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These Holocaust survivors were once classmates in a DP camp. They just reunited after 76 years.
(New York Jewish Week) — The last time Michael Epstein, 87, and Abe Rosenberg, 83, were in the same room, they were in Germany, studying in a classroom in a displaced person’s camp in Bavaria after the Holocaust.
On Sunday, March 19, the two men — along with Rosenberg’s older sister, Ada Gracin, who was also in the DP camp — reunited after 76 years. This time around, it was in the social hall of Young Israel of New Hyde Park, New York, where the pair embraced, said the Shehecheyanu prayer to mark their reunion and shared their survival stories with an in-person audience of about 100.
The reunion came together quickly, just a few weeks after the two men learned they lived less than 40 miles from one another — Rosenberg in New Hyde Park, on the eastern border of Queens, and Epstein in Fair Lawn, New Jersey. Originally intended to be an intimate meeting between the two families, the reunion soon broadened to a festive brunch and celebration open to the public.
“The Torah says it’s a mitzvah to relate what happened to us,” Rosenberg said. “Hitler’s goal was to destroy Yiddishkeit, Judaism. When we gather here, we are involved in a victory over him.”
Michael Epstein, Abe Rosenberg and Ada Gracin, left to right, stand together for the first time in 76 years after meeting as children living in a displaced person’s camp after the Holocaust. (Julia Gergely)
The two were brought together by a sharp-eyed videographer. In February, Epstein participated in an interview at a Jewish day school in Edison, New Jersey as part of the “Names Not Numbers” oral history project, which is dedicated to preserving the memories of Holocaust survivors and ensuring their legacies live on in future generations. As part of the project, high school students interview survivors about their experiences, which are filmed and made into mini-documentaries.
During the interview, Epstein presented a photograph of himself as a 7-year-old in “cheder” or elementary school at Feldafing, an all-Jewish displaced person’s camp near Munich, where he lived from 1945 to 1949.
As it happens, the videographer that day recognized the photograph. He had seen the same one during an interview he had filmed the prior year with another survivor — Rosenberg — who was living in Queens. When Epstein and his two daughters learned this, they knew they had to arrange a meeting.
“This is the first time I know of a reunion happening between survivors as a result of our program,” Daniel Mayer, a Names Not Numbers board member, told the New York Jewish Week.
As for Rosenberg, when he got the call from Epstein, “it just concretized the fact that the whole experience [of Feldafing] wasn’t a dream,” he said.
Though the two men did not specifically remember each other — Rosenberg was 8 and Epstein and Gracin were 11 at the time of the picture, taken in 1947 — at the event, they acutely recalled their lives at the DP camp.
Rosenberg and Epstein point themselves out in the picture of their childhood classroom, taken in 1947. (Julia Gergely)
Rosenberg, for example, remembers living in Barrack Nine with his sister and parents. During the war, the Nazis used Feldafing as a training ground for Hitler Youth. In Feldafing, like at other Jewish DP camps, survivors waiting for a country that would taken them in opened Jewish schools, started newspapers, composed music and began to rebuild their identities.
“We were hoping to go to Palestine, to Eretz Yisroel — that was our dream,” Rosenberg said. “It was not available to us” under the British Mandate. “Unfortunately, the doors of the whole world were closed to us.”
“So what did we do?” he continued. “We started to build on Jewish life again.”
On Sunday, as the assembled crowd noshed on bagels, lox and egg salad — and other participants joined via Zoom from California, Florida, New Jersey and Canada — Epstein, Rosenberg and Gracin shared their experiences with those in attendance.
First to speak was Epstein, who brought with him a scrapbook of pictures from his childhood. Epstein was born in Łódź, Poland, in 1935, which his family was forced to flee when Germany invaded in 1939. They went to Bialystok, which soon fell under the control of the Russians, who transported Poles and Jews to labor camps in Siberia via cattle cars. After spending time at a gulag camp in Siberia, Epstein and his family were moved to another in Uzbekistan.
