The sound in the headphones speaks of a find.

Øystein Moe leans over, puts the metal detector aside and grabs the shovel. With an experienced hand, he drives a shovel a couple of times into a shallow layer of soil on a country road.

Archaeologist Cathrine Stangebye Engebretsen perks up noticeably when she sees what he was able to dig up. A small flat metal object with the letters STAL and the first two digits of the prisoner's number.

That's enough for her to know. This is half of the tag that belonged to a Russian prisoner of war, where STAL is half of the word STALAG (Stammlager), which means a prisoner of war camp.

We know little about the fate of the prisoner of war himself - only that he was brought here to die.

We are located at Mellom Buleren, near the island of Noetterei in the Oslofjord. From the post-war years until the closure in the late 1990s, the soldiers of Fort Boularne had their own training ground here.

Before that, the island had a very dark past. As a rule, Nazi crimes are associated with extermination camps in Germany and Poland. It is less known that in the idyllic skerries of Tønsberg, the Nazis also set up a POW camp, which gradually became an extermination camp.

Since the fall of 1941, more than 100,000 Soviet prisoners of war have been sent to forced labor in occupied Norway. Almost 14 thousand of them died. The overwhelming majority - in Northern Norway where they died from disease and exhaustion.

Those who were lucky were housed in the barracks. Others had to be content with pigsties, or, in the worst case, dig their own hole in the ground. The death toll exceeds the total losses Norwegians, both civilian and military, have suffered throughout the war.

They were buried by the sea

Boulairne was a camp division of the main camp Stalag 303 at Jørstadmoen near Lillehamer. The camp was created in 1943 for 290 prisoners who were sent to physically demanding work related to the construction of defensive structures. Most of the prisoners were Soviet.

In December 1944, almost all the prisoners were sent from here to another place, they were replaced by prisoners who were too sick to work. Most suffered from tuberculosis, they were simply locked up in a camp and, one might say, left to themselves: to die.

The German soldiers were afraid of getting infected, so they preferred not to carry the guard from the inside of the double barbed wire.

About 20 healthy prisoners remained in the camp to carry out the current work on the fortifications. It is difficult to imagine what the conditions in the camp were like during the last winter of the war. Behind the double barbed wire was a muddy field with an area of ​​125 × 70 meters, on which there were ten simple plywood barracks, a dead man's room, a latrine and a guardhouse.

After the war, it was said that here the sick died themselves: from disease, cold and exhaustion.

They lay in torn clothes, in cramped quarters, on narrow beds, breathing in the stench from feces and putrid wounds, while tuberculosis slowly devoured them from the inside. Only in the spring of 1945, when the earth warmed up, did they have the opportunity to bury their dead.

Before that, prisoners were usually ordered to put the corpses in paper bags, and then they were dragged to the edge of the shore. There they were put into holes, which were filled with water at high tide, and then the sea completed everything.

“Even in death, they were deprived of human dignity. It was the racial ideology of the Eastern Front at its worst, when here, in Norway, Soviet prisoners of war were considered second-class people, ”says Engebretsen.

As an archaeologist and advisor to the Vestfold County government, she is leading a project to find and preserve what is left of the old camp. Only in recent years has attention been drawn to the historical value of this little-known "clean" death camp in Norway.

In recent years, a group of volunteers, Friends of Mellom Boulairne, have removed all vegetation from the camp and rebuilt the guardhouse and gateway to the camp. They also suggested rebuilding the tower.

Operation "Asphalt"

For fear of infection, the barracks were burned down in the fall of 1945. But the remains of the foundations of the barracks and two towers are still preserved.

Iron rods with sharp teeth at the top protrude from the rocks smoothed by the sea, this is the top of a barbed wire fence. You have to be careful - otherwise you can get hurt to the blood.

This is in stark contrast to the idyllic surroundings, where the wind and the sun's rays play with the treetops. Surely the tourists arriving here on boats sunbathed on the shore, not knowing that this was the last refuge of 28 prisoners of war.

The cemetery is located half a kilometer from the camp itself, on south side islands. It was set up here at the very end of the war, but it filled up very quickly. The remains of the deceased were dug up and transported to the Vestre gravlund cemetery in Oslo in 1953, according to the War Burial Service.

