OSLO'S FAREWELL

Auckland Star, Volume LXXV, Issue 62, 14 March 1944, Page 3

OSLO'S FAREWELL

EXILED STUDENTS

HUSTLED AWAY AT MIDNIGHT STOCKHOLM. Hundreds of the 1500 Oslo University students who were arrested in the big Gestapo round-up were shipped in the middle of the night, during a snowstorm, from Larvik on the usual ferry route to Jutland.

They had all been carefully "sifted" individually by the Gestapo to discover those most "dangerous" to the occupation authorities.

The students were allowed to take only the clothes they were wearing, a pair of slippers, and a change of shirt, socks and underwear.

No trunks were permitted, nor books.

Thus the Germans broke their promise that the students would not be subjected to concentration camp conditions, but would be accommodated in luxury camps where they would carry on their studies.

None of the arrested professors was sent off with the students.

Quay Crowded Despite Gestapo efforts to get the students away quietly in the middle of the night, crowds of patriots gathered at the quayside beside the slave-ship and gave a stirring farewell cheer.

Norway, like Sweden, believes that few, if any, of the students will be seen in their homeland again.

The quayside demonstration brought savage reprisals from the Gestapo and Quisling police, who made many arrests.

One student who managed to escape from the Germans said that 60 students were surprised by the Germans while they were reading in the university library.

The students sought sanctuary in the Swedish Church across the road. They barricaded themselves in and the Swedish pastor refused the Germans access, but eventually he was defied and the students seized.

After their arrest the students were compelled to sign forms saying, "I am arrested," and to send them home asking their parents to forward clothes for the journey to Germany. More Shootings When the student who escaped refused to sign and argued that he was merely a schoolboy, and, in any case, had not the specified clothes, he was told, "Just sign. We don't mind." Ten girl students were arrested by the Germans, but they were separated from the others, and it is not known what happened to them. Meanwhile terror is sweeping Norway from end to end.

The semi-officiai Swedish News Agency announced that three more Norwegians had been shot in the Arctic province, Finnmark, bringing the total of known executions in Norway to over 150 since April 9—a terrible price for a small nation of 3,500,000. Six other Norwegians, including two women, were sentenced to five to 15 years' hard labour for alleged complicity.