Nacht und Nebel

"Operation 25", which was the codename for Hitler`s planned invasion of Yugoslavia, started 6th April 1941. As groundforces rolled across the borders, German bombers targeted airfields, military installations and the capital Belgrade. The Axis forces were far superior to the Yugoslavian so they met very little resistance, and finalized the invasion by signing the armistice on April 17.

Only ten days later Josip Tito was in contact with Moscow and began building restistance groups around the country. The Partisan Army was officially created later in June and by September it counted 70.000 partisans ready for guerilla warfare against the Germans, pro-nazi militia and rivalling partisan groups. The German answer to guerilla attacks was mass arrests of political activists, teachers and suspected partisans who were sent to concentration camps. Large massacres were also carried out on the civillian population.

About the same time as things unfolded in the Balkans, Hitler issued a "Führerbefehl" demanding a inland route for moving troops and iron ore through Norway. This meant that a road and railroad had to be laid all the way from the Arctic Circle to Kirkenes and Murmansk. He ordered this project to be complete within 4 years. Also the Atlantik Wall was under construction along the coastline. This work was carried out by Wehrmacht troops, RAD, the Norwegian Road Council, several Norwegian and German civillian entrepreneurs and a growing number of Soviet POWs, all supervised and controlled by Org.Todt. To meet Hitlers demand on the 4 year plan a much larger workforce was needed and so 145000 Soviet POWs were sent to Norway and spread out through hundreds of camps.

Early in 1942 a group of workers from the Norwegian Road Council was set to build some barracks in a forest some kilometers northeast from the village Rognan in Nordland. At first the workers didn`t think much of it, but when material for watchtowers and large quantities of barbed wire arrived they understood that this camp wasn`t for ordinary workers.

The construction map over the Botn camp.

Further South in Europe captured Serbian partisans had been on their way to unknown destinations for weeks. Cramped together in dirty cattle wagons they were moved from camp to camp via the railroads through occupied Europe,until they reached a large camp in Stettin. Here a group of 893 were picked out and they had to load goods onto a ship, the German transport ship "Gotha", before they themself were stuffed into the cold hull. Three days later the 13th June 1942 this first group of partisans were set ashore in another large harbour and from signs on the buildings they knew they were in Bergen. They spent a month in a camp being sent off to do different construction and road work in the area until one day all the prisoners were lined up on the Appell Platz and hundreds of names called out for transport.

Again they were chased into a ships hull eagerly helped by hits and kicks from guards and kapos, criminal elements among the prisoners that volunteered to work for the Germans. In the cold and dark hull no one had any idea which direction the ship took, but when allowed up on the deck some of the partisans knew they were heading North. Many of them were confused and lost track of day and night because of the midnight sun. Several days later the ship came to a halt and as the Yugoslavs squinted their eyes in the sun after hours in darkness they could see they were in a fjord surrounded by low, forested mountains. In the bottom of the fjord they saw a small village and from a bay a kilometer away a smaller boat came towards the ship.

The German guards bid them farewell with the usual beating and shouting as the boat took group after group ashore. It was July 25 and 472 partisans had been marched from the beach up a gravel road passing a few houses and into the forest where the camp was.

The ship which brought the prisoners to the north.

Since their capture in Yugoslavia they had witnessed many horrors, but when lined up on the Appell Platz between the barracks in SS-Lager Botn even the dimmest of the partisans started to realize that they had just arrived in hell. SS-Hauptsturmführer Fritz Kiefer welcomed the sad looking group by removing all their blankets and extra clothes and told them he would personally see to it that they would all die. The kapos were armed with logs and placed in all the important positions within the camp system. During the first days the prisoners worked around the camp fixing whatever the Norwegian workers hadn`t had time to complete. But the conditions were terrible, no water for drinking or cleaning, bad and very little food and harsh treatment from guards and kapos.

About a week after arrival the SS guards were reinforced by a group of Norwegian SS guards and they proved to be much more brutal than the Germans, some of these guards were very young only 16-17 years old. It was also now the prisoners really saw what a sadist Kiefer was. He started "exercising" the guards every sunday, driving them hard with Preussian style military workouts. He also made himself a steel hammer with a spike on one end and he loved to hit both prisoners and guards with it, which led to him getting nicknamed "the Hammer". After the war both guards and prisoners described how Kiefer had enjoyed beating and torturing people.