When the war ended, Epstein and his parents returned to Łódź, only to find that their entire extended family had been killed and a Polish family was living in their apartment. With nothing left for them in Poland, they left for Feldafing. They lived there until they could find a way to get to the United States, where they eventually arrived in 1945.
Epstein, who is known as Zayde to his 11 grandchildren and 5 great-grandchildren — many of whom were in the room — left the crowd with a message to invest in Jewish education, and to work to uphold democracy. “We live in ‘di Goldene Medine’ (the Golden Land),” he said. “We thought, in Europe, that meant there was gold on the street. There’s no gold on the street but there is gold on paper in our Constitution, and in our Constitution there is still mining to do. There is still work to be done to make our Constitution’s morals realistic.”
The family of Michael Epstein gathered from New York and New Jersey to celebrate his life story. Epstein, second from the right in the front row, is holding one of his five great-grandchildren. (Julia Gergely)
Rosenberg and Gracin, who spoke next, were also from Łódź. Gracin, born Ada Rosen in 1935, recalled wearing the mandated yellow Jewish star patch on her clothing as a 4-year-old. Her mother was pregnant with her brother when they left Poland for Soviet Georgia, a journey she said was “fraught with peril,” as they were stopped multiple times by the Gestapo. The family lived in Georgia for six years and “fear was a constant.”
When the war ended, the family also returned to Łódź to look for surviving family members — there were none. They connected with the Jewish Agency and HIAS, which helped them get to Feldafing in 1945.
There, “we were referred to as ‘she’arit hapletah,’ the surviving remnants,” Gracin said. “I refer to this period in my life as ‘life reborn,’ as I lost my childhood prior to this. Although we lacked many things, I never felt deprived. The survivors cherished each child as if it were their own. We were precious jewels to them, as they had lost their own children.”
“For the first time in my life, I went to school, made friends, played and laughed,” she added. “I was a happy 9 year old.”
Gracin, her brother and her parents arrived in New York Harbor on April 6, 1949. “At last we were free of fear, free to live and practice our religion and thrive,” she said. “I feel blessed to have been given this chapter in my life and my revenge to Hitler is that I was blessed with three children and six grandchildren.” Two of Gracin’s children and four of her grandchildren were at the event.
In his remarks, Rosenberg recalled the heroism of the parents, teachers and rabbis in Feldafing, many of whom had lost their entire families but made it their mission to educate the few children who made it to the camp. “They were the heroes,” Rosenberg said. “They deserve the accolades — we were kids.” It is in their honor and memory that Rosenberg continued to share his story throughout his life, he said.
Though Epstein and Rosenberg did not stay in touch upon their respective arrivals to the United States, their lives continued to follow similar paths. Both went on to study engineering at the City College of New York and for a time both worked at Bendix Corporation, though in different departments — Epstein in the space program and Rosenberg on the supersonic transport team.
Congregants and community members brunched on bagels and listened to the survival stories in the social hall of Young Israel of New Hyde Park. (Julia Gergely)
Chuck Waxman, a docent at the Museum of Jewish Heritage who moderated the discussion, told the New York Jewish Week he was “blown away” by the event — he said he expected less than half the room to be filled.
But full it was, with family, friends, community members and other survivors who wanted to be a part of the miracle — both the miracle that happened in Feldafing and the miracle of the reunion in Queens.
The event also included speeches from Mayer Waxman, executive director of Queens JCC and Torah commentaries from Lawrence Teitelman, the rabbi of Young Israel of New Hyde Park, where Rosenberg is a member, and Benjamin Yudin, the rabbi of Congregation Shomrei Torah in Fair Lawn, New Jersey, where Epstein is a member.
At the close of the event, the lyrics of “Zog nit keynmol,” the “Song of the Warsaw Ghetto Uprising” — which was sung by Jewish partisan groups around Eastern Europe — were passed in sheets around the room. Rosenberg heartily led everyone in Yiddish.
