On April 26, 1942 the Germans dynamited the entire village of
Telavåg, Norway and sent all of its inhabitants to prison and
concentration camps for their involvement in anti-Nazi activities.
In the 1940s Telavåg was a
small but productive fishing village on an island about one hour’s drive
from Bergen, although at that time it was only accessible by boat.
In May 1940, just one month after the invasion of Norway, two men from
Telavåg, Lauritz Telle, a 63-year-old fisherman, and his eldest son,
Lars, began organizing secret boat trips from Telavåg to Shetland.
People needing to escape the Gestapo for their participation in
illegal activities and those who wanted to help the British Army would
wait in hiding at the Telle farmhouse until a boat was ready.
In return, the British Army sent boatloads of weapons, ammunition,
radios, and other supplies for the growing resistance movement in
Norway. These Lars hid in boathouses and in the crevices along the rocky
coastline.
Fishing boats provided the transportation to and from Shetland as
they were the only type of boat allowed off the coast of Norway by the
Germans, but they were slow and the crossing took about 30 hours in good
weather. Naval officers in Shetland secretly armed the boats with
anti-aircraft machine guns.
For two years Lauritz and Lars had luck on their side: Lauritz was a
sailor who knew the North Sea routes in and out. The out-of-the-way
fishing village of Telavåg was far from any German forts, and remote
enough for people to own illegal radios without anyone raising any
eyebrows. The boats could leave Telavåg in the middle of the night and
be too far out to sea by daylight for the German planes to spot. From
May 1940 until January 1942, at least 136 people fled to Shetland via
Telavåg (although some reports have listed as many as 500). The
trafficking of people and weapons did not happen just in Telavåg, but
occurred all along the western coast of Norway during the war and was
referred to as “The Shetland Bus.”
In the spring of 1942 someone tipped off the Gestapo in Bergen about
Lauritz and Lars. It is difficult to imagine who, from such a tight and
small community, could have done such a thing. Was it Per Lie, the local
sheriff? His wife Rebekah was said to have cheered when the Germans
invaded Norway, and everyone knew her store carried far more supplies
than any other store in the area.
After the war Per published a small book called “The Truth about What
Happened at Telavåg” in an attempt to clear his name. He accused Lars
of being simply too naive and telling too many people about the
operations. He also offered the theory that a local man got mad at Lars
for having sold him a boat with a hole in it. This man complained that
he was going to tell the Gestapo about the family’s illegal radio.
On April 23 the Gestapo sent a man disguised as a Bible salesman to
Telavåg to see what information he could gain. One day later they sent a
spy disguised as someone wanting to go “on a fishing trip” – the code
phrase for getting a boat to Shetland. Lauritz made arrangements with
the man, but his wife soon found out that they had been given a false
name and address and that they might be in danger. Then, on April 26,
four German soldiers arrived at the Telle farmhouse in the middle of the
night, hoping to surprise any would-be escapers waiting in Lauritz’s
loft. Little did they know that on this particular night Lauritz was
hiding two armed secret agents sent by the British Special Operations
Executive (SOE). Emil Gustav Hvaal (codename ANCHOR) and Arne Værum
(codename PENGUIN) were to wait in Telavåg for further orders before
beginning operations elsewhere in Norway. Lauritz’s 13-year-old son,
Åge, was also asleep in the room.
When the Germans entered the loft they ordered everyone to get out of
bed and one hit Værum on the head with the butt of his gun. Værum, who
had been asleep with four firearms strapped to his chest, fired
immediately, killing one of the Gestapo. Hvaal began firing, but was
shot nine times. Hvaal survived and managed to kill another German
officer. Åge stood frozen with his arms up in the air. The other two
German officers ran to telephone their headquarters in Bergen.
Commissioner Terboven and his men at Telavåg on April 30, 1942. (Terboven is in sunglasses.)
The head Nazi commissioner in Norway, Josef Terboven, traveled to Telavåg himself to decide and oversee the town’s punishment.
Lauritz and his wife Martha, together with their son Åge, were taken
to the Gestapo headquarters in Bergen where they were interrogated and
tortured. Lars was taken to a concentration camp near Oslo with 18 other
men from Telavåg believed to have had some connection to the illegal
boat traffic. All other men from Telavåg between the ages of 16-60 were
sent to the Sachenhausen concentration camp outside Berlin. 31 of these
men died in the camp. The women and children were taken to a prisoner’s
camp a few hours from Bergen.
Marching of the men of Telavåg down to the boats that would take them to the concentration camp.
One man, only 8 at the time of the punishment, remembered watching
the men of the village walk down to the boats that would carry them to
the camps. Among them was his father. His mother ran out of the house
with their ration card and urged him to run and give it to his father.
He tried his best, but two German soldiers pointed their guns at him. He
had no idea that this would be the last time he ever saw his father. No
one had any idea what was happening; some thought they were just being
taken for questioning.
Commissioner Terboven also ordered the total destruction of Telavåg,
and that its name be removed from all maps. Telavåg was so fully
obliterated that not even the wells remained.
The destruction of Telavåg.
The story of Telavåg is known throughout Norway, and in the 1940s it
was reported throughout Europe as well. Telavåg was one of the few towns
in Western Europe punished by the German’s with total destruction.
The German leader for civil operations in Bergen, Heinrich Christen,
wrote in his diary about how sorry he was to have lost two of his best
men in Telavåg. About the people of Telavåg he wrote: “A hard destiny,
but it was necessary to hinder the coast people from repeating such
foolishness.”
Accounts from World War II often seek to portray the glory and
heroism of war, but this story has no heroic ending. All of the smuggled
ammunition was confiscated and no resistance operation out of Telavåg
took place. The Germans continued to occupy Norway for another two
years.
The wife of Emil Hvaal was allowed to visit her husband in the
hospital before he was taken away to the prison camp where he would be
executed. Her parting words to him were “Vær norsk.”
Vær norsk – Be Norwegian.
