Human identity, our self-perception and the way we experience beeing part of a community derives from our narratives, our cultural histories.

This heritage engenders collective memories, which bind us together with an invisible thread and consolidate a communal ‘We’, which makes our world intelligible and predictable.

In our new globalised world, we live next to each other with separate, parallel and even excluding narratives.

The friction between different cultures is sharper than before and our diverse identities pose a challenge. The battle lines are drawn between ‘Us’ and ‘Them’.

In the old world, in the aftermath of war, it was different. Throughout this period, one collective memory developed concerning what had happened with Norwegians during the war - one memory, as if we all shared the same narrative and as if we all had lived through the same war.

Yet this was not the case.

From one perspective this was of course true, but from another, far from reality. In fact we are speaking about two wars, one within the other, where the inner one was characterised by massacres, reserved for the few and with allies thin on the ground.

The reverberation of this complexity resulted in a paradoxical scenario between the many who could finally rejoice that good had conquered evil - and the few, for whom evil had conquered good.

I am talking about the war whose purpose it was to annihilate all Norwegian Jews. Through decrees from the Norwegian Government. Vidkun Quisling leading the charge but with executioners in every corner of the country.

Norwegian citizens against Norwegian citizens.

This component of responsibility for part of Norwegian history never transcended from awareness to self-image for the vast majority of the population.

Thus it was never integrated as part of Norwegian identity, nor did it enter the public discourse.

For me as a Norwegian Jew, this represented a problem. I have always believed that a shared comprehension of reality is required in order to create a common understanding of who we are.

This is the necessary basis in order to complete the important work that lies ahead, to reduce the distance between diversity and the ability to deal with it, plurality versus pluralism.

The idea to create the institution that we are opening today was conceived from this vision.

Gradually it took shape with the exhibition at its core. The template and the premise to create a common reality was a fact.

It is with vigilant anticipation that I await the further development. And if I were to be granted a wish, it would be that the institution may play an important role in the dynamic process that has to take place in our society in the years to come, a process which entails the transformation of the ‘threatening Other’ into an ‘enriching We’.