“We plan to meet again in another 76 years,” Rosenberg joked to the New York Jewish Week. “Everyone is invited.”
—
The post These Holocaust survivors were once classmates in a DP camp. They just reunited after 76 years. appeared first on Jewish Telegraphic Agency.
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The one crucial domain in which Iran outwitted Israel
Last summer, a 21-year-old far-left activist named Calla Walsh traveled to Iran for its International Memorial for the Media Martyrs of the Struggle Against the Zionist Regime.
Addressing the crowd in Tehran, Walsh said: “We all have a duty, when we go back to the countries we came from, to share the truth we saw here and to struggle against Zionism and imperialism.”
“Glory to all the martyrs. Glory to the axis of resistance,” she added, also saying “Death to America. Death to Israel.”
Not every leftist American activist is jetting to Tehran to spout propaganda. But the language that Walsh — who supported Sen. Ed Markey’s 2020 campaign, which I worked on — used should be familiar to anyone tracking anti-Israel sentiment in the United States.
What may be less familiar: It’s language that the Islamic Republic of Iran has been key to spreading.
In the current war and in recent years, Israel has proven far more capable in degrading the Islamic Republic as a military actor than in undercutting the influence of the ayatollahs’ ideas, in which anti-Zionism, antisemitism and anti-imperialism are melded into a single ideology. This framework becomes all the more potent when Israel’s government hands its critics ammunition: Settlement expansion, the killing of Palestinian civilians and a rightward lurch have combined to make caricatures of Zionism feel, to many, like a good enough approximation of the truth.
But what the ayatollahs demonstrated better than anyone is that criticism of Israel rooted in anti-imperialism is often just a vehicle for antisemitism.
The bait and switch
Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini, the Islamic Republic’s hardline founder, pitched the Iranian revolution as one of social justice.
In 1963, Khomeini declared that the “great aim of Islam” was “to prevent oppression, arbitrary rule, and the violation of the law” — abuses heavily associated with Iran’s repressive government under the Shah. He spoke to the Iranian public in terms with clear parallels to the liberal canon of the American founders, promising citizens a “government that will assure their happiness and allow them to live lives worthy of human beings.”
As Abbas Milani, with whom I studied at Stanford University, recently wrote in The New York Times, this was a bait-and-switch: a liberal mirage used as a tactic to consolidate support for the revolution. Khomeini cast those principles aside the moment he entered power.
But even before the revolution, Khomeini’s pronouncements about Jews foreshadowed the illiberal oppression that was to come.
“We see today that the Jews (may God curse them) have meddled with the text of the Qu’ran,” Khomeini declared in a series of lectures on Islamic governance in 1970. “We must protest and make the people aware that the Jews and their foreign backers are opposed to the very foundations of Islam and wish to establish Jewish domination throughout the world.”
“Since they are a cunning and resourceful group of people, I fear that — God forbid! — they may one day achieve their goal, and the apathy shown by some of us may allow a Jew to rule over us one day.”
Khomeini’s Jew-hatred appeared to be a genuine ideological commitment, rather than just a political maneuver. In 1977, on the eve of the revolution, he said that “The Jews have grasped the world with both hands and still they are not satisfied.”
Anti-Judaism to anti-Zionism
Israel became the central focus of Khomeini’s conspiratorial belief in Jewish subversion. As such, his objections to Israel often emphasized its Jewish nature rather than its policies.
In 1970, Khomeini lambasted the Shah for extending “his recognition to a government of unbelievers — of Jews, at that — thereby affronting Islam, the Qur’an, the Muslim governments, and all the Muslim people.” (The Shah never formally recognized Israel, but did have unofficial representation in Tel Aviv. One Iranian official at the time described it as “relations of love without a marriage contract.”)
