop as you described holding the family housekeeper’s hand on the way from the playground as you thought you were all going to pick potatoes.  You so vividly described the frantic efforts of your mother to gather her remaining family in the absence of your father who had barely escaped to neutral Sweden.  Those who balked, who felt after all that they had done nothing wrong, were never heard from again.

It was fascinating to learn that for many years the loss of family members who had perished in the Holocaust was simply not discussed.  From your vantage point as a child, your large family had shrunken considerably, and no one told you why.  This long silence added years to the effort to uncover the truth that you pieced together for your book, We are Going to Pick Potatoes, Norway and the Holocaust, the Untold Story.

Your story educated a largely non-Jewish audience about the plight of Jews in Norway and Denmark and the role Sweden played.  Thank you for a most absorbing and memorable evening.

Sincerely,

Sally Richter, Dinner Event Chair