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Historisk tidskrift 131:4 • 2011
Innehåll (Contents) 2011:4
”De plågade oss som om de ville döda oss”. Jugoslaviska fångar
i Norge under andra världskriget i ljuset av nytt källmaterial
Tomislav Dulić
Fulltext (pdf)
Summary
“They tormented us as if they wanted to kill us”: New light
on Second World War Yugoslav camp prisoners in Norway
The article provides new insights into the violence suffered
by the more than four thousand Yugoslavs who were deported to
Norway by Nazi Germany during the Second World War.Placed in
labour camps throughout the country, they were made to work under
extremely harsh conditions on projects such as road construction
and military installations.
The analysis focuses on the prisoners’
experience of camp life. Particular attention is paid to their
interaction with prison guards and to the political conflicts
that emerged within the prisoner group. The findings of sociologist
Nils Christie on the camp guards are juxtaposed against new sources
from Belgrade, which became fully available to scholars in the
early 2000s. These new sources show how the camp administrations
exploited the terrible hygienic conditions, malnutrition and
negative stereotypes about a violence-prone “Balkan culture”
to create emotional distance between prisoners and guards. The
prisoners complained that they were not given enough food or
sufficient opportunity to maintain their hygiene, which they
attributed to a conscious policy on the part of the camp administration.
Lice infestations, outbreaks of typhus and malaria, combined
with extrajudicial executions, not least of prisoners who fell
ill, resulted in a death toll of over sixty percent for the Yugoslavs.
The Yugoslavs thus suffered among the highest death tolls of
any national or ethnic community relocated to Scandinavia during
the war. The analysis further deals with prisoner escapes to
Sweden, which were often made possible by help from Norwegian
civilians. Such experiences contributed to the very positive
image of Norway and Norwegians in the witness statements taken
by the Yugoslav embassy in Stockholm. These statements also show
that the prisoners had a very positive view of how they were
treated by the authorities upon arrival in Sweden.
Keywords
Sweden, Norway, Yugoslavia, Second World War, Prisoners of War
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