Resistance, Imprisonment and Freedom
Ottosen, Kristian: Motstand, fangenskap og frihet. Erindringer1940-45Full title: Resistance, Imprisonment and Freedom. Memories 1940-45
Already in 1940, shortly after the Nazi occupation of Norway, Kristian Ottosen took part in Theta, a resistance group in the city of Bergen. By radio they furnished British intelligence with information on German movements and activities in Norway until the group was split by Gestapo in 1942.
Ottosen was arrested and tortured, facing a death sentence from which he narrowly escaped by feigning insanity. He was brought to Grini, a concentration camp outside Oslo, and later to Germany. After Sachsenhausen he was imprisoned as an NN prisoner (Nacht und Nebel) in the Natzweiler camp. Mortality rates were extremely high in that camp, but Ottosen miraculously managed to survive, not only here but also in all the other camps to which he was sent. Having been saved by the White Buses in which the Swedish Red Cross saved Scandinavian prisoners from German camps in the last months of World War 2, Ottosen was repatriated to Norway in 1945.
Nobody has done more to tell the history of Norwegians imprisoned by the Germans and the Japanese. Accurately and in precise details Ottosen has documented what happened to 44,000 Norwegian individuals, always keeping his own story to himself. Now for the first time we are able to read about his own experiences, in a factual and deeply moving story of courage, sufferings and survival.
”Disturbing but funny…exciting to read, versatile and interesting” (VG)
First published: 2005, Aschehoug Non-Fiction
Kristian Ottosen: Biography and bibliography
