Alf Pahlow Andresen, 2003
Alf Pahlow Andresen
27. October 1918 – 4. September 2005
Life before Imprisonment and Military Service
Alf Pahlow Andresen was born on 27 October 1918, in Kristiansand and grew up with relatives in Oslo after the early death of his mother. Following his interests, he joined the Norwegian Military Academy after graduating from high school in 1939 to complete a three-year officer training programme. After the German invasion in April 1940, he was called up for military service. He fought for the rescue of the Norwegian state gold and the defence of Norway. The Norwegian capitulation in June 1940 ended his military service.
Impact of Imprisonment on Career
After a failed attempt to start an underground newspaper with other resistance fighters, Alf Pahlow Andresen fled to Sweden in May 1941. The planned further escape to Great Britain from Gothenburg aboard the Kvarstad ship D/S Skytteren, which also included Arne Westby and Helge Stray Johansen, failed. He was imprisoned and initially taken to the internment camp Malag/Milag Nord near Bremen. In April 1943, he was sentenced by the Special CourtEstablished in each higher regional court district from 21 March 1933, the special courts served to quickly punish regime-critical behaviour. In so-called summary proceedings, several thousand people of different backgrounds were sentenced to death. in Kiel to five years in prison for “treasonous aiding and abetting the enemy.” As a convicted “Night-and-Fog”At least 7,000 people suspected of resistance from France, the Benelux countries, and Norway were deported to the German Reich and imprisoned there following the “Night-and-Fog”-Decree of 7 December 1941. They were completely isolated, given a number instead of their name, and were not allowed to contact relatives, fellow prisoners, or the outside world. Many died in custody or were sentenced to death and executed. prisoner, he went through the prisons and penitentiaries of Rendsburg, Sonnenburg, Wolfenbüttel, and, after a stopover in Magdeburg, Brandenburg-Görden. From winter 1944, he suffered from severe tuberculosis, particularly due to the harsh forced labour and increasingly difficult prison conditions in “overcrowded cellars.”
Two Kvarstad ships during the crossing. Drawing (excerpt), Wilfred Jensenius, 1945 (after the liberation)
Gedenkstätte Wolfenbüttel
Impact of Imprisonment on Career
After Soviet troops liberated the Brandenburg-Görden PenitentiaryThe sentence of penal servitude was imposed as a prison sentence for criminal offences along with the loss of civil rights. The milder prison sentence was imprisonment. Under the Nazi regime, the punitive measures imposed in penal servitude, particularly forced labour and deprivation, were significantly intensified. on 27 April 1945, Alf Pahlow Andresen, along with several Norwegian fellow prisoners, managed to reach US troops near Magdeburg. From there, he was flown to Great Britain and treated for tuberculosis at the Norwegian hospital in London. Upon his return to Norway in the summer of 1945, he saw himself only as a “shadow of his former self” and had to change his career plans. Marked by imprisonment, he switched from the military to the civilian defence sector. He worked both in the Norwegian Ministry of Defence and at NATO in Brussels as part of the Norwegian delegation and at NATO’s Northern Headquarters in Oslo.
Graphic showing the imprisonment timeline of the crews of all Kvarstad ships. Alf Pahlow Andresen’s imprisonment timeline from the Skytteren onwards is marked in red.
Alf Pahlow Andresen, Durch Nacht und Nebel.
Ein norwegischer Widerstandskämpfer in deutschen Gefängnissen.
Schriftenreihe der Gedenkstätte in der JVA Wolfenbüttel, 2024.
Fight for Compensation in the 1950s and 1960s
In September 1953, Alf Pahlow Andresen participated in the planned lawsuit for damages due to forced labour by Helge Stray Johansen. Additionally, in June 1960, he applied for compensation for imprisonment under the Bilateral Compensation AgreementBetween 1959 and 1964, the Federal Republic of Germany concluded bilateral compensation agreements with twelve Western European states. These agreements included lump-sum payments intended to settle all compensation claims. The distribution of the funds was the responsibility of the recipient state. (Globalabkommen) between the Federal Republic of Germany and Norway. He received compensation for 37 months in November 1960.
Renewed Compensation Efforts from 2001
In June 2001, he applied for compensation for forced labour with the International Organization for Migration (IOM), a partner organisation of the Foundation “Remembrance, Responsibility and Future” (EVZ). According to the foundation’s law, former concentration camp inmates and inmates of closed ghettos in Category A received up to 15,000 DM, while Category B, former forced labourers in industry, were entitled to a maximum of 5,000 DM. Alf Pahlow Andresen applied for compensation in Category A for Slavearbeid [slave labour] with the IOM. He stated that he had performed the harshest forced labour in the Nazi penitentiaries of Rendsburg, Sonnenburg, and Brandenburg-Görden, and in the Nazi prisons of Wolfenbüttel and Magdeburg, and had contracted tuberculosis as a result.
You see, we are still treated as inmates, and according to German jurists, we are to remain so for eternity. We are and remain criminals, a standpoint that is, to put it mildly, shocking.
Letter from Alf Pahlow Andresen to Jochen Pöhlandt, 15 February 2003 (excerpt)
Stigmatisation as an “Eternal Prisoner”?
In February and March 2003, Alf Pahlow Andresen complained to his friend Jochen Pöhlandt that so far only former crew members of the Kvarstad ships who had been imprisoned in concentration camps had received compensation for forced labour. He, on the other hand, had been exclusively in Nazi prisons. Therefore, he saw himself as an “eternal prisoner,” who from the German perspective was regarded as a criminal and not as a victim of the Nazis. A few months later, in July 2003, Alf Pahlow Andresen was indeed classified by the IOM not in Category A for concentration camp inmates, but in Category B for industrial forced labourers. He appealed against this in October 2003.
Appeal letter from Alf Pahlow Andresen to the IOM, 1 October 2003
Bundesarchiv Berlin,
IOM-Antrag Nr.1087221 Alf Pahlow Andresen
Late Revision
He withdrew this appeal in January 2004, as the reclassification from Category B to A had meanwhile taken place. In August 2003, all Nazi prisons and penitentiaries in which he had been imprisoned were recognised by the Foundation EVZ as concentration camp-like detention sites. However, Alf Pahlow Andresen passed away before the higher remaining amount of compensation due to him was paid out in 2006.