The relocation of the remains was part of Operation Asphalt, carried out by the government, of which former Resistance member Jens Kr was the Minister of Defense. Hauge (Jens Chr. Hauge).

Many of the war graves were located in the vicinity of military installations. During the Cold War, the authorities did not want the Russians to be able to travel everywhere under the pretext of visiting graves and sniffing out everything about Norwegian military installations. Most of the remains were transported to the "Russian cemetery" in Tjøtta, today 7,551 prisoners of war are buried there.

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Norwegian grave of Ivan

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NRK 05/09/2017 In 2012, the location of the overgrown burial in Boulairn was localized and cleared of plants. Using GPR and a metal detector, an aluminum tag was found that was worn by all the prisoners. Fragments of wooden crosses, which originally marked the graves, were also found in the ground.

Although the remains were transported, Engebretsen points out that there is evidence that the site may still have burial status. She is still looking for personal tokens that may contain important information for the relatives and grandchildren of the victims. Many of them do not even know that their grandfather, for example, died in Norway.

War criminal

Russian archives should contain documents from court cases conducted by the British War Crimes Commission. She, in particular, denounced the SS camp commandant, Walter Lindtner. However, it is impossible to accurately calculate the death toll in the Boulairn camp.

But there are many eyewitness accounts from May 1945, when the camp, which was plagued by disease, was opened and the prisoners were transported to the provincial hospital in Vestfold.

In the information of the committee for the investigation of German war crimes in Norway, it is written: “The prisoners of war suffering from tuberculosis were housed in small plywood huts, the conditions in which were terrible for the dying. There was a doctor among the prisoners, but he did not have any medicine. The SS doctor usually visited the camp once a week. It seems that the purpose of the visit was to observe how the prisoners die, and not to provide them with medical assistance.

According to the lists of the Østlandet Coastal Artillery Brigade, the first prisoners died in March. Then the number of deaths began to grow. In April, prisoners died every other day; in May, up to three prisoners of war died every day.

The 28 prisoners buried in the local cemetery are those who died in the last two months of the war. On May 9, 1945, the Germans transferred 120 prisoners of war to Boulairn. The next day, representatives of the Red Cross and Milorga entered the camp (organization of the military Resistance in Norway during the Second World War - ed.)... 45 of the most seriously ill prisoners were transferred to the infectious diseases hospital on the same day, but half of them died of tuberculosis after being hospitalized.

Findings

In the ruins, into which one of the barracks where the prisoners lived after the fire turned into, something shiny in the remains of bricks attracts attention.

Katrine Engebretsen carefully scrapes the dirt off a piece of tin that may have once been the lid of a box. If the light hits it from the side, you can see the image of a woman carved into the metal.

It seems that the prisoner who, out of homesickness, scratched out this picture almost 70 years ago, is trying to talk to us.

“It's terribly interesting to work with objects that are so close to us in time,” the archaeologist enthusiastically admits.

The death camp still presents surprises.

Russian prisoners of war

Almost 102 thousand Soviet citizens, herded into forced labor, and prisoners of war were sent to Norway during the Second World War. Of these, about 13 thousand 700 died from hunger, disease or exhaustion. Many were executed for attempting to flee or for some minor misconduct. Many Serbs and Poles were also sent to forced labor in Norway.

Prisoners of war from the USSR and Yugoslavia built not only fortifications and airfields, but also parts of the E6 highway and railroad through the county of Nordland. When the camps opened after the end of the war, they were an eerie sight. The most dire conditions were in the Nordland camps.

In the summer of 1945, the prisoners were repatriated, but most of them were coldly greeted by their homeland, many were again sent to forced labor. The order of the High Command of the Red Army was that it was necessary to either fight or die. There was no other alternative. Therefore, all who surrendered were branded as traitors to their homeland.

InoSMI materials contain assessments exclusively of foreign mass media and do not reflect the position of the InoSMI editorial board.