SS Lager Botn

Soon the work on the road begin. Every morning they are marched down the road past the farm buildings and back again in the evening, and every time they could see an elderly woman standing in the door of one of the houses, watching them with a sad look on her face but she smiled when she got eye contact with any of them. Here they started to find small parcels of food hidden away, under a rock, in a bush or just on the middle of the road. She even ran out of the house yelling at the guards if she saw them hit the prisoners. Several times she went to Kiefer spilling her guts demanding better treatment for the prisoners. Her name was Julie and she was not afraid.

"Mor"Julie

The road work was hard and demanding on the hungry and weak bodies, but the guards didn`t care and treated the partisans very brutal. One of the local workers from the Road Council was the demolition site manager and often when a big rock was prepared with dynamite he gave it a delayed fuze, or he put in a too small charge so the guys could get a few minutes extra rest, he also always gave away his food to them.

A few weeks after arrival the first killings happened. On the way to work one morning a Norwegian guard killed one and wounded 3 prisoners in what the guard thought was an escape attempt. About the same time the Germans asked prisoners that were sick to step forward to be sent to hospital, 4 men believed this lie and were escorted away. The next day some other prisoners spotted four fresh graves.

In the beginning of September one of the partisans managed to sneak away before being marched back to camp. He knew the guards wouldn`t make a head count before back in the camp, so when they left he ran. After a while he found a building and went inside for some rest but he fell asleep. The search party soon found him, he tried to commit suicide but the guards stopped him and beat him half to death and dragged him back to camp. From this point the terror from the SS and kapos became worse and the killing escalated and sickness also started to spread.

The prisoners being marched off to work.

Until the morning of 26th November 78 of the partisans had been killed or died of sickness. This day started as normal but when they got back to the camp in the evening there was a strange silence. SS had cleared the barrack housing the sick. They had been marched 200 meters outside the camp to a 30 meter long prepared ditch. Here they were forced to undress and lined up facing the ditch, a guard went up behind and shot them one by one. 72 in total, the youngest was only 14.

The polar winter set in hard and helped the Germans decimate the prisoner population, and mid January the "sick-barrack" was again filled up. Rumours started spreading that another massacre was underway, and the 25th January it happened. This time around 50 were shot which left only 218 of the original 472 still alive.

In the following months the violence continued but in springtime something happened. A Wehrmacht General came on inspection and both treatment and food became a little better, and in the middle of May commandant Kiefer was replaced and all the SS guards replaced with Wehrmacht. The partisans time as Nacht und Nebel had ended and they were officially prisoners of war.

Now they could recieve Red Cross parcels, they organized resistance and political work and the criminal kapos lost their positions.

Velimir Popovic made the first succesfull escape from Botn. He had help from locals that took him to Sweden in may 1943. Later in the summer a few other managed to get away and over to Sweden but some were shot trying to flee.

The partisans stayed in Botn until 1st June 1944. They were loaded onto trucks and driven a few miles south to a larger camp, Pothus , and later up to a mountain camp by the Arctic Circle while Soviet POWs moved into Botn.

The camp gate.

After the Liberation in 1945 the graves around Botn were exhumated and 356 bodies were found. Witness accounts and a recent discovery in a Serbian museum indicates that as many as 170 are not yet found.

Julie Johansen the brave old lady was presented a badge of honor from Tito personally for the kindness she showed the prisoners.

Fritz Kiefer was executed in Yugoslavia in 1947 and so were 24 of the SS guards having served in the camps in Northern Norway. Of around 4100 partisans sent to Norway 2368 died in different camps.

Today there is a Yugoslavian war cemetery in Botn where 1657 partisans from camps in Northern Norway is buried. On the exact site of the camp is a German war cemetery with 2730 soldiers that fell in Northern Norway.

A cross was raised at the execution site.

The same place today.

Memorial over the yugoslavs.

Entrance to the german cemetery.

The exact location of the camp.

After the last prisoners was gone locals took what they could use from the camps before the rest was burned and bulldozed away. But this camp gate survived and me and my father found it overgrown in the forest floor behind the cemetery when I was a kid

One of the watchtowers.

Between the inner- and outer fence guard dogs were loose.

A prisoner painted a cross on the rock with his brothers blood.