List of North European Jews
Until the Holocaust, Jews were a significant part of the Baltic population. Around 240,000 lived in Lithuania, including 100,000 in Vilnius (45% of the city's population). A large community also existed in Latvia. Denmark, Sweden, Norway and Finland all had, and still have, established but relatively small communities, with the latter two being the smallest. Here is a list of some prominent North European Jews, arranged by country of origin.
Denmark
- Harald Bohr, mathematician (half Jewish)
- Niels Bohr, physicist (half Jewish)
- Victor Borge, entertainer
- Georg Brandes, author and critic, father of Danish naturalism
- Arne Jacobsen, architect & designer
- Benjamin Roy Mottelson, physicist, Nobel Prize (1975)
- Ivan Osiier, seven-time Olympic fencer
- Lee Oskar, harmonica player, member of War
- Edgar Rubin, Gestalt psychologist
- Lars von Trier, film director (Jewish father: non-biological, he later discovered)
Estonia
- Louis I. Kahn, architect
- Eri Klas, conductor
Finland
- Moses Pergament, composer
- Max Jakobson, diplomat
- Mauritz Stiller, director (Finnish-born)
- Ben Zyskowicz, conservative leader
Iceland
- Dorrit Moussaieff, jewellery designer & wife of Ólafur Ragnar Grímsson
Latvia
- Isaiah Berlin, historian of ideas
- Sergei Eisenstein, director (half Jewish)
- Morris Halle, linguist
- Philippe Halsman, photographer
- Mariss Jansons, conductor (half Jewish)
- Gil Kane, comic book illustrator
- Gidon Kremer, violinist
- Mischa Maisky, cellist
- Aron Nimzowitsch, chess player
- Mark Rothko, painter
- Mikhail Tal, world chess champion
- Max Weinreich, linguist
Lithuania
- Elijah ben Solomon, rabbi, the Gaon of Vilna
- Eliezer Ben-Yehuda, reviver of Hebrew
- Bernard Berenson, art critic
- Victor David Brenner, designer of the US penny
- Abraham Cahan, writer & activist
- Vyacheslav Ganelin, jazz pioneer
- Emma Goldman, anarchist
- Chaim Grade, writer
- Zvi Griliches, economist
- Laurence Harvey, actor
- Jascha Heifetz, violinist
- Sidney Hillman, labor leader
- Al Jolson, entertainer
- Abraham Isaac Kook, first Chief Rabbi of Palestine
- Aaron Klug, chemist, Nobel Prize (1982)
- Emmanuel Levinas, philosopher
- Jacques Lipchitz, cubist sculptor
- Harvey Milk, gay politician (Lithuanian parents)
- Hermann Minkowski, mathematician
- Oskar Minkowski, physiologist
- Alexander Schneider, violinist & conductor
- Ben Shahn, artist
- Karl Shapiro, poet (Lithuanian parents)
- Joe Slovo, ANC activist
- Helen Suzman, anti-apartheid MP (Lithuanian parents)
- Uriel Weinreich, linguist
- William Zorach, painter, sculptor & writer
- Louis Zukofsky, poet (Lithuanian parents)
Norway
- Christian Anfinsen, chemist, Nobel Prize (1972) (Norwegian parents, convert)
- Jo Benkow, parliament speaker
- Bente Kahan, Yiddish singer and actress
- Robert Levin, pianist
Sweden
- Jean-Pierre Barda & Dominika Peczynski, members of Army of Lovers
- Gerhard Bonnier and family, founders of Bonnier media house
- Josef Frank, architect & designer
- Johan Harmenberg, Olympic epée champion
- Eli Heckscher, economist
- Erland Josephson, actor & writer
- Ernst Josephson, painter
- Georg Klein, pathologist
- Oskar Klein, physicist
- Leif Pagrotsky, Minister of Commerce
- Nelly Sachs, German-born poet, Nobel Prize (1966)
- Leif Silbersky, defense lawyer & writer
- Art Spiegelman, comic strip artist
- Mauritz Stiller, director
- Peter Weiss, German-born dramatist & writer
See also: List of Jews, Danes, Estonians, Finns, Latvians, Lithuanians, Norwegians, Swedes