Resistance

The entire Norwegian resistance movement has been overshadowed by the success of the “heavy water” incident where Norwegians sank the boat that contained critical material the Nazi’s were going to use in an atomic bomb.  But many other small resistance movements also contributed to thwarting the efforts of the Nazis occupying Norway during World War II.

The stories still circulate at dinner parties about what life was like during the war.  The prejudice toward Germans still lingers for many, but many also feel triumphant for the things they were able to do to “get them back” in little ways.  Norwegians have a sly sense of humor.

Halvor, my father-in-law, was a carpenter by trade, but the Nazi’s forced all the tradespeople to work for them, building things they needed for their own infrastructure.  Halvor refused to do the work so he started painting pictures and called himself an artist, instead.  He took great delight in outsmarting their plans to recruit him.  Another friend of ours actually worked in an office for the Nazis handing out ration cards to the natives during the war.  He felt triumphant every time he made out a card.  If a person told him they had six children, he’d write down they had twelve, so they could get more food. Decades later he laughed about the fact he was never caught, even though he would have been imprisoned if he were.

Many Norwegians hid local Jews, just as the Dutch did.  Some men pretended to be fisherman, then left Norway in small fishing boats, heading to England to be trained as soldiers for the resistance movement, and no German was the wiser.

Nighttime provided the Norwegians with the opportunity to sneak around and pour sugar down the gas tanks of the Nazi’s vehicles to ruin their engines. 

One of our relatives owned a butcher shop and was ordered by the Germans to not sell his high quality meats to the locals, but to save it all for their consumption.  The butcher agreed and told them to come back in a few days when he would have the best meat he could find.

The butcher then told all the boys in his neighborhood to go hunting through the garbage dumpsters and kill as many rats and find as many pigeons as possible.  He skinned and butchered them and was happy to turn over that meat to the Germans when they came in with their machine guns demanding the “best.”  The funny part was, the Germans had no idea what it was and they thought it was so good, they kept coming back for more.