Liberation Day from Fascism
Description:
The Second World War, which broke out in Europe on September 1, 1939, first spared Norway, which declared its neutrality. On April 9, 1940, Nazi Germany invaded Norway and occupied it after a long struggle. The government led by the king managed to evacuate to Britain. The Nazis, having established a strict occupation regime, actively used the industrial potential of the country for their military purposes. In particular, it was here that they began work to build their atomic bomb. During the war against the USSR, the Germans also actively used the territory of Norway as a base against northern Allied convoys and direct operations of their troops in the Soviet Arctic. Quite a large number of Soviet prisoners of war were in Norway for hard labor.
Information that the Germans had set up a large camp for Soviet prisoners of war near the Norwegian city of Tromso appeared at the headquarters of the Northern Fleet at the very beginning of the war. It was aerial reconnaissance. Soon this information received more substantial confirmation. In the middle of 1943, the commander of the TKA-239 torpedo boat V.D. Yurchenko returned to the Northern Fleet, who had long been considered dead. His boat was sunk in battle with a German convoy. According to Yurchenko, the Germans picked him up in the water and sent him to the camp near Tromsø, from where he fled a few months later with the help of Norwegian patriots. Despite the fact that the Navy was already well aware of the atrocities our prisoners of war are subjected to in German camps, the story of the commander of the boat was literally shocking.
As such, there was no camp. It was a double barbed-wire fenced area of bare terrain. The only buildings on its territory were barracks for security and machine gun towers. The prisoners were kept under the open sky. Frost in these places reaches 45 degrees Celsius. Fleeing from the wild cold and hurricane-forced Arctic winds, people tried to build shelters for themselves. They were mostly burrows. They were literally gnawed in frozen rocky soil. Digging what you have - sharp stones and even bowls. The entrance to the burrows was filled with branches or simply hung with rags. Those who did not have the strength to dig, built themselves a kind of hut. Frames were built from branches and thin trunks of dwarf birches. Then all this fragile structure was covered with turf and moss. The bed was just a bunch of branches.
Nobody even thought about heating. There were no stoves or firewood, so it was necessary to warm up against each other, but with such frost it could not save. Every day from the cold shelters were taken out several icy corpses of our soldiers. Their places were immediately occupied by new prisoners of war arriving in the camp.
The conditions in the camp were truly sadistic. For the slightest fault, the Germans took captives' outerwear and shoes. In such circumstances, the punishment meant only one thing: death. Although clothes and shoes these rags could be called with a great stretch.
Water problems started in the summer. There was only one well in the multi-thousand camp. Feed every 2-3 days. Usually it was a soup of potato peels and crackers. Medical care was not a dream. Soviet intelligence reports only confirmed the horrors of the camp near Tromsø. According to the latest data, by the spring of 1945 there were about 2 thousand Soviet prisoners of war, for whom this spring was the last. But Soviet troops could not reach this part of Norway until the end of the war.
Despite the fact that politicians still try not to remember about this camp and the terrible fate of its prisoners, this place remained in the memory of ordinary Norwegians. A month after Norway was liberated, someone placed a plaque near the camp that read: “200 meters to the Russian camp.” You’ll see things there that you’ll never forget – how difficult it was for Norway in 1940-1945, when the German barbaric system prevailed.
Only in connection with the defeat of Finland in the war against the USSR did it become possible to expel the Nazis from the Soviet Arctic and then liberate part of northern Norway, which was done during the Petsamo-Kirkens operation in October-December 1944. The German occupation corps capitulated in Norway on May 8, 1945.