In 1942, the Nazis sent about 4,500 Yugoslav prisoners to concentration camps in Northern Norway. When the war ended, only one third were still alive. Some of the horrors of the concentration camps have become common knowledge. Incomprehensible things came to light. Genocide. Mass destruction of people. Nazi monsters. And not only Nazi ones. Norwegians also served as guards in these camps. Many of them were convicted of cruel treatment and murder of prisoners after the war. How was this possible? Maybe these people were mentally abnormal, monsters? Or is it the result of abnormal social systems and relationships? Niels Christie discusses this in detail in his master's thesis, published in book form in 1952. Today, more than half a century later, the answer to these questions appears in even darker tones. Phenomena in the spirit of the Holocaust are considered by many to be natural results of the development of our civilization.

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company liters.

II. Serbian camps

In this chapter, we will outline the history of the emergence of the so-called "Serbian camps" in Northern Norway. We will try to find out who the Yugoslavs were who ended up in these camps, where they came from and how many there were. We will trace their path from Yugoslavia to the concentration camps in Norway and then try to give as much Full description these camps. Then we will compare the living conditions in the Serbian camps with the conditions in the concentration camps in general, which we wrote about earlier. Our work covers mainly the time period from the summer of 1942 - when the Serbs entered our country - until April 1943, when the Norwegian guards were recalled from the camps.

Sources of

In giving a general description of the concentration camps, we use either the reports of neutral observers or the memories of former prisoners and do not concern the opinion of the guards. When describing the Serbian camps, we will follow the same principle and will use the materials provided by the civilian population, as well as the memories of Yugoslav prisoners, and will not affect the positions of the Norwegian guards. Thus, the principle of the same approach to the use of sources will be respected.

We found most of the material for this chapter in the Norwegian guards' court records. We have studied many sentences that detailed the conditions of life in the camp. In addition, we have studied the testimony of the Norwegian civilian population and the Yugoslavs. To this end, we examined a total of 30 or 40 court cases. (Later, we needed to study a lot more cases).

Nevertheless, on many points there is directly contradictory information about the conditions of existence in the Serbian camps. Most of the Yugoslavs died, and those who survived are in Yugoslavia, and during the trials only a few were interviewed. Language differences only complicate the picture. As for the testimonies of the Norwegian residents, they can hardly be relied on, since the camps were usually located far from the villages, and people knew little about what was happening there, and the Germans diligently hid it all.

As a result, many ambiguities remained, and it is the task of historians to find out over time. We will not touch on these ambiguities or controversial places, unless a similar need arises for our analysis. We will dwell here only on those facts that we will need in the future.

In the summer of 1942, the Germans began sending Yugoslav prisoners to Norway to be accommodated in camps. Most of the Yugoslavs were initially collected in German concentration camps and then transported by sea to Bergen or Trondheim. Those who arrived in Bergen remained there for several weeks, while those who arrived in Trondheim immediately set off onward, to their destination - to the camps built by the Germans in Northern Norway.

Why did they become prisoners?

On this score, there are conflicting opinions, as well as about what kind of people they were. We will touch upon the various opinions on this in more detail later. All indications, however, are that most of the Yugoslavs were political prisoners, just like the Norwegians who ended up in German concentration camps. This is evidenced by three circumstances. First, it is very unlikely that the Germans would carry ordinary prisoners that far. Secondly, there are a number of Yugoslav testimonies given during the trials against the Norwegian guards, in which they explain why and how they ended up in Norway. Thirdly, after the war, almost all the surviving Yugoslavs wanted to return to their homeland. It is unlikely that they would have expressed such a desire if they were not political prisoners, but, for example, criminals.

Selected cases

A.A., who was born in A. in Yugoslavia, gave the following testimony in 1947, which was read to him and approved by him:

“The Germans took me on February 16, 1942 - I was a partisan and was captured after a fight with the Germans. I spent seven days under arrest in the town of Obrenovac, then I was sent to Sabac. I sat there until April 26, when I was sent to Austria. I spent 12 days in the Ademarhoff camp, after which I was sent to Meling in Germany. I stayed in this camp for a month, and then I was sent to Norway. We arrived in Trondheim, from there we were taken by train to Korgen, where we arrived on June 23, 1942. At that moment there were no Norwegian guards, only Germans. Norwegian guards appeared on June 27 or 28 ... "

V.V., 30 years old, gave the following testimony during interrogation in March 1947:

“On February 16, 1942, the Germans arrested me at my house in Vysoké. From there I was sent to a camp in Jasenovac, and then to the German camp Zamli near Belgrade. From there they were sent to Stettin, and from Stettin by steamer to Trondheim ... "

This is how almost all the testimony that we managed to read begins. They are very similar to the stories of many Norwegian prisoners - with the difference that the Norwegians were traveling in the opposite direction.

