In terms of overland transport, the Norway of 1940 was basically divided in two parts. Construction of the Nordland Line heading north from Stjørdal started in October of 1902, and had been ongoing since, on and off. Partly funded by emergency grants, and partly through the regular budget of the Norwegian State Railways (NSB). Transport by the Norwegian National Road 50 (R-50) depended on a small ferry connection from the small village of Elsfjord in what is now the municipality of Vefsn, and Hemnesberget in the municipality of Hemnes.
On 7. June 1940, the railroad finally reached Mosjøen. The new railway station in Mosjøen was opened in a ceremony presided over by Generaloberst Nikolaus von Falkenhorst, commander of the military forces of the occupying Nazi regime.
An updated R-50, with a crossing over the mountain of Korgfjellet, and no longer dependent on the ferry connection, had been included in the infrastructure plans of Nordland county for the period of 1939-1944, but as a low priority project.
After the occupation, the Nazi regime’s need for efficient transportation of supplies and personnel led to the Norwegian Public Roads Administration (Statens Vegvesen) receiving orders to immediately accelerate the planning for this new road connection. It was demanded that the mountain crossing be finished by the end of 1941. The Roads Administration started work in 1941, with a crew of regular Norwegian labourers. It soon became clear to the occupying regime that the progress made by this initial effort, was not enough to meet their goal.
Work on the railroad was accelerated as well, and from the spring of 1942, Soviet prisoners of war were forced to work on the rail construction north of Mo i Rana. The railway station in Mo i Rana – 87 kilometers north of Mosjøen – was opened 21. March 1942.
In the early winter of 1941, the Reichskommissariat (the Nazi civilian administration) and the Roads Administration were debating the use of POWs in the building of roads in Northern Norway. On 11. December 1941, the Roads Director sent a letter to the head engineer of the Roads Administration’s Nordland division. It said:
«The Roads Director has received instructions from the German authorities to make the necessary preparations to establish prison camps in several locations. In these locations, camps will need to be set up on short notice, to be established shortly after the New Year, as outlined in the attached assignments.
«Each camp is estimated to house 250 prisoners of war, as well as the necessary guard staff. »
The letter also contained detailed instructions for the organisation, as well as the construction and layout of the camps. The letter also poses that the camps are meant to house Soviet POWs. And in a memorandum from the Reichskommissariat to the head engineer of the Nordland division of the Roads Administration dated as late as 6. March, it’s still noted that Soviet prisoners are to be put to work building R-50 between Elsfjord and Korgen, and Rognan and Langslet. The same memo stipulates that the camps in Elsfjord and Korgen are to be built to house 500 prisoners. On 24. April 1942, the Roads Director states that each of the camps will be sent an additional barracks, meant to house 120 prisoners. The available blueprint indicate that barracks designed to house 20 people, are to be furnished to house 80 prisoners.
Early in the new year, preparations started for the establishing of prison camps in Korgen/Elsfjord, Narvik and the area surrounding the Salten fjord, as well as Karasjok. Around Elsfjord, it was assumed that the camp was planned to be ready by February 1942. The camps in Knutlia and in Korgen were planned to house 250 prisoners, but as mentioned, in April 1942, an additional barracks for 120 prisoners was raised in both camps.
The camps were built by the Roads Administration on the order of the SS Building Authority. In the early days of June 1942, construction was finished on both «Lager Korgen» at Fagerlimoen and «Lager Osen» in Knutlia.
«Lager Osen» was the main camp, with «Lager Korgen» as a subdivision. SS Sturmbannfûrer Hermann Dolp was in command of both camps, his quarters in the Osen camp. A veteran of the concentration camps in Dachau and Oranienburg, Dolp had also served in Sachsenhausen before coming to Norway. Including Dolp, the Leirkommandant, the command staff of the Osen camp numbered 12 SS officers, as well as four to five German guards from the Ordnungspolizei. Guarding the camp’s outer perimeter and the roadworks themselves were 55 local Norwegians. The Korgen camp had around the same number of Ordnungspolizei and Norwegian guards, but probably only around five SS officers, given that the main command was situated in the Osen camp. Commander of the Korgen camp was SS-Oberstormführer Karl Hesse.
On 21. June 1942, the second shipload of Yugoslavian prisoners arrived in Trondheim, 807 prisoners on board. Five prisoners were so ill and feeble on arrival that they were sent on to the Falstad camp. Four of them were executed, while the fifth, who avoided execution, were set to dig graves for his compatriots.
Thus, the number of prisoners sent north by freight train is assumed to be 802.
It’s also assumed that 402 of these prisoners were offloaded at Elsfjord Station, about 35 km north of Mosjøen, on 23. June. The remaining 400 were then sent on to Bjerka Station, about 10 km north of Korgen.
The prisoners were marched on foot to the newly established prison camps – the Osen camp, 10 km from Elsfjord, and the Korgen camp, 10 km from Bjerka.
Exhausted and starved, the prisoners arrived at the camps late in the evening on 23. June. 1942.
A week later, the prisoners were put to work on the road construction, on both sides of the mountain of Korgfjellet.
Engineers from Organisation Todt (OT) were responsible for the technical supervision of the roadworks, as well as supplying the camps with food. The National Road Administration was responsible for hiring additional engineers, work supervisors and foremen for the roadworks. As stated by the Roads Director in a memo dated 11. December 1941, the Roads Administration was to “supply a worker of normal experience level to serve as foreman to 20 prisoners”. As well as this foreman, two workers from the Roads Administration were also attached to each group of prisoners.
