Beisfjord massacre
The Beisfjord massacre () was a massacre on 18 July 1942 at Beisfjord Camp No.1 (; ) in Beisfjord, Norway of 288 political prisoners. The massacre had been ordered a few days earlier by Josef Terboven, the Reichskommissar for Nazi-occupied Norway. Background In order to build defences in Norway against the Allies, the Germans brought in around 5,000 Yugoslavian political prisoners and prisoners-of-war—in addition to prisoners of other nationalities—to work as forced labour on infrastructure projects. In the summer of 1942 a number of prisoners started arriving in North Norway as a result of the transfer of prisoners from the new Croatian puppet regime to German authorities who needed manpower for projects in Norway. This acquisition of manpower for projects in Norway was under Organisation Todt Einsatzgruppe Wiking. In 2013 Dagbladet quoted Knut Flovik Thoresen saying—in regards to the camps that were to cost the lives of 2,368 Yugoslavs—that "Norwegian [camp] guards' [in North Norway] gruesome violations against Yugoslav prisoners in Norway during the war, were so cruel that I have hardly ever read about more brutal acts". Furthermore, many of the victims were Serbs from the independent state of Croatia (NDH)—not partisans, but chosen based on ethnicity. In the first deployment of camp guards that were sent to North Norway, some used their bayonets so often "that even the Germans had enough of it". The second group were not issued bayonets, for fear that they would become as bloodthirsty. (The guards from these groups came from Hirdvaktbataljonen—a battalion within Hirden, that had the responsibility for guarding the prison camps in North Norway, between June 1942 and April 1943. 500 of these guards served at four main camps—Lager 1 Beisfjord, Lager 2 Elsfjord, Lager 3 Rognan and Lager 4 Karasjok—and their satellite prison camps at Korgen, Osen, and at Lake Jernvann on Bjørnfjell.) The number of individuals victimized by SS-kommandant Hermann Dolp and his German and Norwegian subordinates, might total 3,000 or even 4,000. In 2013, Flovik Thoresen said, "You can be sure that if Norwegian prisoners had been exposed to similar [atrocities], then many of the perpetrators would have been sentenced to death. Instead most were let off with sentences more lenient than those received by women who served as nurses at the front lines". There were 31 camps between Bergen and Hammerfest during World War II. "[F]rom June 1942 until March 1943, regularly there were such executions of Yugoslavs [as at Beisfjord and Bjørnfjell ] in Norwegian camps. 27 prisoners were shot at Ulven near Bergen, and 26 were shot in Tromsø during a ship's arrival. In both cases, the prisoners were told that the sick were going to hospital. In the Karaskjok camp, [and] in Botn, in Korgen and in the Osen camps, groups of 10 to 50 sick prisoners were removed from the camps and shot. The SS cleaned out the infirmaries in this manner", according to the Norwegian Center for Studies of Holocaust and Religious Minorities. The involvement of the Norwegian Public Roads Administration was