Number of prisoners

It is very difficult to find out how many Yugoslavs were in our country in the period of interest to us or before it - that is, when there were Norwegian guards in the camps. The Yugoslavs arrived in separate groups on steamers to various ports, and in addition, they were constantly, right up to their liberation, transferred from camp to camp. Most of the trials against the Norwegian guards involve quantitative data, but they are extremely controversial. Most agree that the total Yugoslav prisoners in Norway during the war ranged from three to five thousand people. According to our own calculations, made on the basis of documents and court cases, it turns out that Norwegian guards supervised at least 2,717 Yugoslavs. This is an absolute minimum, and we do not take into account here those groups of Yugoslavs who arrived in Norway after the Norwegian guards were removed from the camps.

For our purpose, it is not so important that we cannot calculate with a high degree of accuracy the total number of Yugoslavs with whom the Norwegians dealt. Nor does it matter that we later ran into even greater difficulty when we tried to calculate the total number of Yugoslavs killed during the period when there were Norwegian guards in the camps. Of course, it would be interesting to know how many Yugoslavs got here and how many died while there were Norwegian guards in the camps, however, without knowing this, we can still make general idea about most of the Serbian camps.

Five different camps in Northern Norway were the first destination for Yugoslav prisoners. The camp in the city of Karashok was the northernmost, then - Basefjord near Narvik and the Bjørnefjell camp, where the entire Basefjord camp was transferred later. Further south, in the Saltdal commune, was the Rognan camp, and even further south - the Korgen and Usen camps in the village of Elsfjord. Later, the Yugoslavs were transferred to other camps. However, by this time, the Norwegian guards had already been removed, and therefore we did not study these new camps.

Overall, it appears that the five camps were very similar to each other in terms of the living conditions and behavior of the guards. Several of them were subordinate to the same commandant. We were unable to find out if all the camps obeyed him. As for the German officers, they moved from one camp to another. The same thing happened with the Norwegian guards. Camp descriptions produce the same general impression... Therefore, we will thoroughly study several camps, and then give a number of examples from others.

Let's start with the northernmost camp - in the city of Karashok. It is particularly well suited as a starting point, since this camp was located near the church, and therefore there is a number of testimonies about the conditions of the prisoners there. In contrast to many other camps, here we know quite accurately how many Yugoslavs arrived to the camp, and how many of them remained alive when the camp was closed after a while.

At the end of July, 374 or 375 Yugoslavs entered Karashok. Initially, 400 prisoners were sent from Bergen, says former secretary of the Yugoslav mission in Oslo, Memeil Yesitz, who himself was among the prisoners. When the prisoners arrived from Bergen to Tromsø, they were asked if there were any sick among them. 26 people said they were sick, and the Germans immediately shot them.

During the first month, and maybe a little longer, only German guards were on duty. Later, apparently in mid-August, 20 Norwegians appeared, who had previously served in Basefjord and Bjørnefjell. The camp was closed in the second half of December of the same 1942, and the survivors were transferred to the Usen camp in the village of Elsfjord. The Holugalann District Court's verdict no. 31 to Norwegian guard said that at the camp's closure, only 104 or 105 of the 375 people who arrived in Karashok in the summer of that year were still alive. “The rest died of disease, died of hunger or mistreatment, and some were shot,” the verdict reads. These data coincide with what the Yugoslavs showed. The aforementioned secretary of the mission reports that during the transportation to the south there were 100 people left. On the other hand, in the verdicts to the Norwegian guards from the Usen camp in the village of Elsfjord, it is reported that 150 Yugoslavs arrived there from the Karashok camp. The reliability of this figure is questionable. However, whichever figure is true, one thing is clear - almost two-thirds of the Yugoslavs died during their several months in the Karashok camp. It is likely that there were more deaths.