On 16. July 1942, two prisoners managed to escape from the Kvitbergpallan work site on the Korgen (north) side of the mountain. As they were escaping, they were forced to kill a German guard soldier from the Ordnungspolizei.
The following day, Leirkommandant Dolp put severe reprisals into effect. In the Korgen camp, from which the prisoners had escaped, every tenth prisoner was made to assemble, and then shot to death. One was executed within the camp, while 39 were marched outside the camp, to the place of execution. In the Osen camp, 20 prisoners were shot to death.
After this incident, the already ruthless treatment of the prisoners became even worse. Food rations were reduced, and mistreatment during work and in the camp escalated, with random shootings and torture becoming regular occurrences. Conditions were at their worst in the Osen camp – possibly due to this being where Leirkommandant Dolp was stationed. He is said to have had a special cane built, with a piece of metal at one end, shaped like a hammer. He would use this to torture prisoners – at the roadworks as well as in the camp.
The prisoners were not awarded the official status of prisoners of war, but were defined as “unlawful combatants”, not afforded the rights dictated by the Geneva Conventions.
The local Norwegian workers tried smuggling food to the prisoners, as did the populations of the small local villages neighbouring the camps. The Osen camp was situated in a remote location, and only a small number of locals were close enough to be able to help the prisoners. The Korgen camp was in the centre of the village, and more were able to lend a helping hand to fellow men in need.
As previously mentioned, the first prisoners arrived at the two camps on 23. June 2942. 402 at the Osen camp, and 400 at the Korgen camp.
When the camps in Beisfjord and Karasjok were closed – 24. October and 15. December 1942, respectively – prisoners from those camps were transported to join the Korgfjellet roadworks.
On 28. October 1942, 82 prisoners from Beisfjord arrived at Osen, and 70 at Korgen. On 31. December, Osen then received 109 prisoners from Karasjok.
The Osen camp had – and we’ll get back to this later – had an extreme mortality rate early on, which led to 149 prisoners being transferred to Osen from Korgen on 2. January 1942.
This should theoretically add up to a total number of 742 prisoners in «Lager Osen» at this point, though some of the numbers have not been confirmed completely.
From the fourth seaborne prisoner transport, arriving in Trondheim 1. October 1942, 70 prisoners were sent to the Korgen camp, where they arrived 4. October. Likewise, 85 prisoners arriving by the fifth seaborne transport in Oslo on 15. March 1943, were sent on to the Korgen camp. They are believed to have arrived around mid-April.
Including those 149 prisoners transferred to the Osen camp from Korgen on 2. January 1943, the total (theoretical) number of prisoners in «Lager Korgen» would then be 620.
In total, these figures add up to 1362 Yugoslavian prisoners being involved in the building of «The Blood Road» over Korgfjellet, from 23. June 1942, to 6. May 1944.
From their initial construction to 6. March 1943, the two camps were under the leadership of the SS. The most extreme death rates stem from this period alone.
It’s believed that around 420 prisoners died in the Osen camp in the period spanning from 23. June 1942 to 6. March 1943, and that around 180 prisoners died in the Korgen camp during the same period. Of the initial 402 prisoners who arrived in the Osen camp on 23. June 1942, only 40 were still alive in March of 1943. This period’s death rate of 90% is among the most dramatic in the entire history of concentration camps in the second World War.
Mid-April 1943, 166 infirm prisoners were transported from the Osen camp to the infirmary camp at Øysand outside of Trondheim. It’s believed that six prisoners too ill to bear the longer journey may have been brough to the Drevjamoen prison camp about a mile away from Osen. This camp was mainly for Soviet and Polish prisoners, but also served as an infirmary camp for prisoners from other camps. The theory that these five were sent from the Osen camp is bolstered by the fact that one of their names – Ostoja Malbassa – can also be found on a manifest of prisoners sent from the Jasenovac concentration camp in Croatia to «Lager Osen».
The Osen camp was closed on 19. June 1943, the remaining 144 survivors transferred to the camp in Korgen.
The Korgen camp was shut down on 6. May 1944. The surviving 309 prisoners were first sent to Pothus in Saltdal, and after that camp was also closed – on 20. August 1944 – they were sent to the assembly camp by the Arctic Circle. Both the prisoners at Pothus and the Arctic Circle were put to work on the construction of the Nordland Line railway.
The work on the road over Korgfjellet was finished by conscripted Norwegian work crews organised by the NS, the Norwegian fascist party. The first car drove over the Korgfjellet mountain crossing on 14. September 1944, and the road was considered to be complete in November of the same year.
After the war, 435 dead prisoners from the Osen camp were exhumed – mainly from mass graves near the camp, but also from the ditches alongside the road. If you include the six dead prisoners from the Drevjamoen camp, 441 of the 742 prisoners of the Osen camp were killed. A mortality rate of 59,5%.
In the Korgen camp, 205 deceased prisoners were exhumed. Also here, they were mainly found in mass graves, as well as roadside graves. 33% of the Korgen camp’s 620 prisoners had died.
The shared death rate of the two camps – 646 of 1362 prisoners killed – was 47,5%.