The display will feature photographs and documents telling of the occupation of Norway by Germany in 1940 and about Soviet POWs who were put into concentration camps set up in that country by the Nazi occupiers. The items on show will also tell visitors about Norwegian people's aid for the POWs, the return of these latter to their home country, V-E celebrations in Norway in 1945, and the conservation of monuments and memorial complexes built here to commemorate Soviet POWs. Among the exhibits will be objects prisoners made with their own hands.
"Norwegians would risk their lives to try and help Soviet prisoners. They would dig out small canals to put fish in [for the prisoners to catch], find out which road the prisoners were to be taken to work only to scatter sacks filled with food by the side of that road, and they would try to hand their clothing, shoes and cigarettes over to the prisoners inside the camp. The appreciative POWs would make bric-a-bracs to offer Norwegians as a gift-cigarette cases, statuettes, that kind of thing. All these objects are kept in Norwegian families like relics and are passed on from one generation to the next, " one of the organizers told RIA.
An estimated 60,000 to 80,000 Soviet prisoners went through Nazi death camps in occupied Norwegian territories during World War Two. They were used as forced labor in the construction of German railways and airfields.
The forthcoming display is a collaboration between Russia and Norway.
