Mother and Son

Taffy-haired, wide-eyed Gunnar Skog (a pseudonym) was a schoolboy of 16 when the Nazis overran Norway four years ago. Like thousands of others among his 2,900,000 countrymen, he went into the underground to fight the German-Quisling tyranny. Recently he escaped to Sweden, then to Britain. Last week, en route through New York to "Little Norway" in Canada, where he expects to become a Royal Air Force navigator, he told this story of life under the Germans:

Boy at Work. At home, our day began at 7 a.m. Before breakfast we had to fetch the milk for the small children. For breakfast we always had potatoes and bread. Butter was very scarce. Then the boys and girls went to school and the women had to go out and queue up for fish, if they could find some fish, and other foods. This took several hours, then they went home to make dinner, mostly potatoes. There are a hundred ways to fix potatoes. We had meat, usually half veal and half horse, once every four months.

I had a job in a workshop. When I got there I could get some soup every day and meat twice a month. After the soup I began working, not very hard because in one way or another our work helped the Germans. We worked slowly about half the time, and the rest we talked about the war, the Germans, Norwegians in concentration camps, other little items like that.

At the factory we got underground bulletins with the latest news from the BBC twice a day. The underground press works very hard and Norwegians are well informed about what is going on in the world. When the R.A.F. bombed Oslo they killed some civilians. The quislings made big headings in the paper to show us that Germans resist an awful people trying to bomb out civilians, but we knew the R.A.F. was trying to hit the Gestapo headquarters. It is bad, of course, that civilians have to be killed, but it was a good try and we didn't care.

Boy on a Bicycle. After I got through at the factory at 6 p.m., I went to get the underground papers I delivered. I had a bicycle and got around very easily. It usually took an hour and a half to deliver my papers. I delivered the papers to people in their houses or apartments. I always handed the paper over to the person who was to get it. If I had been caught, I probably would have been put in concentration camp. I probably would not have been killed, but I might have been tortured.

I usually had some friends at home in the evening. They would bring their own food with them, usually bread and potatoes. We couldn't go to any public place or restaurant to talk about the things we liked to talk about and we never went to any cinema or theater that was German. We had a radio at home but we never let our guests listen because we didn't like other people to know we had it. Penalty for having it was death.

On the streets you meet a German soldier about every other minute. Now they are all either old men, 40 to 50 years, or very young, under 20. The old ones leave you alone, but the young ones, especially those back from the Eastern front, are tough and rough. They are eager to strike you on the nose for anything, or have you say something they can put you in a concentration camp for.

Women at War. My mother was in the underground, as I was. She helped people to escape to Sweden by letting them use her house for an underground station and finding others who would do the same thing. She also collected money for distribution among the wives and children of men in concentration camps. She didn't keep any records of her collections, because they would be very dangerous if she was caught. Her underground work took about four hours every day.

My family is just one Norwegian family. There are thousands of others like us. We don't discuss politics. Practically the whole life of Norway is aimed at doing damage to the Germans. Everything that can be done to hurt them is done.

There are, I think, about 30,000 to 40,000 quislings including women and children. We think these quislings have to be killed. If our refugee Government in England returns to control very quickly, I think most of the quislings will be put to trial before they are killed. Otherwise, I'm afraid the people will kill them. There are some, probably not many, who only pretend to be quislings and are really patriots. I think they are likely to be executed, too, because many quislings will say they were really patriots and nobody will believe them.

Mother Said Go! When underground workers are caught the Germans often torture them to make them talk. If it is a strong man, they have to torture him nearly to the death to get anything. They take off the fingernails with tongs, knock the men down and jump on their chests, emasculate them. Last winter my superior was caught. Other people in the underground said perhaps he would be tortured and tell the Gestapo my name. They said: "You had better stop working for at least six months."

In the underground, when you have an order you carry it out, as in the army. My mother did not hesitate. She said there was no use my being in Norway when I couldn't do any work against the Germans. I felt the same way. So then I left Norway to go outside to find something to do against the Germans.

This file is automatically generated by a robot program, so reader's discretion is required.