debate on this issue in Norway, where shechitah has been banned since 1930, one of the parliamentarians said straight out, 'If they don't like it, let them go live somewhere else.'" Representatives of both Muslim and Jewish communities, citing scientific studies, dispute the assertion that traditional halal and kosher slaughtering methods lead to unnecessary animal suffering. Norway's acceptance of hunting, whaling and sealing were also raised as proof of the alleged hypocrisy of the Norwegian position. Minister of Agriculture, Lars Peder Brekk of the Centre Party (which has always rejected shechita, see above), rejected the comparison. Proponents of the continued ban, including officials from the Norwegian Food Safety Authority claimed that animals slaughtered according to shechita were conscious for "several minutes" after they were slaughtered, and writer and farmer Tore Stubberud claimed that animals in Judaism had "no moral status... pure objects for ... archaic, religious needs", and wondered whether the EU, in allowing for such slaughter had become "purely a bank, without values". To get around the ban, kosher meat has had to be imported into the country. In June 2019, it was proposed to extend the ban to imports of kosher meat. The proposal has also been described as antisemitic. Holocaust Niels Christian Ditleff was a Norwegian diplomat who in the late 1930s was posted to Warsaw, Poland. In the spring of 1939, Ditleff set up a transit station in Warsaw for Jewish refugees from Czechoslovakia that had been sent there through the sponsorship of Nansenhjelpen. Ditleff arranged for the refugees to receive food, clothing, and transportation to Gdynia, Poland, where they boarded ships bound for Norway. Nansenhjelpen was a Norwegian humanitarian organization founded by Odd Nansen in 1936 to provide safe haven and assistance in Norway for Jewish refugees from areas in Europe under Nazi control. The sanctuary in Norway was only shortlived. Germany occupied Norway on 9 April 1940, and a number of Norwegians were immediately arrested, and two months later the occupying force established the first prisoners' camp at Ulven, outside Bergen. Many Jews who could, fled the country. "Nearly two-thirds of the Jews in Norway fled from Norway". Of these, around 900 Jews were smuggled out of the country by the Norwegian resistance movement, mostly to Sweden but some also to the United Kingdom. In 1942, before deportations started, there were at least 2,173 Jews in Norway. Of these, 1,643 were Norwegian citizens, 240