![\"\"](\"http:\/\/upload.wikimedia.org\/wikipedia\/commons\/thumb\/6\/69\/GunnarS%C3%B8nsteby2.jpg\/640px-GunnarS%C3%B8nsteby2.jpg\")
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Gunnar S\u00f8nsteby. Photo credit: Arnephoto.<\/i><\/p>\n
I was planning to post something about Occupied Norway<\/strong> today anyway (you’ll find it below), but it happens that one of Norway’s last living Resistance heroes died today. He was named Gunnar S\u00f8nsteby<\/a>, and he was the most decorated man in Norwegian history. If you followed my advice and watched the movie, “Max Manus,” S\u00f8nsteby was one of the characters portrayed in it. But he could have carried a movie all on his own.<\/p>\n OK, here’s a strange story.<\/strong><\/p>\n A while back, I posted a piece I called Survival Story<\/a>. It concerned a strange character I discovered in a Norwegian-language book I read about my ancestral community, Kvalav\u00e5g, in Norway. During World War II, one of the German occupation officers who served there was a Jew named Konrad Gr\u00fcnbaum, who ended up in the Wehrmacht due to a clerical error.<\/p>\n One of the commenters on that post was an actual descendent of Gr\u00fcnbaum’s. He contacted me through Facebook and asked if I had any further information. I didn’t, but promised to check with my relatives over there.<\/p>\n And they came through, past all hope. As it happened, an article on Gr\u00fcnbaum had been published in the Haugesunds Avis <\/i>newspaper back in 1986. The article was illustrated by a photo of part of Kvalav\u00e5g which Gr\u00fcnbaum took during the war. Because of that, my relatives kept a couple copies, and they were happy to send one to me. I have forwarded it to my correspondent, and it’s on its way to him by mail.<\/p>\n My translation of the article can be read below:<\/p>\n THE GERMAN IN KVALAV\u00c5G<\/strong><\/p>\n By Ida Nydstr\u00f8m (July 23, 1986)<\/p>\n Konrad Gr\u00fcnbaum, a Jew by birth, is now 70 years old and a retired city council member in F\u00fcrth. He lived in that city before the war as well. He was a metal worker in a factory, and an active member of the SAJ<\/i>: The Socialist Labor Youth.<\/p>\n * * *<\/p>\n Gr\u00fcnbaum came to Norway in 1941. The troop to which he belonged consisted of 14 men and they had four armored vehicles with 15 cm. cannons.<\/p>\n \u201cWe went first to \u00c5lborg in Denmark, where we boarded an 8,000 ton cargo ship (name unknown). The voyage proceeded in a five-ship convoy to Kristiansand. From there to Stavanger, Kopervik, and Haugesund.<\/p>\n \u201cBatteries were installed in Kristiansand and Stavanger. My troop came to Haugesund. After a long delay we were sent over to Karm\u00f8y just opposite Utsira. There we, along with some Norwegians, built a battery installation with side-installations in Vikene and \u00c5krehamn.\u201d<\/p>\n ***<\/p>\n Gr\u00fcnbaum remained in Kvalav\u00e5g until the fall of 1943, when the troop was ordered to Lyngen in Troms.<\/p>\n \u201cI had a good relationship with the people of Kvalav\u00e5g. They always called me \u2018Englishman,\u2019 because I spoke only English to them.<\/p>\n \u201cRussian prisoners of war had to build the positions for us. They came in every day from a camp in Haugesund, and were held under guard by infantrymen. When I observed one day that prisoners were being beaten up, I said to our captain that this was a violation of the Hague Convention, and what would we say if such things were done to our own men? Captain Dr. St\u00e4hler immediately called in the [feldwebelen<\/i>: corporal?] in charge of the punishment detail and forbade the mistreatment of prisoners in the area of his command.\u201d<\/p>\n ***<\/p>\n Gr\u00fcnbaum, a lover of nature and a mountaineer, is busier in his retirement than ever before. He is constantly hiking in Germany and Austria, giving lectures, and participating in seminars concerning the history of the Labor movement, the Weimar Republic, Socialism, etc.<\/p>\n He often visits German schools and reports that the students are attentive enough, but that they often know tragically little of the events of the Second World War. In his lectures Gr\u00fcnbaum tells only the things he himself experienced or saw with his own eyes in \u201cThe Third Reich.\u201d He is what is called in German a witness to the times (Zeitseuge<\/i>). And the ranks of those are beginning to thin out.<\/p>\n The purpose is to bring to youth the knowledge of that dark period in German history, so that what happened then should never happen again.