YUGOSLAVIAN PRISONERS

IN

NORWAY

The large infrastructure challenges facing the occupying Nazi regime in Norway – industrial expansion, as well as the building of roads, railways and military facilities – proved insurmountable if using the regular Norwegian work force. Large numbers of enemy soldiers and civilians were captured during the invasion of the Soviet Union on 22. June, 1941. The captives were then utilised as forced labour all over Nazi-occupied Europe. A total of 102.000 Soviet prisoners were sent to Norway, a significant number of which were forced to work on building the Nordland Line railway north of Mo i Rana. Around 13.500 of these Soviet prisoners were killed while imprisoned in Norway.

The prioritised placement of the Soviet prisoners on the Nordland Line construction, among other projects fueled the rivalry between Terboven and von Falkenhorst, his counterpart in the Wehrmacht. This led to Terboven authorising – with the help of his old friend August Edler von Meyszner – the transfer of Yugoslavian prisoners to perform forced labour in Norway. The majority of these prisoners were sent to work on building National Road 50 (R-50), in the counties of Nordland and Finnmark.

The prisoners were sent from the Balkan POW camps of the SS, and from the camps of the Independent State of Croatia (Nezavisna Drzava Hrvatska, or the NDH).The prisoners were transported overland (mainly by train) to Stettin, and from there by boat. The first Yugoslavian prisoners arrived Norway in Bergen on 14. June 1942, on the cargo ship «Gotha».

A summary of the prisoner transport can be found in the transport manifests:

297 so-called «free labourers» («Kroaten») also arrived in Norway from the NDH. Records show only one of these dying – from natural causes – in Norway.

Prisoners were allocated between 28 prison camps. These were known in the local population as “Serbian camps”, due to over 90% of the transported prisoners being Serbian. The majority of the prisoners were sent to the 14 camps in Northern Norway, and were mainly put to work building R-50 in the regions of Helgeland, Salten, Ofoten and Karasjok. A smaller number participated in the building of the Nordland Line, and various projects building military facilities.
A separate chapter of this story are the extermination camps in Beisfjord and Øvre Jernvatn outside the city of Narvik. 900 prisoners arrived here on 24. June 1942. The camps were decommissioned on 24. October that same year, the 152 remaining survivors sent on to the Osen and Korgen prison camps in the municipalities of Vefsn and Hemnes. 748 prisoners had been murdered in the span of four months. 288 of them were executed on the horrible night of 18. July 1942 (see the “Beisfjord Tragedy” section). A grim parallel can be drawn back to the SS leadership’s directive of putting the Yugoslavian prisoners “to work under the strictest conditions possible”.

The first camps founded – Bergen (June-July 1948), Falstad, Osen, Korgen, Botn, Beisfjord, Øvre Jernvatn and Karasjok – were placed under the jurisdiction of the SS.

Falstad remained under SS jurisdiction for the duration of the war. The Karasjok camp was operational from 22. July to 15. December 1942. When it closed, 261 of the 374 prisoners remanded there were alive, and of these 113 (109) were sent to Osen. Øvre Jernvatn was a temporary camp were surviving prisoners from Beisfjord were held from 20. July to 25. August 1942. The Beisfjord camp was operational from 24. June to 15. December 1942. Its survivors (152 of a total 900 prisoners) were sent to Korgen and Osen.

In April of 1943, Wehrmacht assumed responsibility for the Osen, Korgen and Botn camps from the SS.

Of the 2364 (2388) prisoners murdered during the war, 2135 of them died in the SS camps mentioned above. Of these, 2029 died in the aforementioned 6 camps in Northern Norway. The vast majority of these prisoners were killed in the period stretching from June 1942 to March 1943. During this time, these prisoners were classified as “unlawful combatants”, and as such, were not seen by the Nazis as being subject to the Geneva Conventions. On 6. March 1943, the Wehrmacht were given control of these camps, and started treating the prisoners as official prisoners of war. This meant they were given access to support from the Red Cross, and better treatment in general.

As mentioned, the prisoners were divided between 28 camps, 14 of these in Northern Norway. In total, 3521 prisoners were sent to Helgeland, Salten, Ofoten and Karasjok. 2099 of them were killed. A mortality rate of 64,5%.
The camps located in the southern half of Norway were mainly in the region of Trøndelag, with the exception of a transitory arrival site in Bergen in June/July of 1942, and an infirmary camp at Jørstadmoen, near Lillehammer. A large group of the so-called «free labourers» worked at Rjukan.

During 1944, the camps in Northern Norway were all closed, the prisoners gathered first in the village of Pothus in Salten, and from August 1944 in the assembly camp by the Arctic Circle. After peace was declared, all of the Yugoslavian prisoners from Northern Norway and Trøndelag were then gathered in a camp at Melhus outside Trondheim. During this time, the former prisoners became a familiar sight the streets of Trondheim. Some of the connections that made back then were later to be formalised in the organisation of the Norwegian-Yugoslavian Friendship Association (later the Norway-Western Balkan Friendship Association).