In 1971, Khomeini called attention to “Israel, that stubborn enemy of Islam and the Quran, which a few years ago attempted to corrupt the text of the Quran.” Replace “Israel” with “Jews” and that statement is all but identical to his earlier accusation that Jews had altered a holy text.
From theology, Khomeini turned to pathology. Eight years after the revolution, he spoke of Israel as a “prevalent, festering, and cancerous Zionist tumor.” Israel must be destroyed, he said, to keep Muslim countries “safe from the evil of this unclean enemy” and the “unclean presence of the Zionists” — taking issue not with Israeli political actions but with the cleanliness of its people, a classic antisemitic trope.
Khomeini referred to imperialism, too, as a cancer. In a 1972 letter to students in North America, he wrote that “Israel was born out of the collusion and agreement of the imperialist states.” Khomeini had previously referred to Jews as the “servants of imperialism,” and framed Islam as “the school of those who struggle against imperialism.”
Colonialism’s pernicious legacy and antisemitic tropes of Jewish domination made it easy for Khomeini to package opposition to colonial rule with opposition to Israel. Muslims, Khomeini said, needed to “stop colonialism and Zionism” on the basis of “human duty, brotherhood, and rational and Islamic standards.”
Khomeini’s vision was clear: resistance to imperialism, opposition to Israel and hatred of Jews were all the same cause.
Khamenei exports revolution
Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, who succeeded Khomeini as supreme leader in 1989, committed himself to spreading that vision. His English-language account on X amassed more than two million followers, and issued pronouncements such as “the long-lasting virus of Zionism will be uprooted thanks to the determination and faith of the youth.” In 2022, he spoke of “Zionist capitalists” as “a plague for the whole world.”
After the Oct. 7, 2023 Hamas attack on Israel , Khamenei addressed American campus protesters, telling them: “You have now formed a branch of the Resistance Front.” He invoked, in that address, “the global Zionist elite” that “owns most U.S. and European media corporations.” He repeatedly refused to call Israel by its name, referring to it instead as the “Zionist regime” or “Zionist entity.”
That wasn’t the first time he explicitly appealed to Western, left-leaning youth. A 2015 letter he issued after Islamist gunmen attacked the offices of the satirical magazine Charlie Hebdo in Paris explicitly addressed “the youth in Europe and North America.” The letter referenced slavery and colonialism, and encouraged young Westerners to study Islam for themselves rather than let it be defined by the West, who “hypocritically introduce their own recruited terrorists as representatives of Islam.” Khamenei notably did not condemn the act of terror itself.
The letter did not specifically engage with issues surrounding Israel, but it marked a notable moment in Khamenei’s efforts to establish connections with young Westerners. And, alarmingly, the considerable energy he and the Islamic Republic spent in translating their ideology to Western, English-speaking, progressive audiences worked.
The echo chamber
Calla Walsh’s pronouncements in Tehran were extreme. But they still pointed to an escalating tenor of activist discourse that is increasingly shaping the public’s attitudes toward Israel.
Democratic Socialists of America chapters across the country have passed resolutions defining Zionism as “a racist, imperialist, settler-colonial project,” with some insisting on the need to oppose it “by any means necessary.”
On TikTok, video after video uses Khamenei’s framing of Israel as a “Zionist entity,” from a clip saying that “the American public has woken up to the Zionist entity known as Israel” to another decrying “the cowardly Arabs who normalize relations with the Zionist entity.” A coordinator of the sham charity Samidoun, which conducted fundraising for the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine in North America and Europe, stated in October 2022 that “we all have a right and a duty to resist the murderous Zionist entity.”
Most of the echoes between activists and the ayatollahs represent rhetorical alignment, rather than literal coordination. But that alignment has had profound consequences for how the world thinks about Israel, and about Jews.
The road ahead
We do not know how this military campaign ends. But no matter what happens, the ideology of the ayatollahs has already outlasted Khamenei.
