Helge Norseth
Helge Norseth (born December 6, 1923 in Lurøy , Norway , † November 22, 2008 ) was a Norwegian resistance activist and concentration camp survivor.
Norseth was born on December 6, 1923 as the son of pastor Thorleif Norseth in Lurøy and grew up in Kolbu . In 1935 the family moved to Oslo , where Norseth's father was head of the Norwegian Deacon House from 1936 to 1948 . Norseth has at least one brother and sister, Gurid.
In 1948 Norseth graduated from the Technical University of Stockholm and worked as an engineer in Molde , Hamar and Oslo. In 1982 he took early retirement. Since then he has been actively traveling and reported as a contemporary witness. He also visited various stations of his captivity several times.
Norseth married in 1948 and had at least one daughter, Kristin.
Resistance and Captivity
Norseth was a member of the Christian High School Students Association and in 1941, at the age of 17, joined a resistance group with several comrades. The aim of the group was to provide a courier network for the Allies in the event of an Allied invasion of Norway. When all radio receivers were confiscated by the German occupying forces in September 1941, the reception of Allied radio news was severely restricted. Part of the resistance group, including Norseth, then brought out an illegal newspaper between November 1941 and April 1942, which they called the BBC Norwegian Service. The newspaper appeared twice a week with a circulation of 1,500 copies. Some of the newspapers were printed in the basement of the parents' office in the deacon house.
On the evening of May 5, 1942, Norseth was arrested at his parents' home and interrogated all night long with abuse. The next day he was taken to the Bredveit prison, which had been in operation for political prisoners of National Socialism since 1941. Other prisons were Åkerbergweg (Oslo), Grini (Oslo), Sachsenhausen , Natzweiler , Dachau , Ottobrunn and Dautmergen . In Sachsenhausen it became unofficially known that Norseth was an NN prisoner . Supported by many friends and patrons, its removal was postponed for a long time, but could not be completely prevented. Norseth was one of 75 Norwegian NN prisoners in Natzweiler. When all Norwegians were called on March 7, 1945 in the Dautmergen camp near Balingen on the Swabian Alb , Norseth was one of the three survivors of the original 75.
Norseth was first transported to Dachau and later to Neuengamme near Hamburg on the white buses of the Swedish Red Cross . There, at the end of March 1945, Norseth contracted life-threatening typhus . The hospital staff had already given up on Norseth, but his friends continued to nurse him intensely. Despite the illness, he was transported from mid to late April 1945 via Padborg , Aabenraa , Kolding and Fredericia to Helsingborg in Sweden , where he visibly recovered. He experienced the end of the war in the Ramlösa Brunn sanatorium in Helsingborg.
On May 25, 1945 he reached Oslo again.
In 1978, Norseth bequeathed his notes on imprisonment in the various concentration camps to the Norwegian Resistance Museum in Oslo.
Web links
- Helge Norseth at www.hvitebusser.no (Norwegian)
- Helge Norseth on active fredsreiser (Norwegian)
literature
- Helge Norseth: Trapped and yet free. Hänssler-Verlag, ISBN 3-7751-2393-8 .
Individual evidence
| personal data | |
|---|---|
| SURNAME | Norseth, Helge |
| BRIEF DESCRIPTION | Norwegian resistance activist and concentration camp survivor |
| DATE OF BIRTH | December 6, 1923 |
| PLACE OF BIRTH | Lurøy , Norway |
| DATE OF DEATH | November 22, 2008 |