Nazi Forced Labor in Northern Norway

A Norwegian-Russian-Serbian-Swedish-German research theater project by Vajswerk, the German-Russian Museum in Berlin and the Narviksenteret Norway.
Anyone who passes the Arctic Circle in Norway will take photographs or just look at the magnificent landscape of the Saltfjell. However few are aware that Nazi forced laborers laid the ground: Yugoslavian and Soviet forced laborers built the roads and the railways. They were the main victims of this gigantic and inhumane infrastructure program of the German occupiers. Of the 4,000 Yugoslav forced laborers, only 40% survived. The Yugoslav and Soviet forced laborers are subject to our biographical research theater project.

From a European perspective, we describe the Nazi forced labor in Northern Norway, the everyday life of forced laborers. Historians from Norway, Russia, Serbia and the country of escape Sweden and their respective German colleagues form a tandem of historiographical research.

At an international conference and through the final presentations, representative individual fates are documented in a historical context. That will take place in Berlin, Narvik, Arkhangelsk, Belgrade and Skinnskatteberg. A website in German and Norwegian (with excerpts in Russian, Serbian and English) is available: www.blodveger.info.

With Michael Stokke/Narvik and Sinje Kätsch/Berlin; Dr. Marina Panikar/Archangelsk and Ingrid Damerow/Berlin; Dr. Milan Koljanin/Beograd and Beate Niemann, Jovan Arsenić/Berlin; Hanna Sjöberg/Berlin; Head of the project: Gaby Oelrichs. Theater director: Christian Tietz
The project is funded by the Foundation EVZ „Remembrance, Responsibility and Future“.