Bjørn Meier Scharff
On 26th November 1942, a bus picked up 21 Jewish women, children and the elderly from the districts around Oslo. Final stop: the pier for the America Line, where the troop carrier Danube was waiting for them. The last to enter the bus were the brothers Bjørn and Idar Scharff, two and one years old. Five days later, all 21 passengers were gassed to death in the Auschwitz-Birkenau extermination camp.
The author told their story to Vebjørn Sand, and he eagerly seized on it. They met during a dinner after a visit to Roseslottet at Frognerseteren in March 2022. Over the next few months, he made three drafts. One of them made the cover: The small, well-groomed boy who gets into the bus on its way to annihilation. He demanded nothing for the work on the painting.
Harry Rødner tells the boy's story in Sviket. The subtitle hints at the tragedy: "What the government and the King in exile knew about the extermination of the Norwegian Jews". Three years later, he was the same age as Bjørn Scharff on his way into the bus. On 10th December 1945, he boarded a train at the Central station in Stockholm together with his mother and father. They were going home to Norway. They were free. They lived.
Vebjørn Sand
Vebjørn Sand, born 1966, is a painter, graphic artist and project creator. He has studied at the Norwegian Academy of Fine Arts in Oslo, the Academy of Fine Arts in Prague and The Art Students League of New York. Nudes, anatomy and portraits are central themes in Vebjørn's work.
In recent years, he has dedicated himself to developing series of paintings using the Second World War as a basis, including "Scenes from the Second World War - The Individual's Choice" and "Guernica - A Turning Point".
He has built the Trollslottet, the Kepler star, and has developed his Antarctic series beyond several expeditions to the South Pole. The Da Vinci-Bro project was erected in ice on several continents to clarify climate change.
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In 2020, Roseslottet opened on Frognerseteren to tell the story of the occupation of Norway and of the basic principles of democracy, the rule of law and humanism that were then put out of action. The persecution of the Norwegian Jews receives a lot of attention in the picture series and the anti-Semitism, before and during the war, is depicted.
