UNDERGROUND IN NORWAY

Timaru Herald, Volume CLVII, Issue 23205, 19 May 1945, Page 3

UNDERGROUND IN NORWAY

Secret Activities LONDON. May 15. It is estimated that 2000 members of the Norwegian underground movement lost their lives during the German occupation. Between 300 and 400 are known to have suffered the death penalty at the hands of the Germans and at least another 1000 died in German camps, says the British United Press correspondent at Oslo. Several hundred others were wounded, but this count is still incomplete because underground agent number 420 never knew what agent number 421 was doing. A prominent member of the underground, a newspaper editor, estimated that it would take more than a year for most of the members of the underground to discover the true identity of those with whom they worked.

The editor said: ‘‘We worked on small links of about five men and women. Only one person from each link was permitted to make contact with one person of another link. Each underground worker in that way knew at the most only five or six other workers, all under assumed names. We often met in garrets and cellars and those who contacted other links would wear masks.”

The correspondent continues: Germans in the basement of the Gestapo headquarters at Oslo tortured both men and women. One of the most frequent tortures was to strip a woman naked in front of several officers end give her “water treatment,” consisting of dlpher in and out of freezing water to to make her talk.

Forty thousand armed underground workers on the morning of May 7 after word of the German surrender was received controlled every important bridge, railway station and cross road. Then there were some amazing revelations. Close friends who never in private life spoke of underground activities suddenly found themselves holding rifles at the same crossroads. The leader of a vast underground organisation of 300,000 was a lawyer, of Oslo, 30 years old. Hundreds knew him personally but few ever knew he headed the underground movement. His name is not yet revealed.