Let's try to describe the impression that the Yugoslav prisoners themselves made on the civilian population, and what happened in the "Serbian camps." We will basically follow a copy of the report containing the testimony of thirty-three different civilian witnesses that these witnesses gave to various investigators. These readings create an almost uniform picture of the impression that the camps made on the population. As for the points of interest to us, there are no significant discrepancies in the testimony of witnesses.

S.S., age 30, living in the town of Karashok, was questioned at the Lensman's office on May 2, 1946, familiarized himself with the case materials, realized his responsibility as a witness and voluntarily gave the following testimony:

“In the fall of 1942, I worked on the road between the city of Karashok and the Finnish border. Several groups of Serbs were working on the same road. Each group consisted of 15–20 people with guards. The guards were armed, and in addition they had sticks with which they beat and stabbed the prisoners. The guards were mostly Wehrmacht and OT soldiers, but there were also Norwegians among them. The guards treated the Serbs cruelly - they beat and stabbed these unfortunates with a stick, so that in the end they did not even react to the blows. The indifference of the prisoners was explained by the torture they were subjected to, and not least by the lack of food.

Serbs were doing normal road work and felling wood. The guards made sure that they did not rest and carried the logs to the work site. The logs were very large, and, as a rule, one log, with superhuman efforts, was carried by only three or four people.

Serbs came to work every morning at seven o'clock. To be in time by seven, they left the camp at about six. They worked without interruption for up to 12 hours. There was a break from 12.00 to 13.00, but the Serbs were not given food. The German guards brought food with them from the camp, or they were brought food by car. Then the Serbs worked from 13.00 to 18.00. At six in the evening a car came from Karashok and picked them up. In the evening it was painful to look at these people. They supported each other, and those who could not walk were literally dragged along by the rest. "

D. D., age 50, living in Karashok, was questioned at the Lensman's office on May 14, 1946, got acquainted with the case materials, realized his responsibility as a witness and voluntarily gave the following testimony:

“I have worked on road construction in various locations around Karashok. In 1942, when the Serbs were in the camp, I worked in a quarry near Ridenearga. Serbs also worked here, guarded by German and Norwegian guards. I was the foreman of a group of Norwegian workers, and we went about our business, while the Germans forced the Serbs to work for themselves ...

Work at the quarry began at seven in the morning and continued until 12 without interruption. From 12.00 to 13.00 there was an hour break. Serbs were given only a piece of dry bread each. Before getting this piece, they had to lie on their stomach and do up to ten push-ups. It was a pity to look at them.

After an hour's break "for lunch and rest," they worked until 17.00. The prisoners walked back to the camp, which was at a distance of two kilometers. These columns to the camp were a deplorable sight. The guards raged like wild beasts, and those who could not walk from exhaustion were lashed with whips. Those who were still on their feet helped the others. "

We see that between these testimonies there are minor discrepancies in the indication of the length of the working day. Perhaps there was such a difference between road work and quarry work. It is also known from other sources that the Germans gave small indulgences - for example, a piece of bread - to those who were engaged in especially hard work.

FOOD AND CLOTHING:

As we saw above, the inmates spent the whole day without food or received one piece of bread. A number of other testimonies also indicate that the Yugoslavs received very little food:

E.E., age 16, living in Karashok, was questioned at the Lensman's office on May 7, 1946, got acquainted with the case materials, realized his responsibility as a witness and voluntarily gave the following testimony:

“I can name another episode when the guards were having fun, forcing the Serbs to fight over a piece of bread. In front of the Isaksen bakery, Serbs were constantly working, and old bread was thrown out to them. They fought each other for this piece of bread. A whole bunch of prisoners could throw themselves on one piece of bread. When someone still managed to get this piece, and he tried to eat it, the rest rushed at him and tried to take it away. Food was thrown not to feed the unfortunate, but to have fun in this way. "

Or another example: F. F., age 48, living in Karashok, was questioned at the Lensman's office on April 26, 1946, familiarized himself with the case file, realized his responsibility as a witness, and voluntarily gave the following testimony:

“The Serbs I saw were skinny and pathetic. They had almost no clothes, very few people had hats, and if they did, they did not correspond to the climate. It would not be an exaggeration to say that they were all in rags, and that a bare arm or a leg was seen all the time.

