Knut Rød

Knut Rød (30 June 1900 – 19 May 1986) was a Norwegian police officer responsible for the arrest, detention and transfer of Jewish men, women and children to SS troops at Oslo harbor. For these and other actions related to the Holocaust in Norway, Rød was acquitted in two highly publicized trials during the legal purge in Norway after World War II that remain controversial to this day. The trials and their outcome have since been dubbed the "strangest trial in post-war Norway."

Rød was born in Kristiania (today's Oslo) in 1900 and earned his law degree in 1927. He was immediately hired into the police department in Aker, serving under Jonas Søhr, who was noted in his time for opposing admission of Jewish refugees during World War I and for vilifying shechita, slaughter of animals in accordance with Jewish law. He was promoted to detective ("kriminalbetjent") in 1929 and to lieutenant ("førstebetjent") in 1937. When the police departments in Aker and Oslo were merged in 1940, he was transferred to the surveillance desk. He became a member of Nasjonal Samling on 4 January 1941, well after the German invasion of Norway.

Rød joined the newly established Statspolitiet ("state police") and became the administrative head of the Oslo section. For reasons and under circumstances that remain unclear, Rød resigned from the state police in September 1943 and his membership in NS on 30 September 1943.

In the fall of 1941, Jonas Lie, the commissioned police minister in the Terboven administration, established Statspolitiet, consisting of several merged surveillance sections throughout the country. The force was initially 150 men strong and was under the command of Karl Marthinsen. Marthinsen was under the direct command of German authorities independently of Lie. All but four of the police officers in this group were members of NS. For the purposes of the operations related to the Holocaust, Rød was Martinsen's executive officer who acted on his authority in crucial moments.

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