Arne Westby, 2015

After two failed escape attempts to Sweden in the summer of 1940, Arne Westby, along with some colleagues from the Lehmkuhl Company, began working for the resistance. He was supposed to provide the resistance movement with observations about the occurrences at Oslo-Fornebu Airport, where Lehmkuhl was conducting assembly work. After warnings about his imminent arrest, he managed to escape to Sweden in June 1941. He initially arrived in Gothenburg as a political refugee, then moved to Stockholm in August 1941. There, he worked for the Norwegian embassy, among other things, as a messenger. In March 1942, the embassy urgently recommended that he flee to Great Britain as a passenger on the Kvarstad ships. He was assigned to the D/S Skytteren.

The German Navy captured Arne Westby on 1 April 1942. German patrol boats had previously intercepted the D/S Skytteren in the Swedish-Norwegian border area near Skagerrak, and the crew scuttled the ship. He was taken to the naval internment camp Milag/Malag Nord near Tarmstedt, 30 km northeast of Bremen, via Frederikshavn. In April 1943, he was sentenced to five years in a penitentiary by the special court in Kiel for “treasonable aiding and abetting the enemy.” After imprisonment in the Rendsburg Prison and the Sonnenburg 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., he was transferred to the Wolfenbüttel Prison in June 1944. In Sonnenburg, he contracted a severe eye infection. In Wolfenbüttel, Arne Westby, like his fellow prisoners, performed forced labour for the Voigtländer & Sohn Company, manufacturing optical war equipment. He was responsible for a grinding machine there.

On 8 April 1945, the “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. prisoners were transferred from Wolfenbüttel to the Magdeburg Prison due to the advancing American troops. Arne Westby was separated from his fellow prisoners and, presumably due to his poor health, was transported by truck to Genthin and left there. From there, he managed to reach a military hospital in Burg, 30 km away, on his own but was re-arrested and interrogated. Due to his military uniform, which had been returned to him in Wolfenbüttel, the Germans believed his claim that he came from Milag/Malag Nord near Bremen and was thus a prisoner of war. Therefore, he was taken to the POW camp StalagMain Camp (Stammlager, in short: Stalag) is the term for camps where the Wehrmacht housed prisoners of war with the rank of enlisted men. From there, the prisoners were usually distributed to labour detachments. XI A Altengrabow, about 20 km southeast of Burg. US troops liberated the camp on 3 May 1945. Arne Westby made his way to London via Hildesheim and Reims, where he was treated at the Norwegian hospital. His health was extremely poor: he was diagnosed with jaundice, colitis, and pneumonia.

Although Arne Westby recovered from his illnesses in London, the tuberculosis he contracted during his imprisonment was only discovered and treated after his return to Norway in November 1945.

His health problems repeatedly limited him professionally, so that from 1959 he was finally certified as completely unable to work.

Arne Westby dedicated his life to educational work as a volunteer contemporary witness with the organisation Hvite Busser (White Buses). Since 1992, this organisation has been offering school trips to memorial sites of former concentration camps in Germany and Europe, inspired by the “White Buses” of the Swedish Red Cross.

In June 1960, Arne Westby applied for detention compensation 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). Just two months later, in August 1960, he received compensation for 37 months of imprisonment (1 April 1942 – 8 May 1945). In addition, he was granted a one-time disability payment. According to the law passed in Norway for the distribution of compensation under the Bilateral Compensation Agreement (Globalabkommen), there was an entitlement to this one-time payment if the disability had been proven for at least five years and was at least 30 percent. Arne Westby met both conditions. Apart from these compensation payments, he received a war victim’s pension.