Asbjørn Svarstad, Prisoner of War | Officers in Forgotten Captivity
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The retired NRK veteran Rønning Tollefsen (80) stumbled upon a piece of almost forgotten war history when he got hold of his uncle’s diaries from the war.
Asbjørn Tollefsen (1900–1953) was a farmer in Målselv, but also a trained officer and lieutenant in the Norwegian armed forces. When the Germans attacked in 1940, he served – during the two months of war in Narvik – among other things as second in command in a machine gun company.
Asbjørn Svarstad
Asbjørn Svarstad started writing in the local newspaper Dagningen, for some years was linked to VG. From 1987 Dagbladet’s stringer in Copenhagen. Since 1996 lived permanently in Berlin where he has worked for various Scandinavian media. Works mostly with historical feature articles, political commentary and is an authorized guide in Sachsenhausen.
The signature
Tollefsen was one of the many officers in Northern Norway who escaped German captivity – despite the fact that they never signed that they would not raise arms against the Germans as long as the war continued. In southern Norway, many had chosen to make the promise – also on the advice of their predecessors.
In 1943, the German occupiers determined that quite a few officers – despite having given their oath of honor – appeared to be engaged in active resistance work. Many had even fled to Sweden or England.
During the summer, almost everyone was summoned to sign again. But the great majority – those who were not active NS people or who had taken a job in the Nazi Labor Service – refused. They were therefore arrested and sent south.
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After a month’s waiting in Oslo, the trip went to a small town in western Poland, where the 1,150 Norwegians were accommodated at the school and in a few other buildings. This apartment in Ostrzeszow/Schildberg for officers was primarily characterized by boredom and poor food preparation. But eventually the arrival of food parcels from the Red Cross in Denmark, Sweden and Switzerland came into order.
Rønning Tollefsen tells in the book “Officers behind barbed wire” about how he and the others had to activate themselves and each other – to avoid just hanging around and sinking into boredom. Some were involved in the cultivation of vegetables, while others were engaged in the production of home-brew.
The letters from the wife
Almost all prisoners suffered from homesickness and everyone looked forward to the letter with news from home coming soon.
In the case of Asbjørn Tollefsen, the letters from his wife were often about the cattle that had to be placed on a neighboring farm – and the father’s farm that had been seized by the Germans. She told about the children who grew up and about practical problems in everyday life.
By January 1945 it was clear that the Red Army would soon reach Schildberg. So the Norwegians were told that they had to be evacuated westwards. They could take with them what they could bear to carry. The first – long – distance had to be covered on foot in minus 20 degrees and on bad roads.
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Quite quickly, the officers threw away suitcases and other belongings that simply became too heavy to lug around. After a dramatic week, they reached the huge POW camp in Luckenwalde, just south of Berlin.
The “white buses”
Conditions in Luckenwalde were difficult, with little space and a cold house. When it rarely came through aid packages from the Red Cross, the Norwegians used to share them with far worse prisoners from the Soviet Union. Eventually the camp was liberated by the Soviets.
But then a long period of uncertainty began. There were rumors that they were to be put on cow wagons and sent on a three-month journey by train to Murmansk, where they could be sent across the Norwegian border.
Many ante owls in the bog, and the opposition to the planned journey was great. General Otto Ruge himself believed that it was he who, during a stay in Moscow, managed to prevent the plan from being carried out.
240 elderly and sick officers were picked up by the “white buses” and reached home in Oslo on 27 May, while the others came to Norway via Denmark a week later.
Rønning Tollefsen took his uncle’s diaries with him last year and traveled to both Schildberg/Ostrzeszow and Luckenwalde, where he talked to people and looked for remnants of the “Norwegian” camps. In Schildberg there is a small museum with objects from the time of the Norwegians there.
Abandoned era
I was there in 2007, when Thorvald Stoltenberg (1931–2018) was a tour guide for sons and grandson who would become known with the story of Emil Stoltenberg’s (1900–1998) time as a prisoner. Thorvalds himself hadn’t told much about this period, and at the museum they didn’t know more about lieutenant colonel Emil Stoltenberg’s time in Schildberg yet that he was obviously head of the home distillery.
Thorvald often used to show off his old bell, which he got as a gift from his father the day Emil Stoltenberg came home from captivity.
The other day I was asked to guide Jens Stoltenberg and his sister Camilla, as well as Anniken Huitfeldt and ambassador Hilde Haraldstad – who is also the granddaughter of officers who spent the war’s three months in Luckenwalde. We had a pleasant trip of an hour and a half in the bus south from Berlin.
Despite the fact that from the very start of the war in 1939, thousands and thousands of prisoners of war were put there, this era is wasted with a small and bland room at the local museum. (So we dropped that.)
The grave site
The manager himself is largely gone, apart from a few barracks which nowadays are in the middle of an industrial area.
In return, there are four huge memorials on the spot in the forest where the Germans buried those who perished. Special Soviet prisoners – who were not protected by the international laws of war – died in large numbers and were thrown into mass graves. They have their own area, while there are separate supports for the French, Italians and Yugoslavs – as well as a central monument for all those who lost their lives there.
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(Camilla and Jens Stoltenberg had actually visited Luckenwalde on a summer holiday trip in 1973 with Thorvald at the helm. He put in all his charm, but the Soviet guards refused them entry to the camp.)
Learned Russian
The Minister of Foreign Affairs told about his grandfather Otte Huitfeldt (1908-1996), who had used the time in Schildberg to learn Russian. This was knowledge that now came in handy when the Norwegian officers needed a man with good language skills to negotiate with Soviet officers.
The three grandchildren took the opportunity to lay a proper wreath on the memorial.
And their guide sent more than a friendly thought along the way to Rønning Tollefsen in Målselv, who had provided me in advance with the up-to-date book about his uncle Asbjørn’s experiences as a prisoner of war.
PS: It triggered a slightly embarrassing situation when Anniken Huitfeldt received her Russian colleague – Sergej Lavrov – in Tromsø last autumn. During the dinner, the Norwegian foreign minister showed off what she called “a dear family memory”. Lavrov believed that the casket – which Otte Huitfeldt had received from fellow Soviet prisoners in Luckenwalde – was a gift and promised on the spot that it should be given pride of place in the Russian Foreign Ministry’s museum in Moscow.
It required a bit of clarifying work before the misunderstanding was cleared up. Huitfeldt said that towards the end of his life the grandfather, who for many years was head of the assessment in Sarpsborg, liked to recite poems in Russian to his grandchildren.