<\/p>\n Gr\u00fcnbaum is one of the sources for a series of historical books published in Germany after the war. Together with his comrades from the Labor movement, who have kept in contact with one another since the war, he has gathered stories and anecdotes minted during Hitler\u2019s regime, which it would have been dangerous to write down at the time. They have recently been published in Germany under the title of Spare the Ones Who Laugh.<\/p>\n <\/i><\/p>\n ***<\/p>\n Gr\u00fcnbaum himself was imprisoned in Dachau concentration camp before the war, for \u201cactivities against the state.\u201d The prosecuter at the high court in Nuremberg charged that he had carried on illegal work as a courier for the KPD. When he was unable to prove otherwise, he was sentenced to three years.<\/p>\n \u201cOnce I was released from Dachau, people turned aside to avoid me when I met them; they were afraid of going to Dachau themselves. But when I went out and ate at cafes, the bill was always paid anonymously for me.\u201d<\/p>\n Through a clerical error, Gr\u00fcnbaum came to Norway in 1941. Political convicts were not supposed to go into the Wehrmacht, and his only hope to avoid a return to Dachau when the error was discovered was to be promoted. This occurred when his company commander refused to give orders to destroy navigational lights in a fjord in Troms, and was send to a concentration camp in Germany. Before he left he said to Gr\u00fcnbaum, \u201cSo we are in the same boat after all, both convicts.\u201d He knew Gr\u00fcnbaum\u2019s secret.<\/p>\n After the war he was accused of having boycotted his duties, but was let off by the military court in Narvik. The judges were Austrians, and apparently foresaw defeat, Gr\u00fcnbaum thinks.<\/p>\n ***<\/p>\n Gr\u00fcnbaum tells of various episodes from his time in Dachau. It passes comprehension that people can have done such things as he reports, and the impression is of course much greater when the listener knows that he is being told personal experiences.<\/p>\n Gr\u00fcnbaum and his friends have tried time and time again to get one of the SS officers from that time at Dachau brought to trial, but each time the man is [judged] \u201cunfit for trial.\u201d<\/p>\n Once this SS officer asked a newcomer if he had ever ridden a carousel. \u201cYes,\u201d said the prisoner, a little frightened. \u201cWhen I was three or four years old.\u201d<\/p>\n \u201cThen it\u2019s about time you rode a carousel again.\u201d<\/p>\n And in the sight of all the others he was pushed into a large cement mixer, and the SS man started it turning.<\/p>\n One of the others lifted a pocket handkerchief to his eyes, and was at once commanded to be \u201changed on the tree\u201d (a gruesome method of torture in which a man was hanged by his hands, bound behind him, from a tree trunk) for having broken camp discipline.<\/p>\n In the camp they were subject to completely arbitrary punishment. Any day a man might be shot or, like Dr. Riesenfeld-Breslau, placed in a cement mixer and ground to death. In the end there was danger in nearly everything.<\/p>\n \u201cOne of my friends came to me one day and asked for advice. He had gotten a letter from his wife in which she asked if it was true that the prisoners were treated badly by the SS.<\/p>\n \u201cI did not know what advice to give. But two days after he had sent an answer to his wife, he was given chocolate and cigarettes by an SS man.<\/p>\n \u201c\u2019What did you write?\u2019 I asked him.<\/p>\n \u201c’I wrote, \u201cDear wife, you wish to know how the SS treat us. To that it must be replied that among the SS there are to be found both one kind and the other (solche und solche<\/i>), but more one kind than the other!\u201d\u2019\u201d<\/p>\n ***<\/p>\n The visit with Gr\u00fcnbaum must close with his bringing out his guitar and singing the Dachau song, \u201cThe Day Will Come At Last,\u201d or a labor song.<\/p>\n Gr\u00fcnbaum has only visited Norway once since then. He would like to come back, but his school work takes up his time.<\/p>\n Would he consider coming as a \u201cwitness to the times\u201d and speak in Norwegian schools, I ask him.<\/p>\n \u201cMore than willingly, but with an interpreter,\u201d Gr\u00fcnbaum replies.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Gunnar S\u00f8nsteby. Photo credit: Arnephoto. I was planning to post something about Occupied Norway today anyway (you’ll find it below), but it happens that one of Norway’s last living Resistance heroes died today. He was named Gunnar S\u00f8nsteby, and he was the most decorated man in Norwegian history. If you followed my advice and watched … Continue reading Concerning Norway and World War II<\/span>