Judas in Oslo

Boldness was indicated. The meeting was called for 3 o'clock in a conference room of Oslo's Deichman Library. Along the slush-filled Moellergaten, past the Swedish Church and the grim Gestapo prison at No. 19, crowds splashed all day. From all over the city, underground editors filtered quietly through the throng toward the library.

On the steps loitered an informer. He counted one, two, three--half a dozen prizes, waited to count no more. An hour later the Gestapo burst in, arrested 30 of Norway's fiercest patriots.

Gestapo Chief Wilhelm Rediess decided to change his tactics. He told his bullies to skip the traditional cooling off period, the hours when the weak collapse through fear, but the strong steel themselves for the coming ordeal. His Gestapomen went to work immediately with clubs, pipe-lengths, supple whips.

As the interrogation at No. 19 Moellergaten went on, the prosecutors tried a new persuasion: wide metal cuffs, slipped around wrist and knee, with a wing-nut attached, to press against an inner cuff like a brake band. When a pipe-length was applied to the wing nut for leverage, bones cracked like walnuts. With care, occasional recesses and dashes of cold water in the face, the pressure could be prolonged up to 48 hours. Gestapoman Rediess hoped his trick would serve to get the address of every illegal printing plant in Norway. Outside the muffling walls, the unwitting crowds continued to splash along the Moellergaten.

But the relentless prosecution failed to win its case. That week, the last in February, eight of Oslo's eleven underground papers failed to appear. Last week all eleven came out on schedule.

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