The university that boycotted Israel and the professor who claimed: "There were no death camps"

A history professor at the University of Bergen in Norway claimed in posts published under a pseudonym that there were no death camps during World War II. The university stated that freedom of speech applies to all employees.

Stefan Sander-Pass, a history professor at the University of Bergen in Norway, claimed in posts and comments published on a blog under a pseudonym on the Substack platform that during World War II there were no dedicated death or extermination camps. The matter was first reported by the Austrian newspaper "Der Standard" on November 5, and was verified by the Norwegian site Khrono. Sander-Pass, an Austrian native, has been employed at the university since 2020 and has served as a professor since 2024. In an article from February 26, he wrote about a "plethora of lies" spread since World War II, and elsewhere described the post-1945 memory culture as a "post-bourgeois ideology" imposed on Europe by American and Soviet propaganda. He dismissed the criticism and claimed his words were taken out of context. The university's rector, Margareth Hagen, declined to comment specifically, noting that freedom of speech applies to all employees. The article also mentions that in recent years the university has dealt with its relations with academic institutions in Israel, including canceling a student exchange agreement with Tel Aviv University and severing cooperation with Bezalel.

The university that boycotted Israel and the professor who claimed: "There were no death camps"