In a surprise attack, the Germans invaded Norway on April 9, 1940, and quickly secured the capital of Oslo as well as other major cities along the east and west coasts of the country. The underequipped and unprepared Norwegian military fought the Germans in the interior and in the far north but even with the assistance of British troops and ships was unable to withstand the German onslaught.

 

After running from the enemy for two months, the Government, King and Crown Prince of Norway fled to Britain, and the Germans took complete control of the country.

 

The Nazis appointed Josef Terboven as the Reich Commissioner, and all of Norway came under his control. Approximately 1700 Jews lived in Norway at the time of the invasion, and about 200 of them had fled from the Nazis in Central Europe. Although Terboven placed restrictions on the Jews and their property, it wasn’t until one year later, in the spring of 1941, that arrests and imprisonments were stepped up. Most of these arrests took place outside Oslo, in locations where Jews were small in number.

In early 1942, Terboven required all Jews to have a “J” stamped on their identity cards and the word “Jew” stamped on their identity papers. Also in 1942, Vidkun Quisling, a Norwegian collaborator, was named prime minister. He and Terboven executed the main persecution of the Jews.

 

In the fall, the Norwegian police arrested the seven hundred and sixty-three Jews they could locate, including women and children, and transported them by ship to Germany. They were immediately sent to Auschwitz where most of them perished in the gas chambers. 

 

The Norwegian Resistance had facilitated the escape of about nine hundred Jews to Sweden, where they survived the war as refugees. Hans Mamen was one of those resistance members. Hans grew up on a farm outside Oslo and was a student at the local Lutheran seminary. He learned of the persecution of Norway’s Jews and felt called as a Christian to help protect them. Hans’s mission began when a seminary professor asked him to help find a hiding place for a Jewish family who had requested the professor’s help.

 

Hans established a network of seminary students and other friends and contacts to assist. Some hid Jews, some shared food and supplies, and a few of them led Jews safely across the border into Sweden. Hans led many rescue efforts, usually taking only three people at a time to reduce the risk of capture. He led his charges through sparsely-populated areas of dense forests. They crossed these difficult areas on foot, often at night. Hans arranged for a Swedish lumberjack who lived just across the border to keep a lantern lit at night so they would know when they had arrived in Sweden.

On one journey, Hans accompanied a mother and her three-year-old son across the country, and then they hiked to the border. He carried the child on his shoulders into the dense forest, and the sudden, complete darkness frightened the young boy. His cries echoed across the landscape, and nothing Hans or the child’s mother tried would calm him.

With dawn approaching and the threat of their footprints in the snow leading a Nazi patrol to them, Hans feared capture. Finally, he whispered to the boy that he shouldn’t wake up the birds, and the child immediately quieted. Once across the border, they enjoyed the sunrise and the opportunity to speak aloud again.

 

In December 1942, the Norwegian police, working for the Nazis, arrived at the Mamen’s farm and demanded to see Hans. His mother explained that he was at the seminary in Oslo. After the police left, she telephoned the seminary, and her coded message was passed to Hans during class—“‘Pack your suitcase.’”

Hans rushed to the home of a trusted friend and sent a message to his fiancée, Ruth. Although her parents were afraid and didn’t want her to leave, Ruth packed a small bag to escape with Hans.

Hans and Ruth traveled by train from Oslo but disembarked before reaching the border. He had called ahead and arranged for one of his contacts, a licensed woodcutter, to meet them. The couple rode under a tarp in the back of the man’s old truck. They stopped at a safe house; however, Nazi agents were searching the neighborhood. Hans and Ruth climbed back into the truck, and the woodcutter drove them to a border checkpoint, where he knew the lone Norwegian guard was loathe to leave his hut at night.

Although the woodcutter turned resistance fighter was willing to use his gun if necessary, the truck rolled across the border without incident. The couple’s benefactor didn’t stop until they were far from the border. After he did, Hans and Ruth climbed out of the truck, fell on their knees, and thanked God for bringing them safely through.

Hans and Ruth married in Sweden and had the first of five children. Before the war ended, Hans finished his seminary studies and assisted the Norwegian resistance by helping Allied agents cross from Sweden into Norway to conduct operations. After Norway was liberated, Hans and Ruth returned home, and he served as a Lutheran pastor for many decades.

 

More than sixty years later, Hans was asked to speak at the new Holocaust Center in Oslo. A tall, bearded Norwegian “greeted him with unusual affection for a stranger.” The man identified himself as “the Jewish toddler who decades earlier had quieted down in the dark, snow-covered forest so he would not awaken the birds.”

 

Sources: 

Gragg, Rod. My Brother’s Keeper. Center Street, 2016.

“Norway.” Shoah Resource Center.