Osvald Harjo (30 September 1910 – 20 April 1993) was a Norwegian resistance member during

World War II World War II or the Second World War, often abbreviated as WWII or WW2, was a world war that lasted from 1939 to 1945. It involved the vast majority of the world's countries—including all of the great powers—forming two opposin ...

, and a prisoner in

Soviet The Soviet Union,. officially the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics. (USSR),. was a List of former transcontinental countries#Since 1700, transcontinental country that spanned much of Eurasia from 1922 to 1991. A flagship communist state, ...

Gulag The Gulag, an acronym for , , "chief administration of the camps". The original name given to the system of camps controlled by the GPU was the Main Administration of Corrective Labor Camps (, )., name=, group= was the government agency in ...

camps for more than a decade. After being arrested and tortured by the

Gestapo The (), abbreviated Gestapo (; ), was the official secret police of Nazi Germany and in German-occupied Europe. The force was created by Hermann Göring in 1933 by combining the various political police agencies of Prussia into one organi ...

in 1942, he managed to escape from custody and fled into the Soviet Union. Here, he was accused of being a German spy, and convicted to 15 years forced labour. He was released in 1955, after pressure from the

Norwegian Prime Minister The prime minister of Norway ( no, statsminister, which directly translates to "minister of state") is the head of government and chief executive of Norway. The prime minister and Cabinet (consisting of all the most senior government department ...

during a visit in Moscow.

Paul Engstad Paul Øistein Engstad (13 October 1926 – 13 May 2012) was a Norwegian writer and politician for the Labour Party. He was born in Sauda. He was a journalist in the Labour-aligned newspaper ''Arbeiderbladet'', and held several positions in the La ...

wrote Harjo's memoir book ' ( en, Moscow knows no tears) in 1956.

References

1910 births 1993 deaths People from Sør-Varanger Norwegian resistance members Norwegian memoirists Norwegian torture victims Norwegian escapees Escapees from German detention People convicted of spying Foreign Gulag detainees Norwegian people imprisoned abroad 20th-century Norwegian writers 20th-century memoirists {{Norway-bio-stub