FRANCAISNorwegian Church Aid - History
1947-1959
-1947, Norway: with two Lutheran reverends, Conrad Bonnevie-Svendsen and Henrik Hauge, NCA starts in October 1947 as a fund raising campaign for the victims of the Second World War. Under the name of Norwegian Church Relief, it carries on the activities of a Confederation created in 1945 to coordinate the congregational work of some 200 Lutheran parish based charities. After receiving Danish and Swedish aid to Norway (which was occupied by Germany during the Second World War), the new organisation also wants to help other countries, including the defeated ones. To favour an ecumenical reconciliation, it assists first the needy populations in Germany, where there are numerous Lutheran communities. Its two first employees are Andreas Grasmo and Arne Torgersen, who also works for Aid to Europe (today’s Norwegian Refugee Council).
-1948-1949, Germany: through a local NGO, Hilfswerk der Evangelischen Kirchen, the Norwegian Church Relief starts in February 1948 to give dry fish rations in Ludwigshafen, Mainz and Friburg. After 1949, it still administers some parcels to families in Eastern Germany but does not work in Central Europe because of the cold war and the iron curtain.
-From 1951, Israel/Palestine: for the first time, the Norwegian Church Relief extends its assistance outside of Europe to send relief to Palestinian refugees. It provides medical care on the West Bank and, in Eastern Jerusalem, it rehabilitates the Augusta Victoria Hospital with the Lutheran World Federation in 1950. Built in 1907 by Kaiser Wilhelm II in honour of his wife, the Empress Augusta Victoria, the building was a pilgrims’ hospice that was taken over by the Turkish then the British armies until the ICRC (International Committee of the Red Cross) used it to accommodate Palestinians displaced by the fighting during the creation of the State of Israel in 1948.
-From 1953, Norway: six years after its launching, the Norwegian Church Relief becomes more formal and draws its first guidelines.
-1956, Hungary: the Norwegian Church Relief helps refugees who escape the Soviet repression in Budapest.
-1959, China: in British Hong Kong, the Norwegian Church Relief assists refugees who run away from communist China. Its missionary equivalent created in 1891, the Norwegian Lutheran Mission, had to leave China as soon as 1948, a year before the Red Army took power in Beijing.
