When the Soviet Union invaded Finland at the end of 1939, Karsten Løvestad, a 23 year old Norwegian born 13 June 1916 , volunteered to assist the Finns, He went to Finland. The war against the Soviet Union was lost and shortly afterwards, Stalin’s ally Hitler invaded Norway.
Together with his three brothers, he later also became involved in the resistance struggle in Norway, where they helped refugees based on the family farm in Trøgstad in Østfold . Trøgstad is around 15km from the Swedish border but the terrain is tough those that are not physically fit.
Karsten Løvestad was first arrested in February 1942, but managed to escape to Sweden. After a short time there, he became a courier between Gothenburg and Oslo , and he also took assignments as a border guide .
On 22 October 1942, Løvestad was accompanying a group of ten people, nine of whom were Jewish and the tenth was another guide and resistance fighter Harry Pedersen. At the Østbanestasjonen in Oslo, they got on the train to Halden which is on the Swedish border. This is a journey of 137km.
When the train was between Skjeberg and Døle , the group became aware of two police officers who were checking documents. One of them was 31 year old Arne Øystein Hvam who was also a member of the Norwegian version of the Nazi party, the Nasjonal Samling or NS, the party of the puppet ruler Vidkun Quisling and the only political party allowed in occupied Norway.
Løvestad had a false passport in the name "Harald Jensen", while the Jews traveled with their real passports (stamped with a red "J"). The further course of events is somewhat unclear, but Hvam is said to have asked the group to leave the compartment. Løvestad then shot and killed Hvam, and jumped off the train with Willy Schermann and Herman Feldmann. near Besseberg.
The other refugees on board the train got off at the next station.
Herman Feldmann broke an arm in the fall, and Willy Schermann sustained some gashes. The hunt for the three was one of the largest police dragnets in occupied Norway.
The two Jews were quickly arrested, while Karsten Løvestad managed to stay free until he was arrested on 27 October 1942.
The murder of Hvam was widely reported in the newspaper of the Norwegian equivalent of the SA, the Hirden. Both Vidkun Quisling and Nazi Reichskommisar Josef Terboven were present when Hvam was buried. A few days later, the Gestapo ordered the arrest of all the Jews in Norway. The Hvam murder was used as a pretext when the order for mass arrests was given to Norwegian state police officers, even though the action had been planned well before the events on the railway line, something the Norwegian state police would have known.
The NS regime portrayed the murder of Hvam as a Jewish attack on the state, and on the new order in Norway.
On 27 October, the NS newspaper Fritt Folk defended the law on confiscation of the possession of Jewish people on the basis of the murder on the Halden train, illogically adding that the measures are in no way to be regarded as any kind of revenge for the murder committed. "
The German occupation forces initially wanted Løvestad to be tried by the Norwegians themselves, and it was considered to put him before a People's Court . The People's Court in Norway was set up along Nazi German lines and used in trials of a political nature, in this case it could mean acts of resistance or just harassment of members of the (NS). They were not very busy, their role, like in Germany was to create fear. However, the People's Courts had not yet sentenced anyone to death, so Minister of Justice Sverre Riisnæs ‘svarry reesness] therefore asked Josef Terboven that Løvestad should be brought before a German court-martial. Sverre Riisnæs svarry reesness] was a lawyer and I would have thought that a German court martial was not competent to judge the case. Of course legal niceties did not bother the Nazi overlords. That wish was granted, Løvestad was put on trial without the benefit of a defence lawyer and on 13 July 1943, he was sentenced to death by the Germans.
The death sentence was carried out on 3 September 1943 and the body was dumped in a mass grave at Trandumskogen [tra nums kogen]. Trandumskogen was the location of where the Nazi authorities dumped those that they killed. After the end of the war, on 27 July 1945, Løvestad was given a funeral with a full parade from the Oslo Fire Brigade , for whom he had worked. His body is today in grave two at Trandumskogen.
Meanwhile Willy Schermann and Herman Feldmann were deported from Norway on the ship Gotenland. They were sent to Auschwitz where they were murdered on 20 August 1943.

[ Ссылка ]

Please consider supporting me on Patreon. [ Ссылка ]

свернуть