Every other day I walk around the streets of Kristiansand hoping to get a nice picture and story from people and today I met a man with a very interesting story from World War 2.
"My goal in
life is to make a movie about my grandparents. We have war history here in
Norway from World War 2 when we were occupied by the German forces from 1940 to
1945.
My
grandmother (father's mother) wanted to be a doctor but she could not do it because
of a high school teacher that did not like her. Apparently she really hated
her. This teacher gave her bad grades in one subject which prevented my
grandmother from going to medical school, so she decided to become a nurse
instead.
That made
her angry because she was always the best at everything including various types
of sports: skating, kayaking etc. Eventually she became content with being a
nurse and then the war came.
I am not
too sure about the details, but she met my grandfather during the start of the
war who was in the German SS Panzer division called 'Totenkopf'. They fell in
love and got married and Himmler went to their wedding to bless it. This was
common practice in the early stages of the war with SS officers but it was
known as the perfect wedding because a blonde haired, blue eyed pretty
Norwegian girl was marrying a German. An Anglo Saxon wedding.
She then joined
the Red Cross and went to Germany where she worked in the countryside of Germany
from 1942 to 1943 and later she worked in Berlin. During this time he was away
fighting in different parts of Europe and Russia, so they would meet up when
they could. The last battle he fought was against the Americans when they
entered Germany.
There is a ten
page letter she wrote on the 27th of March 1945 to her family here in Norway.
She wrote about courage because at that time the war was coming to an end and
the Russians were almost at her door step at the hospital where she worked.
She wrote
about being a nurse at the hospital with a lot of responsibility being in
charge of her ward and transport of wounded soldiers. She also carried a
leather bag full of syringes that contained poison. She was instructed to kill
all of the wounded soldiers that could not walk if the Russians were to come.
This also included officers that had could be tortured and release important
information to the Russians.
She wrote
that she has accepted that she may die and she is not afraid anymore.
She
survived the war and I am not sure if she had to inject any of the soldiers.
What I do know is that she managed to escape from Berlin with my grandfather
who was injured and deserted his post. He paid some SS guards with gold and
diamonds that my grandmother had from her family, so they let them through the
road blocks in an ambulance.
They hid in
the western part of Germany where the Americans were and lived there for a
little while after the war. There, he was imprisoned for 3 months by the
Americans because he was a German soldier.
They stayed
together and lived amongst the rubble and what was left over of the buildings
there until they moved to Norway in 1946. My grandmother was considered German
by the Norwegian authorities because she was then a German citizen and married
to a German.
They had a
hard time back in Norway from the local people but they lived in Drammen where
many citizens had helped the Germans during the occupation, so they simply did
not talk about it. A lot of people had something to hide at that time.
My father
did get a hard time at school and got into many fights. In the end he carried a
knife around to defend himself.
The other
side of my family is my mother's mother. She fell in love with a Norwegian
doctor and she had been raised in both Italy and in Wales and because she had
British contacts, british intelligence contacted her to work for them within
the Norwegian resistance.
She was to
deliver a note to a bookshop in Oslo. The note contained the name of a doctor who
was responsible for delivering the names of over 200 Norwegian jews that were
transported out of Norway to a concentration camp.
He was to
be killed.
The Gestapo
was after my grandmother and grandfather, so they fled the country and ended up
in Sweden. He ended up working as a doctor there and was the first doctor to
meet with the survivors from the Bergen-belsen concentration camp.
So that is
a different story from the same family. Two different women struggling with
love and life during the Second World War.
She died in
Norway in 1953 of cancer leaving behind 3 small children. My grandfather moved
back to Germany after that with the smallest child and left the others with my
grandmother's family.
It shows me
that love conquers all. That was the most intense period of time in European
history and through that war and misery, they found each other and found love even though they were representing common enemies at the time.
So to me it is a love story."
This blog is further than my expectations. Nice work guys!!!
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