Even the reactions to his death prove it: Some leftist organizers have put together vigils for the slain dictator. One coalition of activist groups in New York wrote that “we stand with Ayatollah Khamenei because he stood for us” and lauded him for speaking “about the shared struggle of oppressed people.”
The confluence of anti-imperialism, anti-Zionism, and antisemitism didn’t originate solely with the ayatollahs. Many other forces, including some academic theorists at American institutions such as Edward Said and Judith Butler, played a role.
And many protesters opposing Israel, or the current war, may have no idea that some of the rhetoric they use has ties to the oppressive regime in Tehran. The genuine horror of the war in Gaza, ongoing crackdowns in the West Bank, the sense that the U.S. has enabled these abuses, and a wariness of American adventurism in the Middle East can do a lot to explain public opinion.
But the rhetorical ties are there all the same. And while this war may determine crucial aspects of the future of the Middle East, it will not undo the damage the ayatollahs’ ideas have already wrought.
Khomeini insisted he distinguished between Jews and Zionists, even as he cursed Jews in one breath and condemned Zionists in the next. When today’s activists make that same claim, we should ask whether the distinction they draw is any more meaningful than his was.
The post The one crucial domain in which Iran outwitted Israel appeared first on The Forward.
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‘This isn’t the Gov. Newsom that we know’: One week after apartheid remark, calls to reconsider remain unheeded
One week after California Gov. Gavin Newsom caused a stir by using the term “apartheid” to describe Israel, Jewish leaders in the state and beyond — have tried in vain to get him to walk back his statement.
Those seeking answers include allies of the term-limited governor, a likely presidential candidate, who have defended his record and even the comment itself.
Newsom said March 3 on a podcast that Israel had been talked about “appropriately as sort of an apartheid state,” and suggested that a time may come when the U.S. should reconsider its military aid to Israel.
Some Jewish leaders have said the apartheid comment had been taken out of context, and representatives of Jewish groups who met with the governor’s staff following Newsom’s remark called the conversation constructive. But Newsom has not backtracked in public appearances since then, leaving those leaders split on whether a serious contender for the 2028 Democratic nomination — long seen as a champion of Jewish causes — is plotting a new course on the national stage.
Newsom’s clarification two days later — noting that he was referencing a Thomas Friedman column in the New York Times about the direction Israel was headed — offered them little succor.
“It’s out of step,” said David Bocarsly, executive director of Jewish California, a group that represents more than 30 Jewish community organizations in the state. “This isn’t the Governor Newsom that we know.”
Newsom’s office did not respond to an inquiry.
‘Sort of an apartheid state’
Newsom made the remark in a live taping of Pod Save America, a podcast hosted by former Obama administration staffers Jon Favreau and Tommy Vietor. The duo, who are among the Democratic mainstream’s most vocal Israel critics, asked Newsom whether he thought the time had come to reevaluate American military support for the country.
In an extended response, Newsom brought up Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu.
“The issue of Bibi is interesting, because he’s got his own domestic issues,” Newsom said. “He’s trying to stay out of jail. He’s got an election coming up. He’s potentially on the ropes. He’s got folks, the hard line, that want to annex the West—the West Bank. I mean, Friedman and others are talking about it appropriately as a sort of an apartheid state.”
As to whether the United States should consider rethinking military support for Israel down the road, Newsom replied, “I don’t think you have a choice but that consideration.”
Newsom’s use of the term and apparent willingness to break from pro-Israel orthodoxy sent heads spinning. Jewish Insider described the interview as a “hard left” shift. A column in the Jewish Journal of Greater Los Angeles assailed Newsom for “finger in the wind politics.” And secular outlets like Politico and The Guardian reported that Newsom had likened Israel to an apartheid state.
Even organizations that have historically enjoyed a collaborative relationship with Newsom publicly condemned the remarks. Jewish California, whose member groups include the state’s local Jewish federations, took to Instagram to call them “inflammatory.”
