Wilfred Jensenius

Wilfred Jensenius was born on 10 January 1911, in Oslo as the youngest of four children. He worked in Oslo as a draughtsman and cartoonist and began a career in the film industry as a director and producer in the early 1930s. After his marriage in 1938, his daughter Elisabeth was born in 1939. Just a few days after the German occupation of Norway, the Jensenius family fled to Sweden in April 1940.

The Kvarstad ship Storsten, with which Wilfred Jensenius wanted to flee to Great Britain, hit a sea mine on 1 April 1942, and was attacked by German fighter planes. He reached the southern Norwegian coast at Jøssingfjord in a lifeboat. There, he was arrested on 4 April 1942, and taken to the notorious prison in the Akershus Fortress in Oslo for interrogation. After five weeks, he was transported by ship to the naval internment camp Milag/Malag Nord near Bremen. Like other crew members of the Kvarstad ships, Wilfred Jensenius 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 “treasonable aiding and abetting the enemy.”

From Rendsburg Prison, Wilfred Jensenius was transferred to 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. and in the summer of 1944 to Wolfenbüttel Prison. During the transport to Sonnenburg Penitentiary, he was denied water as a political prisoner. In an interview with Norwegian radio at the end of May 1945 in London, he described the harsh forced labour conditions in Sonnenburg and Wolfenbüttel. The working hours were eleven hours, and if there were delays in work, the food ration was reduced. In Sonnenburg, he had to sew rifle slings, shoulder straps, and cartridge pouches. In Wolfenbüttel, he worked in the prison church, which had been converted into a workshop, manufacturing optical targeting devices for machine guns for the Braunschweig Voigtländer & Sohn AG Company.

After being liberated from Brandenburg-Görden Penitentiary, Wilfred Jensenius returned to his family in Norway via London in May 1945 as a changed man, marked by imprisonment. He could not continue his promising film career. Initially, he worked as an art teacher in Oslo schools until 1948. He then re-entered the film industry, but the trauma from imprisonment repeatedly limited his ability to work. He recorded his memories of imprisonment in numerous drawings.

The Wolfenbüttel Memorial Helped Wilfred Jensenius with Coming to Terms with the Past bei der Aufarbeitung

In September 1953, Helge Stray Johansen contacted Wilfred Jensenius. Helge Stray Johansen aimed to file a lawsuit for damages on behalf of 13 former Norwegian prisoners against the company Voigtländer & Sohn AG for forced labour in Wolfenbüttel Prison. The lawsuit did not materialise.

Wilfred Jensenius’s application for compensation in the Federal Republic under BEG was rejected in 1959 due to the residency rule. In July 1960, he submitted another, ultimately successful, application 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 Norway and the Federal Republic. From 1968, he also received a war victim’s pension. Henry Brym, chairman from 1963-1964 and secretary of the KrigsinvalideforbundetThe War Invalids’ Union or the War Invalids’ Association, founded in 1954, was the umbrella organisation in Norway for military and civilian associations representing all war victims, advocating for improvements in war victims’ pensions. [War Invalids Association] until 1982, was lifelong friends with Wilfred Jensenius and his wife Gerd Rogne Jensenius and supported him in the application process.

Wilfred Jensenius died on 23 March 1999. His widow, Gerd Rogne Jensenius, successfully applied for compensation for forced labour with the International Organization for Migration (IOM) as a partner organisation of the Foundation “Remembrance, Responsibility and Future” (EVZ) in 2001. According to the foundation’s law, survivors were eligible to apply if the affected victims had died after 16 February 1999.