They had no shoes. In severe frost, they walked barefoot, wrapping their legs in pieces of burlap. There was nothing on his hands either. I believe that they did not have the opportunity to properly wash and tidy themselves up. Everyone I saw was unshaven and dirty. But I do not think that the reason for this was their untidiness, because there was a doctor among them, as far as I heard.

The entire Serbian camp was a shameful spot for the entire church parish, and everyone here knew in what conditions they lived and how they were treated. "

G. G., 40 years old, living in Karashok, was questioned at the Lensman office on April 29, 1946, got acquainted with the case materials, realized his responsibility as a witness and voluntarily gave the following testimony:

“Once, a guy and I hid food in a woodpile. She was found by four Serbs. There was food for one person, but they divided it among themselves. We stood nearby and watched. When they realized that the food was from us, they knelt down, crossed their arms over their chests and thanked us.

The prisoners were dressed in rags, but over time it got a little better. This was due to the fact that they shared among themselves the rags of their dead of starvation or killed comrades. Anyway, that's how I understood it. It was not concealed in any way that it was an extermination camp, and that the prisoners were starved and tortured deliberately. "

ABUSE AND COLD

N.N., 41 years old, living in the city of Karashok, was questioned at the Lensman's office on June 13, 1946, got acquainted with the case materials, realized his responsibility as a witness and voluntarily gave the following testimony:

“In 1942 there were prisoners here in the town of Karashok, and I learned that they were Serbs. At one time they were supervised by the Germans, but later the Norwegian guys appeared. Cruel treatment of prisoners was commonplace, and not a day passed without comrades bringing any of the prisoners home in their arms. All prisoners were very poorly dressed, although the temperature on some days dropped below 25 degrees below zero. It was not uncommon to see prisoners with bare hands or feet. It is safe to say that these people were subjected to inhuman torture. "

Recorded from the words of I. I., age 65, living in Karashok, interrogated at the Lensman office on December 4, realizing his responsibility as a witness:

“He lives in the northern part of the city of Karashok, in the area adjacent to the church, under the mountain, where the Germans had a camp with barracks. The Serbian camp was a little further on the same hill. The Germans in the barracks did not have running water at that time, and they forced Serb prisoners to carry water from the river to the camp, at a distance of several hundred meters.

On the way, at eight o'clock in the morning, the prisoners passed by his house, right under the window. Each of them carried three trunks of water, 20 liters each, one in each hand and one on his back. A staircase with wooden steps led up the hill. Every time a Serb slowed down, the guard hit him with a thin pole. The witness had never seen a guard hit them with the butt of a rifle. Many who could not climb the stairs were beaten so that they could not get up. Then they were dragged up the hill, and the witness does not know what was done with them. The witness drew attention to one lanky Serb in the caravan. They beat him until he fell and could no longer get up. Then they dragged him upstairs, and he never saw him again.

End of introductory snippet.

* * *

This is an introductory excerpt from the book Concentration Camp Guards. Norwegian guards of the "Serbian camps" in Northern Norway in 1942-1943. Case Study (Niels Christie, 2010) provided by our book partner -

At the moment, Norway remains one of the few countries in the world where both citizens of the country and foreign students have the opportunity to study at universities for free, which makes this area popular among Russian applicants.

You can study in both Norwegian and English. The education system in Norway complies with the rules of the European Credit Transfer and Accumulation System (ECTS). The study program for each subject includes lectures, seminars and self-study, and is measured in credits. The standard rate for a year at full load is 60 credits. Exam marks for students are set on the A - F scale, where A is the highest score and F is the lowest, E is fail. In some subjects, certification is in the "pass / fail" format.

