Escape from Norway: A WWII Story & A GIVEAWAY

by Cindy K. Stewart

Reine Fishing village in Lofoten, Norway - Credit Petr Šmerkl, Wikipedia

In a surprise attack, the Germans invaded Norway on April 9, 1940, and quickly secured the capital of Oslo as well as other major cities along the east and west coasts of the country. The underequipped and underprepared Norwegian military fought the Germans in the interior and in the far north but even with the assistance of British troops and ships was unable to withstand the German onslaught. After running from the enemy for two months, the Government, King and Crown Prince of Norway fled to Britain, and the Germans took complete control of the country.

Courtesy of the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum

The Nazis appointed Josef Terboven as the Reich Commissioner, and all of Norway came under his control. Approximately 1700 Jews lived in Norway at the time of the invasion, and about 200 of them had fled from the Nazis in Central Europe. Although Terboven placed restrictions on the Jews and their property, it wasn’t until one year later, in the spring of 1941, that arrests and imprisonment were stepped up, and most of these took place outside of Oslo where the Jews were small in number.

Vidkun Quisling & Josef Terboven
Courtesy of Flikr: The Commons via Wikimedia Commons

In early 1942, Terboven required all Jews to have a “J” stamped on their identity cards and the word “Jew” on their identity papers. Also in 1942, Vidkun Quisling, a Norwegian collaborator, was named prime minister, and he and Terboven executed the main persecution of the Jews. In the fall, the Norwegian police arrested the 763 Jews they could locate, including women and children, and transported them by ship to Germany. They were immediately sent to Auschwitz where most of them perished in the gas chambers. 

The Donau - one of the ships used to deport Jews from Norway to Germany
Courtesy of the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum

The Norwegian Resistance had facilitated the escape of about 900 Jews to Sweden where they survived the war as refugees. Hans Mamen was one of those resistance members. Hans grew up on a farm outside Oslo and was a student at the local Lutheran seminary. He learned of the persecution of Norway’s Jews and felt called as a Christian to help protect them. His mission began when a seminary professor asked him to help find a hiding place for a Jewish family who had requested the professor’s help.

Hans established a network of seminary students, other friends, and contacts to assist. Some hid Jews, some shared food and supplies, and a few of them led Jews safely across the border into Sweden. Hans led many rescue efforts, usually taking only three people at a time to reduce the risk of capture. He led his charges through areas of dense forests with few roads and a sparse population. They crossed these difficult areas on foot, often at night. Hans arranged for a Swedish lumberjack who lived just across the border to keep a lantern lit at night so they would know when they had arrived in Sweden.

Three Norwegian commandos at the Swedish border during World War II.
Hans Mamen on the left. Courtesy of Creative Commons via lokalhistoriewiki.no

On another journey, Hans accompanied a mother and her three-year-old son across the country, and then they hiked to the border. He carried the child on his shoulders into the dense forest, and the sudden, complete darkness frightened the child. His cries echoed through across the landscape, and nothing Hans or the child’s mother tried would calm him. With dawn approaching and the threat of their footprints in the snow leading a Nazi patrol to them, Hans feared capture. Finally he whispered to the boy not to wake up the birds, and the child immediately quieted. Once across the border, they enjoyed the sunrise and the opportunity to speak aloud again.

Celia Century, a Jewish refugee from Norway, sits on the deck of a summer
camp in Ronneby Sweden next to a non-Jewish friend.
Courtesy of the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum

In December of 1942, the Norwegian police, working for the Nazis, arrived at the Mamen’s farm and demanded to see Hans. His mother explained that he was at the seminary in Oslo. After the police left, she telephoned the seminary, and her coded message was passed to Hans during class—“‘Pack your suitcase’” (Gragg). Hans rushed to the home of a trusted friend and sent a message to his fiancée, Ruth. Although her parents were afraid and didn’t want her to leave, Ruth packed a small bag to escape with Hans.

Hans and Ruth traveled by train from Oslo but disembarked before reaching the border. Hans had arranged for one of his contacts to meet them, and they rode under a tarp in the back of an old truck. They stopped at a safe house; however, Nazi agents were searching the neighborhood. Hans and Ruth climbed back into the truck, and the licensed woodcutter drove them to a border checkpoint where he knew the lone Norwegian guard was loathe to leave his hut at night. Although the woodcutter turned resistance fighter was willing to use his gun if necessary, the truck rolled across the border without incident. Their benefactor didn’t stop until they were far from the border, but when he did, Hans and Ruth climbed out of the truck, fell on their knees, and thanked God for bringing them safely through.

Hans and Ruth married in Sweden and had the first of five children. Before the war ended, Hans finished his seminary studies and assisted the Norwegian resistance by helping Allied agents cross from Sweden into Norway to conduct operations. After Norway was liberated, Hans and Ruth returned home, and Hans served as a Lutheran pastor for many decades. More than sixty years later, he was asked to speak at the new Holocaust Center in Oslo. A tall, bearded Norwegian "greeted him with unusual affection for a stranger." The man identified himself as "the Jewish toddler who decades earlier had quieted down in the dark, snow-covered forest so he would not awaken the birds" (Gragg).  

Villa Grande in Oslo. Site of the Center for Studies of Holocaust and
Religious Minorities and former home of Vidkun Quisling.
Credit: Leifern, Wikimedia Commons

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Sources: 

Gragg, Rod. My Brother's Keeper. Center Street, 2016.

"Norway." Shoah Resource Center, www.yadvahem.org.

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Cindy Stewart, a high school social studies teacher, church pianist, and inspirational historical fiction author, semi-finaled in the American Christian Fiction Writer’s 2017 Genesis contest, and won ACFW’s 2014 First Impressions contest in the historical category. Cindy is passionate about revealing God’s handiwork in history. She resides in North Georgia with her college sweetheart and husband of thirty-seven years and near her married daughter, son-in-law, and four adorable grandchildren. She’s currently writing a fiction series set in WWII Europe.

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