Silent Refuge

by Margrit Rosenberg Stenge

  Although the village school re-opened shortly after this incident, my parents worried that it would be too risky for us if they allowed me to attend. So for me, Grade 5 lasted from August 1939 until April 8, 1940. I missed going to school with the other children. At that point, all I wanted was to be like everyone else. But of course I was different.

  A few days after the incident with the German officers, the lensmann paid us a visit. He reiterated what Nils had already told us, that we would be quite safe in Rogne and that we would have nothing to fear from the villagers in the area. He did not know any Nazis or anyone who had ever met a Jewish person. He assured us he had no intention of becoming a Nazi collaborator and that he would give us ample warning should the situation warrant it. We agreed with Nils that the lensmann could be trusted.

  Unfortunately for the lensmann, he joined the Nazi Party a few years later. His reasoning was that if he did not join the party, the occupation forces would remove him and appoint a real Nazi to fill his position, which would be much worse for the villagers. What he didn’t realize was that, in his new role, he would have to arrest people, even his own friends, who were known to be anti-Nazi, most of whom were teachers. These arrests caused him to be treated like a war criminal after the war, and he was ultimately brought to trial. My parents were called as witnesses for the defence, and he was not imprisoned. However, his reputation was irreparably damaged and his life ruined.

  My family’s most serious immediate problem was a lack of money. We needed funds to pay Nils and Alma rent and to buy groceries. Since no one could foresee how long the German occupation of Norway would last, my parents were faced with a difficult decision. One of us had to return to Oslo to withdraw our family’s savings. My father was completely ruled out because his dark hair and prominent nose — stereotypical Jewish traits — would make him much too conspicuous. With her blond hair and blue eyes, my mother did not look like a foreigner, but she and my father both spoke Norwegian with a German accent. A Norwegian police officer might consider her the enemy and treat her accordingly. An encounter with a German would also have disastrous results for my mother. That left only me. I have often wondered how my parents could send their only child on such a mission. It must have been out of desperation, because they both would have known that I might not succeed in the mission or, even worse, might never return.

  My parents found a truck driver who had to drive to Oslo and back the following day. Equipped with a signed power-of-attorney document for our Oslo neighbour Fru Prager and the telephone number of my father’s former employer, Nordiske Destillationsverker, I climbed into the cab with the driver. We travelled in complete silence, mainly I suppose because the driver did not quite know what to say to me. I assume he was just as worried as I was about being stopped on the road. What was he doing with a little girl without any kind of identification? When he let me off on Kirkeveien road, I was greatly relieved.

  My parents had advised Fru Prager that I was coming to Oslo, so she was waiting for me in her apartment. We headed for the neighbourhood bank immediately. I was nervous and fearful when we entered the bank, and I was sure everyone could hear the loud pounding of my heart. I need not have worried. Fru Prager gave the bank clerk the power-of-attorney document, and we withdrew my family’s savings without any difficulties.

  Later that day, Fru Prager told me that my father’s intuition had been right — a few days after the takeover, two Germans in civilian clothes had come to our apartment to look for us. When they found no one there, they asked some of the neighbours if they knew where we were, and they truthfully replied that they did not. The Pragers had not been at home at the time.

  Fru Prager phoned Nordiske to advise them of my family’s whereabouts. My father’s colleagues were relieved when they heard that we were safe. Throughout the next almost three years that we spent in hiding in Rogne, my father’s co-workers took turns coming to see us, always bringing enough money to last us until the next visit. Although we needed this money desperately, my father always felt embarrassed when the envelope was handed to him. How would he ever repay Nordiske? His colleagues insisted, however, that these payments were merely royalties derived from his formulas — and his due. The generosity of Nordiske Destillationsverker was instrumental in saving our lives.

  In May 1940, the lensmann came to see us again, this time with the news that he had received directives from the occupation forces that every person in his area had to be registered and issued identification papers. Since this posed a certain danger to us, he suggested that we move to the mountain range above Rogne for the summer. It would be safer there, and by the time we returned in the fall, no one would be looking for people to register — at least that is what he hoped.

  The Norwegian farmers move with their cattle to the mountains above their villages during the summer. Here their cows and goats graze freely on the lush mountain grass in the higher elevations. These little mountain villages are called seter and consist mainly of small primitive cabins without electricity or other amenities.

  We had heard of a nice log cabin in a seter called Buahaugen that was for rent, and one fine day in June, Nils drove us there in his truck. Like all the other cabins, ours was without running water or electricity, and there was an outhouse behind the cabin. Buahaugen lay above the treeline, so mainly low bushes grew there with just an occasional small birch tree. The cabin overlooked two lakes, the Vansjø and the Royri, which were joined by a brook and surrounded by mountains.

  In the beginning, we were almost alone up there, but toward the middle of June, farmers began moving up, and we were glad to have people around. Living in the seter was not easy, and our whole lifestyle changed dramatically. We had to fetch water from the brook — fresh and cold water — which my mother and I did. My father cut the wood for heating and cooking. No one in Germany would have believed that he would be able to do such hard physical work ever again. He felt really well in the fresh mountain air, although the sore on his back never healed. Fortunately, we were able to get his insulin from an apothecary in Fagernes, a small town not far from Rogne, who sent the preparation to Nils at regular intervals.