Applications for the fall semester (usually starting in mid-August) are accepted from December 1 to March 15. For admission to a bachelor's degree, you most often need a document confirming secondary education, one year of study at a Russian university, confirmation of sufficient knowledge of English or Norwegian, a passport and confirmation of financial solvency. However, the procedure for collecting documents for admission should begin as early as possible so that there is time to apply for scholarships and student housing.

25 children from the war zone were able to rest and recover in a children's camp in Norway. The guys spent ten unforgettable days playing games, traveling, communicating with each other and God. Irina Babak, the international coordinator of the "From family to family" program, went to the camp with the children.

- Irina, how were you met in Norway?

After our long but interesting trip from the ferry and via Sweden to Norway, we arrived at the long awaited camp! We were greeted by a lovely team of Norwegian friends who were looking forward to the arrival of the children. After meeting, a hearty dinner and dessert, we went on a small excursion around the camp and to the sea. Beautiful nature, clean air, warm sea and wonderful friendly atmosphere - all this is called happiness.

- How were your days in the camp?

Every day was especially intense and exciting. The theme of the camp was called "Be the Winner!" Children learned to overcome obstacles and win in different situations. Every day, the children listened to exciting classes on the topic "The Bible is an instruction for a successful life", "Patient and faithful will receive the promise from God", "I was created wonderfully", "Joy in God is our strength."

Many children saw the sea for the first time, frolicked and swam with great joy. They could regularly attend various master classes in cooking, coloring T-shirts, making postcards, and even painting on stones. One day together we had a friendly football match with friends from Norway.

- What else impressed you in the camp?

Our entire team, together with children, visited one of the largest amusement parks in Norway! Children had the opportunity to ride all slides, swings, water and air attractions. It was unforgettable, fun and very interesting! All the guys said that they saw such attractions only on TV and did not even dream of riding them ever.

A group of young people from the Norwegian church also came to visit us, along with their pastor. We sang together, played, listened to God's Word and had a lot of fun!

The guys had the opportunity to go on an excursion to the capital of Norway - Oslo! We visited the royal park, watched the solemn change of the guards of the royal army, visited the museum of the history of the development of skiing in Norway and climbed the most high point Oslo and ski jump. Well, our trip ended with dinner at McDonald's. What could be better and tastier? It is impossible to convey in words the beauty that we saw! This excursion will forever remain a bright ray in the memory of children.

One of the days became a dream come true for many guys - riding a Mustang! Our friend and amazingly kind man gave a ride to all the children on his Mustang! Joy and delight knew no bounds.

Each child took many gifts with him; Norwegian friends gave the children a lot of new clothes and shoes for school.

The guys were very impressed with the eventful camp. interesting life... Of course, the camp has become a very vivid memory for children, who every day hear the sounds of exploding shells in the zone of military conflict. Thanks to our friends from Norway, who are not indifferent to children and helped make this fairy tale come true.

Press Center Global Christian Support

In Norway, a government bombing and shooting in a youth camp killed 91 people. First, at about 15.30 local time (17.30 Moscow time), an explosion thundered near the government building. According to preliminary police reports, a car filled with explosives exploded. A powerful blast wave knocked out windows in the buildings of the government and the ministry of the oil industry. Norwegian television showed the asphalt strewn with glass, debris of doors, wounded people lying on it. According to the latest data, as a result of the terrorist attack, seven people were killed and more than ten were injured.

An hour and a half after the explosion near the government, an unknown person opened fire in the camp of the youth wing of the Norwegian Workers' Party, which is headed by Prime Minister Jens Stoltenberg.

A gathering of the party on the island of Utoya (located on Lake Tyrifjord, about an hour's drive from Oslo) gathered about 600 people, many of whom were teenagers. At about 17.00 (19.30 Moscow time) a tall young man in the uniform of a policeman came to the camp. Passing between the small houses of the camp where the participants lived, he shot at everyone who met him on the way. According to the police, from "automatic weapons and pistols." “We all gathered at headquarters to talk about what happened in Oslo. Suddenly we heard shots. At first they thought it was nonsense, and then we ran out into the street, "Hannah, a 16-year-old survivor, tells Norway's Aftenposten." I saw a policeman with earplugs. He looked at us and said: "I want to gather everyone." And then he ran and started shooting at people. "The rally participants ran to the water, many jumped into the lake to hide from the bullets. But the offender stood near the shore and started shooting at the swimming teenagers, other eyewitnesses say. A young girl who was pulled out of the lake rescuers, told TV2: "He walked slowly around the island and shot at everyone he saw. In the end he came to where I was sitting and slowly killed ten people in front of my eyes. He was so calm, it was very scary."

