In Eiksmarka, outside Oslo, the German occupying forces set up a »police prisoner camp« in 1941 which they named after the town Grini, located further westwards. Political prisoners and resistance fighters were held captive there, but it also served as a transit camp for inmates who were to be deported to Germany.
Today, there is a small museum on the premises maintained by former inmates.
History
On June 14, 1941, the SS set up the Grini police prisoner camp in a building which had been originally constructed as a women's prison and used as a Wehrmacht prison for prisoners of war from April 1940 on. The camp served both as a prison for political opponents and as a transit camp for prisoners who were to be deported to concentration camps in Germany. Death sentences were also carried out at the Grini camp.
Between 1941 and 1945, a total of 19,788 prisoners were registered at Grini; of those, between 6,000 and 7,000 were women. The camp was in operation until Norway's liberation in May 1945. Among the prisoners were the later Norwegian prime ministers Einar Gerhardsen and Trygve Bratteli.
Victims
A total of 19,788 prisoners were registered in Grini between 1941 and 1945; these were mainly political prisoners, but also a small number of Jews. 8 prisoners who had been sentenced to death were executed at Grini. 786 prisoners did not survive captivity.
In April 1940 the German Wehrmacht occupied the Kingdom of Norway following weeks of fighting. At the time, over 1,300 Norwegian Jews and around 600 Jewish refugees were living in the country, mainly in Oslo and Trondheim. The majority of the Norwegians were opposed to the Germans. Prior to the German invasion public support was also lacking for the anti-Jewish stance of the Norwegian party »Nasjonal Samling« (National Unity), founded in 1933 and led by Vidkun Quisling (1887–1945). From June 1941, the German occupying forces and Quisling’s nationalists pursued an increasingly radical policy of excluding the Jews and persecuting opponents of the regime. In February 1942, a collaboration government was established with Quisling as Prime Minister. This government, which was under the control of the German Reich Commissar Josef Terboven (1898–1945), further stepped up the terror measures, especially against Jews. All of the Jews in Norway were arrested in October 1942. At the end of November 1942 and the end of February 1943 the SS deported 690 of these Jewish men, women and children by boat to Stettin in Pomerania (now Poland). From here they were deported to Auschwitz, either directly or via Berlin. At least 765 Jews from Norway became victims of the mass murder, over forty percent of the Jewish population of the country.
A number of resistance groups were formed in Norway, which practised civil disobedience and carried out acts of sabotage. Arrested members of the resistance were deported to the concentration camps at Natzweiler-Struthof, Neuengamme and Sachsenhausen. Many villages and industrial plants in the north of the country were razed to the ground during the Wehrmacht’s withdrawal from Norway in spring 1945. Quisling was arrested on 8 May 1945 and executed in the Akershus fortress in Oslo on 24 October 1945. In many languages the name Quisling stands for collaboration and treachery. Around 45,000 Norwegians had joined his party by 1945. Norway’s national Resistance Museum was opened in Akershus in 1970 along with a monument for the Norwegian patriots shot at the fortress during the Second World War. A number of Holocaust memorials have been established in Trondheim and Oslo since the 1990s. The Centre for Studies of Holocaust and Religious Minorities was founded in 2005 in Quisling’s former offices (»Villa Grande«) in Oslo. The Norwegian royal family headed by King Haakon VII (1872–1957) became a symbol of the Norwegian resistance and post-war democracy. The king and crown prince both refused to capitulate and went into exile in Britain. A »Peace Grove« was opened in 1997 near a birch tree where they had sought refuge in April 1940. The aim is to encourage people to engage in the »continuing struggle for freedom, peace and human dignity both today and in the future«. Many Norwegian sites of memory are oriented to the present and future and focus on education in peace and human rights. Since the 1980s, a critical confrontation with collaboration and everyday life under the German occupation has also been a feature of the Norwegian culture of memory.
Remembrance
After the end of the war, the former camp premises were used as a prison for Norwegian collaborators and National Socialists. Since 1951, there has been a prison on the premises. On September 27, 1990, a memorial on the site designed by Solveyg W. Schafferer was unveiled by crown prince Harald.
In 1997, the »Friends of the Grini Museum«, an association of camp survivors, opened a museum on the history of the Grini police prisoner camp. It is located on the former camp premises. Because of the prison there, there is only restricted access to the museum.
Open
During the summer daily from 11 a.m. to 2 p.m. and by appointment.
