Torbjoern’s Story – Underground work, and Kiel Concentration Camp

This is Torbjoern as he is today – 90 years old and still going strong.In 1940 he was very young, but he wanted to do his bit and make Norway free again. Like many others he joined the Kristian Stein organisation. Torbjoern became one of the brave young men who transported people, by rowing boat from a hidden cove, to small vessels that were anchored ready to cross the North Sea to England and safety. These were men the Germans suspected of participating in sabotage against them, and they had to get away. He and a friend also hid in the undergrowth and photographed the German ships arriving. These pictures and necessary data were sent over to the UK. He was arrested the same night as the other Nesttun-Boys, October 23rd 1941. They all spent the next nine months at Ulven Leir (camp). Torbjoern was arrested because he was a member of the Kristian Stein organisation which was illegal, but did not carry a death sentence. They didn’t know about his other activities. If they had he would not be alive today.

I have already written about the journey to Oslo in ‘My Father’s Story’ so I will concentrate my writing to what was different for Torbjoern, and his memories.

He recalls that my father was taken ill with Typhoid fever while in Kiel and that he spent several weeks or months in a prison hospital. They were all placed in solitary confinement and this was a dreadful experience for everybody. The cells had to be scrubbed and polished every day, and some of the guards were particularly brutal and always found faults with the work they had done. Torbjoern never knew what he had done to upset one of these fanatical guards, but as punishment he was brought to the basement and thrown into a pitch-dark cell with no windows. Electric light was not permitted, and he had to strip naked every night, neatly fold his clothes and place them by the cell door. His bed was the bare floor – he was not even provided with a straw mattress or a blanket.  His days  and nights were spent daydreaming about home and family, fishing trips and the good times. He was beginning to lose touch with reality and had no idea how long he was there. One slice og mouldy bread and some bad tasting coffee was the day’s food ration. Suddenly one day the person in overall charge of the cells opened the door and asked: “Why are you here?”  Torbjoern didn’t know  and his answer was: “I have no idea”. He was  escorted back to his previous cell  and was given another job to do. He says this ‘rescuer’ is the only man he would have liked to shake hands with after the war ended.

A photo of Kiel jail in 1945, after it was destroyed by the Allies.