Newsom said in a subsequent live appearance March 5 that he was referencing Friedman’s recent assertion that Israel annexing the West Bank without giving Palestinians equal rights would create an apartheid system.
“I was specifically referring to a Tom Friedman column last week, where Tom used that word, ‘apartheid,’ as it relates to the direction Bibi is going, particularly on the annexation of the West Bank,” he said. “I’m very angry with what he is doing.”
The clarification wasn’t strong enough for the Jewish California coalition. Bocarsly told The Jewish News of Northern California last week the groups hoped to see a definitive public statement from the governor that he continues to support funding for Israel’s defense and that he “doesn’t believe that a thriving, pluralistic and democratic society, as it is in its current state, is an apartheid state.”
Tye Gregory, chief executive of the JCRC Bay Area — a Jewish California member group — added to the outlet that “we need to hear directly from the governor.”
The coalition left its conversation with Newsom officials believing such a statement was forthcoming, but Bocarsly said his optimism was fading.
“It’s been several days, and we haven’t seen the clarification that we had hoped,” Bocarsly said. “And we’re still waiting.”
A loaded word
Some international and Israeli human rights organizations say Israel’s occupation of the West Bank and the treatment of Palestinians in the territory already constitutes apartheid.
The term was originally used to describe the system of institutionalized segregation in South Africa that granted the minority white population official higher status, denied nonwhites the right to vote and enforced a range of other forms of economic, political and social domination. Those applying the apartheid term to Israel point to the Israeli citizenship, voting rights, freedom of movement and legal protections granted in the West Bank to Israeli residents but not Palestinians in the territory.
But many Jews say that any charge of apartheid — whether referring to the present or a hypothetical future — oversimplifies the Israeli-Palestinian conflict and is used as a cudgel to delegitimize the Jewish state, where within its boundaries Israeli Arabs can vote and travel freely.
Israel annexing the West Bank — a stated goal of far-right ministers in the Netanyahu coalition like Itamar Ben Gvir and Bezalel Smotrich — would replace the premise of Palestinian sovereignty in the territory, which is officially governed by the Palestinian Authority, and enshrine the two-tier system. Such a step, Friedman wrote in a Feb. 17 column, would amount to apartheid.
“It’s been several days, and we haven’t seen the clarification that we had hoped. And we’re still waiting.”
David BocarslyExecutive Director, Jewish California
Bocarsly believed that Newsom’s reference to apartheid had been misinterpreted — even after the governor clarified his views — as describing Israel today, rather than a future scenario.
Nevertheless, he said, by invoking the term “apartheid” at all the governor had played into an effort among Israel’s detractors to make use of terms like “apartheid” and “genocide” to describe the Jewish state’s actions a litmus test for elected leaders.
Only a month earlier, Democratic State Senator Scott Wiener — then the co-chair of California Legislative Jewish Caucus — called Israel’s war in Gaza a genocide, after first declining to during a congressional candidate debate and getting jeers in response.
“For someone as close to our community as Gavin Newsom is, I think it was disappointing and painful for a lot of people to see that he was falling into this test,” Bocarsly said. “We want to know that when it comes down to it, that he is willing to avoid criticizing Israel in that way.”
Halie Soifer, chief executive of the Jewish Democratic Council of America, said Newsom’s initial comments had been taken out of context, and she was satisfied with his later clarification. Instead, she objected more to Newsom’s suggestion that the U.S. might eventually withhold military aid to Israel. The JDCA rejects withholding or conditioning such aid in its platform.
Still, while the “apartheid” phrase got the most attention, Soifer suggested it was just as revealing when — in the same podcast appearance — Newsom had described Israel’s rightward turn under Netanyahu as “heartbreaking.”
“It’s indicating his emotions are actually in this but also disagreement with the policies of the current Israeli government,” Soifer said. “And that is a view that polling has consistently shown is held by the vast majority of American Jewish voters.”