  We were very fortunate to be able to spend the summer months at Buahaugen. It was a quiet, tranquil life. Each morning, we were awoken by the tinkle of cowbells as the cows were led out to pasture. A young girl, Martha, who became one of my best friends in the seter, delivered fresh milk every morning. I played on the rocks at the water’s edge with all the other children, and sometimes in really hot weather we went swimming in the ice-cold lakes. We watched the women make goat cheese in huge black kettles, and when they were finished, we scraped the kettles clean. This cheese was a delicacy. On midsummer nights, we feasted on rømmegrøt, a type of Norwegian porridge made from sour cream. I cannot possibly describe its wonderful taste. We often climbed the mountain above Buahaugen to pick blueberries and cloudberries, yellow berries that resemble raspberries but with a completely different taste. The women made jam with these berries, and the cloudberries were also mixed with whipped cream for Sunday dessert.

  My parents learned to fish for trout and other kinds of fish in the lake. They usually fished from a rowboat, but on balmy summer evenings, the three of us took our fishing rods to the large stones protruding into the lakes and fished for smaller fish from there. With help from a neighbour, my father built a makeshift oven of rocks outside our cabin, in which he smoked some of the trout he caught, and my mother stored some of this fish for the winter months ahead. We were never short on food.

  In the fall of 1940, we had no other choice but to move back to Nils and Alma’s house in Rogne. Despite the inconveniences of living in a primitive log cabin in Buahaugen, we had been more comfortable there. I had my own bedroom, and we had a spacious living room and kitchen. At the Granlis’ house, we shared one room. It was, however, impossible to stay in the seter in the winter because of all the snow, the difficulty in getting provisions and
the utter isolation.

  When I returned to Buahaugen in 1994, much had changed. I could still see the remnants of the primitive oven we had used in the underbrush near the steps of our burnt-down cottage. During a raid in the summer of 1943, the Germans set fire to all the cabins in Buahaugen. Forests of birch trees surrounded the many new cottages that had been built and that belonged mostly to city dwellers. Only a few farmers brought their cattle up to Buahaugen by that time, since other seters were more convenient. Many of the cabins and cottages still had no electricity, but complicated installations provided running water to most of the summer homes and electricity had been promised. Buahaugen has become a popular summer and spring ski resort of sorts and is easily accessible from the highway that goes to Rogne, only about twenty minutes by car. In the winter, the gravel road from Rogne is closed.

  In September, my parents decided that I could not afford to miss any more schooling, so I began Grade 6 in a one-room schoolhouse in the next village, Volbu. Volbu was across the lake that was visible from the Granlis’ house and could be reached by walking or cycling around the lake in the spring, summer and fall or by crossing the frozen lake on skis or with a spark in the winter. A spark, known as a “kicksled” in English, is like a chair mounted on runners. Its rider stands behind it and kicks the ground to propel it forward. These sleds were a very useful mode of transportation on icy or snow-packed surfaces, and in those days they were also extensively used as baby carriages in the winter.

  To my surprise, children attended school only every other day. By this time, I understood the dialect of the region perfectly, but I had to learn to write it as well. I loved school because it lent some sense of normalcy to my life.

  News travels fast in the countryside, and when I started school, many of the villagers knew that we were Jewish, although they really did not know what that meant. I believe that none of them had ever met a Jew before. We heard that there were now a few Nazi sympathizers in the village, but it was thought that they would not pose any danger, and in fact they did not. Gudrun, a very intelligent girl in my grade, was the daughter of such a sympathizer. When she invited me to her house for dinner one day, my parents debated whether I should go. Was there a sinister motive behind the invitation? In the end, my parents thought that it might do more harm than good not to accept the invitation. Perhaps Gudrun’s parents, having never met a Jewish person before, were curious about the Jewish girl who had become their daughter’s schoolmate. I was somewhat uneasy in their company, although they were very pleasant and did not even ask any unusual questions.

  On my trip to Buahaugen in 1994, I met a man who remembered that he had gone to school with me, although he was a few years younger than I. I asked him if he knew anything about Gudrun, and he told me that she was now living in Lillehammer, Norway, with her family and that she had become a teacher.

  My parents’ lives were difficult. They were totally isolated, with Nils and Alma as their only company. My father was often very depressed. Even though he should have had regular medical checkups, he did not dare go to a doctor. We also did not have dental care during those years, and my mother had to pry the braces off my teeth when the war broke out. To pass the time, my parents went for walks in good weather, my mother knitted endlessly and they both read voraciously anything they could get hold of.

  Although my life was far from normal, I still had some kind of routine. I did my homework, which there was a lot of, my mother taught me how to knit and I, too, read a great deal. Alma taught me how to milk the cow, so I would from time to time relieve her of this work. I actually liked to help Alma with her chores because she was always pleasant company. But nothing was more fun than the Christmas preparations. The house filled up with the delicious fragrance of freshly baked cookies mixed with burning wood from the stove. Alma cleaned house from morning to night, until everything sparkled. In the living room, the lights of the Christmas tree blinked on and off, and the house looked peaceful and pleasant. How I wished that I could be a part of all the celebration surrounding Christmas! But I could not. I turned twelve years old that winter and was, in the Jewish tradition, considered a woman. As a Jewish woman, I was quite aware that I had different obligations.

