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On March 7, 1942, the official media announced that 300 teachers would be required to report for unspecified “social work” in northern Norway. Privately, teachers were given a deadline of March 15 to “volunteer.” In his book The Power of Nonviolence (1960 edition), the American social philosopher Richard Bartlett Gregg wrote, “teachers who resisted government orders after that date were threatened with loss of jobs, pay and pensions. The Quisling Education Department received tens of thousands of letters of protest from an estimated ten percent of Norway’s parents.” (Reliable data on the numbers is not available.) The deadline arrived and passed. The teachers did not comply.
On March 20, a Norwegian policeman knocked on Holmboe’s door to arrest him. Holmboe called the policeman “very decent” and allowed him to spend an hour making preparations to leave. (Whether ordinary police should have arrested fellow Norwegians on Quisling’s behest has been hotly debated.) In all, approximately 1,000 male teachers were arrested on the 20th or in the following days.
Holmboe spent over a week in Hamar prison in the company of about 20 other teachers. Then, as Gregg explained, “From southern and western Norway, about 650 of the arrested teachers were transferred from jails to a concentration camp at Grini.” A handful of others were picked up along the journey.
Sharp related a story that expresses how the Nazis greeted them:
The German commander of Grini concentration camp, Stürmbannfurhrer (SS Commander) Koch, was nicknamed by the prisoners Stormfyrsten — the tempestuous prince. He always carried a whip and was accompanied by a large dog. On one occasion the teachers received an expression of sympathy from an unexpected quarter, following an harangue by Koch which concluded with the words: “You must not think you will be martyrs, or that a few dirty teachers will be able to stop the New Order for Europe!” At that point the dog vomited.
The 687 men were put on rations of water and 150 grams of bread a day — about four small slices. Gregg described the teachers’ routine:
Each morning they were compelled to crawl and run in deep snow for an hour and a half. Then came an hour and a half of heavy work, mostly shoveling snow, followed by another hour and a half of crawling and running in the snow. Then they were given a “meal” of hot water.
The “treatment,” as the teachers called it, was designed to erode their ability or willingness to resist by using hunger and exhaustion as weapons.
After the second day of the treatment, 76 of the teachers from 55 to 59 years of age were questioned one-by-one by camp officials. They were asked to retract their letters of resignation from the new union. Not a single one did so. If the older teachers wouldn’t back down, the Germans realized the younger ones wouldn’t either. The attempt to break the teachers’ will resumed.
Resistance as a collective effort
Gregg described what happened next. “After several days more of this treatment, the camp authorities marched the prisoners through a room, asking each one if he would sign a retraction of his protest. As they filed through the room each prisoner said ‘No’, often in advance of the officer’s question.” Only 32 prisoners retracted. When one of the teachers physically collapsed, a German officer demanded to know why he did not give in; the teacher replied, “Because I am a Norwegian.”
Quisling desperately wanted the teachers to denounce their protest letters in a public manner that would vindicate him. Overwhelmingly, the teachers denied this to him.
On March 31, 499 of the prisoners were loaded into cattle cars and then onto a steamer built to carry only 100 passengers. For 13 days, they steamed north to a prison camp by Kirkenes, a small town in the extreme northeastern part of Norway — a town far into the Arctic Circle. There, the Wehrmacht assumed custody of the prisoners from the Gestapo. About the same time, prisoners who were being held in a separate location were released to go home, perhaps because of the difficult logistics of transporting them to Kirkenes.
The conditions at Kirkenes were miserable and the work was very dangerous. Much of what is known about this imprisonment comes from the letters and diaries of Edvard Brakstad, an imprisoned teacher. They are reprinted on the website “The Teacher’s Protest” along with the caveat:
Of course, we should remember that all the letters were censored and therefore the teachers were not able to write about the reality of the situation. When you read between the lines, you can see that Edvard is also writing to try and reassure his family back home. He paints a bright picture and puts a brave face on everything. When we read Kirkenesferda (written by the teachers after the war) we can see the reality was much harder.
Rather than recount here another set of torturous conditions, Brakstad’s writings can describe them eloquently.
It is important to note, however, that the teachers at Kirkenes were aware of outside events and the impact their imprisonment was having on the politics of Norway. In a letter dated May 25, Brakstad wrote:
The biggest thing that happened was a letter read aloud, from our leaders in Oslo [Illegal letter from the underground leaders, smuggled in]. Main points:
- They are following closely what is happening to us.
- Our families get all the financial help they need.
- 663 clergymen have resigned. 70,000 civil servants have written protests against the samband [relationship].
- The schools, for the most part, are in session although the teachers have not signed the loyalty pledge.
- Plans for the Riksting [New Parliament] will be dropped. Youth mobilization also dropped. Teachers’ samband probably also dropped.
- There is “feverish” activity to secure our freedom.
- People are praying for our safety.
The letter caused a quiet optimism amongst us. It is a common belief that we might be let free fairly soon. Our action has brought about big results.
Brakstad’s letter was accurate. Accounts of the teachers’ treatment circulated throughout Norway, with the teachers’ defiance becoming a point of national pride; public outrage coalesced and grew against the Nazis. Quisling had reopened the schools with the announcement that all who returned to work would be automatically registered in the new union and fees deducted from their pay. Almost to a person, the remaining teachers repudiated the new union. Holmboe’s wife was among the returning teachers, and she described how each one of them “spoke of conscience, the spirit of truth, and our responsibility to the children.” At this point, the teachers’ sense of solidarity was so strong that she did not worry about being arrested. She knew the others would take good care of her two children.
Holmboe’s wife had reason for confidence. Throughout the teachers’ detention, their families received the equivalent of the otherwise “frozen” salaries. The source of the payments was not disclosed. The funds may have come from the Norwegian government-in-exile or from the resistance itself, to which many people pledged a percentage of their incomes. This mystery has never been solved — at least, not publicly.
The suffering of imprisoned teachers and the obdurate resistance it inspired in others was a massive problem for the Quisling regime. After all, the education system was meant to be the building block of his new Corporate State, and the Nazis watched his progress closely. What to do?
This article was originally published in the February 2025 issue of Future of Freedom.