As of 11.30 Saturday, 84 people were shot in the youth camp.

There could have been more victims, police say. While combing the area on Utoya in search of victims, law enforcement agencies discovered a bomb planted near the camp. It didn't work "for a technical reason." Dozens of young people remain in hospitals. Doctors say that the number of victims may grow: the condition of many patients is assessed as extremely serious.

After the terrorist attack in Oslo and the first reports of shooting in a youth camp, the Norwegian media immediately began to write about the Islamist trail. But the detainee at Utoya turned out to be an ethnic Norwegian. All Western media have already published photographs of 32-year-old Anders Behring Breivik - a tall green-eyed Norwegian with light blond hair.

Breivik reportedly held ultra-right views. A friend of the offender told the Gang Verdens that the Norwegian became a nationalist a few years ago, "after about twenty-five."

He expressed his ultra-right beliefs in discussions on various websites. “He is an ardent opponent of the idea that people of different cultures can live side by side with each other,” says the source.

Social media users almost immediately discovered Breivik's Facebook page. His interests include bodybuilding, conservative politics and Freemasonry. He indicated his place of work at Breivik Geofarm, where he worked as a director. According to VG (newspaper Verdens Gang - Gazeta.Ru), Breivik founded the company in 2009, it grows vegetables. The alleged perpetrator's Facebook page has now been closed.

It contains one entry: "One person who has faith is equal in strength to 100 thousand who have only interests." Breivik is now being interrogated by the police.

There is no doubt that the terrorist attack in Oslo and the shooting of the youth camp are linked. The police believe that the attacks were organized by several people. Now the authorities are looking for Breivik's accomplices, searches were carried out at the address from which he entered Twitter and Facebook.

Police sources believe both the Oslo bombings and the Utoya shootings were attempts on the life of the country's prime minister. He was supposed to arrive at the camp of the youth wing of his party on Friday evening. As a result, the prime minister worked from home, a government spokesman said, and was not on Friday at the government headquarters or in Utoya. After the Oslo bombings, Stoltenberg only gave telephone interviews: the police advised him not to appear in public yet. On Saturday morning, the Prime Minister called an urgent press conference.

“Never since the Second World War has our country suffered so much,” he said. The official called Friday events "a nightmare and a tragedy of the nation."

The "democratic foundations of Norway", according to the Prime Minister, will not be shaken. Stoltenberg promised the country "even more democracy."

“You will not destroy us. You will not destroy our democracy and ideals, ”he said in front of television cameras. The official also said that he did not see any reason to raise the level of threat in the country. Nevertheless, it became known on Saturday that the Norwegian authorities decided to restore border control with the Schengen countries.

Officially, the Norwegian law enforcement agencies and authorities did not state which groups could be involved in the attacks. The Norwegian TV channel NRK reported that an unknown Islamist group, Supporters of Global Jihad, published a message on its website stating that the explosion and attack on a youth political forum was a reaction to the publication of cartoons of the Prophet Muhammad by the Norwegian media.

However, after the arrest of the ethnic Norwegian Breivik, few people believe in the version of the Islamist attack in Norway.

“If we compare Norway with other countries, I would not say that we have any big problem with right-wing extremists. But we have certain groups, we track them. Our police are aware of their existence, ”said Prime Minister Stoltenberg.

Norwegian International Institute expert Jakob Godziminski told Reuters that Norwegian far-right groups are more likely to be involved in the tragic events than Islamists. He noted that in Norway, as well as throughout Europe, due to problems with immigrants, right-wing ideas have become more popular. “It is strange for Islamists to attack a local political event. Attack on youth camp tells us that this is something else. If the Islamists wanted to attack us, they would have planted bombs in the nearest to the center of Oslo shopping center, and not to a remote island, ”the expert said.