But she acknowledged that further backtracking would help, noting that she had listened to the section of the podcast multiple times to get a clear idea of his intent.
“I don’t think the average person is doing that,” Soifer said in an interview, “and he shouldn’t assume that either.”
The governor you know
The comments seemed to break with Newsom’s track record of verbal and legislative support for Jewish life both in the state and in Israel.
During his seven years in the governor’s office, he has funded the largest nonprofit security grant program in the nation, signed a landmark bill aimed at addressing antisemitism in public education and poured some $50 million into Holocaust survivor assistance programs. He also visited Israel to meet with Oct. 7 survivors less than two weeks after the attacks.
That made Newsom’s failure to hedge in a more fulsome way all the more confounding for his Jewish allies.
Gregg Solkovits, president of Democrats for Israel Los Angeles, a Democratic party club, thought the governor had been intentionally vague — and was intentionally waiting out the Jewish criticism — to “protect his left flank” as a future presidential candidate.
“He knows that in the upcoming election, there will be Bernie-supportive candidates who are going to be running for the nomination, and he will be attacked for being too pro-Israel, which he has been consistently,” Solkovits said. “Would I wish that he had not taken that approach entirely? Of course. I also understand he’s running for president.”
Soifer offered that Newsom might just be waiting for the right opportunity.
“He doesn’t actually legislate on this particular issue, so perhaps he feels he doesn’t need to clarify,” she said. “But I think it would be helpful for him to clarify that, especially if he’s seeking an opportunity at some point in the future to weigh in on such decisions.”
The post ‘This isn’t the Gov. Newsom that we know’: One week after apartheid remark, calls to reconsider remain unheeded appeared first on The Forward.
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Norway Police Apprehend 3 Suspects in US Embassy Bombing
Police vehicles outside the US embassy, after a loud bang was reported at the site, in Oslo, Norway, March 8, 2026. Photo: Javad Parsa/NTB/via REUTERS
Norwegian police said on Wednesday they had apprehended three brothers suspected of carrying out Sunday’s bombing at the US embassy in Oslo, in an attack investigators have branded an act of terrorism.
The powerful early-morning blast from an improvised explosive device (IED) damaged the entrance to the embassy‘s consular section but caused no injuries, Norwegian authorities have said.
The three suspects, all in their 20s, are Norwegian citizens with a family background from Iraq, police said.
“They are suspected of a terror bombing,” Police Attorney Christian Hatlo told reporters.
“We believe they detonated a powerful bomb at the U.S. embassy with the intention of taking lives or causing significant damage,” Hatlo said, adding that none of the suspects had so far been interrogated.
One of the men was believed to have planted the bomb while the two others were believed to have taken part in the plot, Hatlo said.
The brothers, who were not named, had not previously been subject to police investigations, he added.
A lawyer representing one of the three men said he had only briefly met with his client and that it was too early to say how the suspect would plead.
Lawyers representing the two others did not immediately respond to requests for comment when contacted by Reuters.
“Although it is early in the investigation, it is important that the police have achieved what they characterize as a breakthrough in the case,” Norway‘s Minister of Justice and Public Security Astri Aas-Hansen said in a statement.
Images of one of the suspects released by police on Monday showed a hooded person, whose face was not visible, wearing dark clothes and carrying a bag or rucksack.
Investigators on Monday said one hypothesis was that the incident was “an act of terrorism” linked to the war in the Middle East, but that other possible motives were also being explored.
Police are now investigating whether the bombing was done on behalf of a foreign state, Hatlo said, reiterating that they were also looking into other possible motives.
Europe has been on alert for possible attacks as the US and Israel conduct air strikes on Iran and Iran strikes Israel and US targets in the Middle East.
On Monday, a synagogue in the Belgian city of Liege was damaged by a blast that authorities called an antisemitic attack. It was not clear who was behind it.