  That winter I participated in skiing competitions, both downhill and slalom. I was never much good at either because I was scared of falling. As a matter of fact, when I came down the hills, some of my friends would exclaim, “Here comes the lensmann,” because our chief of police was known to be slow. It upset me that I was not better at this popular sport, because I was always ambitious. But no matter how hard I tried, I never won a skiing competition. Cross-country skiing was a way of life in the village so was not considered a sport.

  While the war was raging in Europe, we lived in relative tranquility in our secluded village. My parents, however, were never at ease. Coupled with their concerns about our own future were the worries about the family they had left behind in Germany. Finding out that Tante Selma, Onkel Gustav and Elfriede had arrived safely in the United States was a great relief.

  The Germans were stationed in Fagernes and communicated with the lensmann only from time to time. We were no longer permitted to own radios, but we broke this rule, and on dark winter nights we would sit around the radio trying to tune in to the bbc, the British Broadcasting Corporation. Sometimes we would hear Hitler speak, which totally infuriated my father and depressed him for hours on end. The war was not going well for the Allied forces.

  We were happy to return to Buahaugen in the summer of 1941. It had been a long and difficult winter with the Granlis. Nils had gone on drinking binges, and we had worried that he would one day spill our secrets when under the influence of alcohol. Our log cabin was waiting for us, and now that we knew what to expect, the summer seemed like a welcome reprieve.

  That summer we had a visitor. Mr. Meiranovsky arrived from Oslo to spend a week with us. What a welcome surprise! My parents’ pleasure at being with their long-time friend was palpable. But the visit was also a time for reflection. In my mind’s eye, I can see my father and Mr. Meiranovsky sitting on a large stone overlooking the Vansjø, the large lake, while my father warned his friend of the danger that he and the entire Norwegian Jewish population would face if they remained in Norway. I happened to overhear this conversation: my father advised Mr. Meiranovsky to persuade his whole family to try to escape to Sweden. Sweden was a neutral country, and many Norwegians had already crossed the border to escape the German occupation. However, like so many others, Mr. Meiranovsky did not believe that any harm would come to the Jews in Oslo. They were Norwegians, and the Germans would not dare to persecute them, he thought. How wrong he was! That was the last time we saw Moritz Meiranovsky. The elder Meiranovskys were ultimately deported to Auschwitz with two of their sons and their families. All perished in the camp.

  A neighbouring cottage in Buahaugen was owned by an attorney, Mr. Wellén, whose nephew Einar came to visit each summer. My father often spoke to the elder Wellén, and that summer of 1941 he was also introduced to Einar, then nineteen years old and a tall, gangly law student. We did not know then how important that young man would be to the future of our family.

  In the fall of 1941, we moved back to the Granlis’ house and an uneasy coexistence. I suppose that the rent we paid Nils each month was still an incentive for him to try to be civil around us. Alma was always kind and patient, but the tense situation in the household, aggravated by Nils’s heavy drinking, took its toll on all of us. Fortunately, I was able to go to school and escape the situation at home every other day. Even Christmas was no longer the same that year. Although we still had plenty of food, rationing of items such as sugar, flour and butter was now in effect, which curtailed Christmas baking. The prolonged German occupation of Norway, with no end in sight, affected all of us, and no one seemed to be in the mood to celebrate.

  By February 1942, it had become obvious to my parents that we would have to find a p
lace of our own to return to in the fall after spending the summer in Buahaugen. By then, when Nils was inebriated, we were really afraid of him and never knew what to expect.

  Our stay with the Granlis came to an unexpected and abrupt end. In March 1942, the lensmann paid us a visit with some very disturbing news. A German raid of the villages in his district was imminent, and he urged us to leave for Buahaugen immediately. Travelling to Buahaugen at this time of year and with no advanced planning was a terrifying prospect. We did not know how we would manage all by ourselves or how we would get all the necessary provisions. Nils promised to look for someone to bring us what we needed at regular intervals, and we had no choice but to believe him. So on a bright, sunny day, we set out on skis with one of our neighbours, each of us carrying as many supplies as we could.

  It took several hours of skiing through deep and heavy snow to reach the seter, but since there were four of us, we made deep tracks in the snow. We hardly recognized Buahaugen when we arrived — the landscape looked like it was frozen in time. Our neighbour helped us carry wood inside and start a fire in the fireplace and the stove to warm up the cottage. And then he left. We were all alone in the great expanse of snow and ice.

  The brook was frozen, too, except for a small opening, where we were able to fetch drinking water — on skis, of course. When we needed water with which to wash ourselves and our clothes, we melted snow in a large pot. At night, the cottage got freezing cold, and it was usually my mother who got a fire going before my father and I arose in the morning. We could not go outside without putting our skis on. It was almost inconceivable that we could stay here all alone until the farmers came up for the summer. But that was what we did — at least that was what my parents did.