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| Cover design shows Grini Concentration Camp main building. Print made by Ole Olden and smuggled out as his greeting for Christmas 1941. Nothing can keep a star from shining. |
A couple of weeks ago, I posted "Under occupation" as one of the ways I'm trying to make sense of the current USA presidency and its actions.
A commenter on that post mentioned Myrtle Wright's book Norwegian Diary 1940-1945. I just finished re-reading it, to my great benefit.
On April 9, 1940, Wright was a Quaker peace worker who happened to be on her fourth day of a brief visit to Norway when the Germans invaded that morning. She ended up remaining there for nearly four years. Thirty years later, her account of those years was published by the Friends Peace and International Relations Committee in London. It's now out of print but there are used copies on the market. Online, a Russian translation is available in various formats.
After the initial conquest, the German occupation of Norway seemed relatively mild at first; the occupiers hoped to convince Norwegians that the invasion was simply to protect Norway from the UK's hostile plans. German soldiers conducted themselves correctly, by and large; the German overlords mostly operated behind the facade of the Quisling government and other local collaborators. In summer 1942, the mass arrests of Jewish people began, including a group of Jewish children who became a special concern of Wright and her friends. Executions were more frequent, private radios were outlawed on pain of death, labor conscription began (often destined for Germany). The occupation became much harsher. As life in Norway became more and more complicated under these conditions, Wright began keeping a diary starting in June 1942 in order to record and remember significant events, travels, and contacts as they happened. The first four chapters of her book were written after the war, and cover her arrival in Oslo, the German invasion, the famous teachers' and pastors' acts of resistance. After those first four chapters, the contemporary diary itself begins, and takes up most of the rest of her book.
The book was published in 1974, the very year I became a Friend. In 1975, after my visits to Moscow and Leningrad, I spent a couple of weeks with my grandparents in Oslo. On Sundays I attended the Oslo Friends Meeting, and there I met some of the people whose names come up in Wright's book, and visited some of the locations she described.
Norwegian Diary reminded me of Patricia Cockrell's more recent Sketches from a Quaker's Moscow Journey. In both cases, much of their service consisted of making and keeping appointments, arranging meetings, carrying food, money, clothing, and letters, dealing with bureaucracy, responding to emergencies, and observing discretion in risky situations. The level and character of repression differ between the two cases, but, sadly, that gap is narrowing.
I wondered—what might Myrtle Wright have recorded in her book that we might find interesting in our present situation? Here are some of her observations on living in an occupied country.
The importance of community. Even after being unexpectedly trapped in a country under occupation, Myrtle Wright was not alone. Her overlapping networks—including Quakers, Women's International League for Peace and Freedom, and Old Woodbrookers (alumni/ae of Woodbrooke College in Birmingham, England), and their families and friends—were sources of mutual support. Although at the start of her story, Oslo had just one Quaker member, there were frequent opportunities for worship with likeminded people. Occasionally Wright was able to travel to Stavanger, the historic center of Norwegian Quaker life.
The importance of information. After the German authorities confiscated private radios upon pain of death, Norwegians listened to BBC news and similar sources on hidden radios at great personal risk, and then passed along war news by word of mouth and through underground newspapers—also a very risky business. Information about arrests, prisoner transport, and incarcerations, about the underground railroad to Sweden (its departures, arrivals in Sweden, failures and betrayals) needed to circulate under the noses of the occupiers. The book gives several examples of the code words used by the resistance. Despite all the impediments, Norwegians found ways to keep themselves informed. One example: the amazing story of the White Rose circle in Germany became known in Norway.
Pacifists' dilemmas in war and occupation. Myrtle Wright and many of her friends were committed pacifists, yet (as she writes eloquently) they understood that Allied successes on the battlefield would hasten the end of the war. Within Norway, most people agreed that nonviolence was the only basis for resistance, but many people quietly cheered the Allies' advances in the USSR, (Stalingrad is often mentioned), North Africa, Italy, and France. With these wartime realities, Wright and her friends preferred to discuss postwar visions of freedom, justice, and the growth of empathy without distinctions.
War and occupation create understandable bitterness. The pacifist outlook, as expressed by Wright and many of her friends, not only made violent resistance unacceptable, it also helped them preserve empathy (for example) for the German cities being bombed by the Allied air forces. Such spiritually grounded empathy was nothing if not universal, and would be badly needed when the time for repair and restoration would come, as these circles believed it would.
The value of humor. Humor has the power to build community, point out awkward truths, reward divergent thinking, and restore perspective.
Myrtle Wright tells this story from Grini concentration camp:
At Christmas the prisoners had decorated the barracks and Per Krohg had painted a frieze. Fehmer, from the Gestapo ... came to inspect. He was evidently impressed and stopped in front of Per Krohg's frieze with the remark, "It is remarkable what a primitive nation can produce under German control." This became a byword in Grini and, when prisoners were digging ditches in slow temple or on some other work, they would say to each other, "It is wonderful what a primitive nation can produce when under German control."
The importance of rest. The constant demands on Wright and her friends eventually brought them to the very limits of their energy. As the war went on and restrictions on travel increased, it became harder and harder to do the usual Norwegian thing—hiking on mountain paths, along rivers, on glaciers, in meadows ... and away from the streses of daily life. Some of the most beautiful passages in Wright's book describe these wonderful escapes, even as they find their movements being more and more restricted by the occupation.
There are few direct parallels between the occupation that Myrtle Wright experienced and the looming threats to democracy in the USA, but I think that some of the values and capacities that aided her and her friends remain valid for today's resistance.
July 10 Saturday (from Norwegian Diary, 1943).
Landing on Sicily—the news has gone round like lightning and spirits rise at once. Everyone adds a few more details until there is no more to tell, and rumour does the rest. At least this is another step, and a long-awaited one. A pacifist, what should she think? Many lives will be lost, but every day of delay means more lives, to say nothing of illness and misery. The fury of this disease of violence is not likely to abate without much more loss of life, and, therefore, can one feel a little relief if only the end draws nearer? The physical death of the soldier cannot be worse than the torturing decay of the concentration camp, or the ghetto, or the terror of the civil population in the bombed towns. But physical death is not the ultimate test—what of the spirit which is bread in the warring nations and the occupied countries? We at least can do nothing to stop the fury of the armed warfare; our job lies in another direction and is quite clear, if only we can get it done. We have to prepare the minds of men for the moment when they again have choice and can by their actions, determine the way the peace shall be built; or will the end of the outward war show that Nazism, beaten in the battlefield, has won a victory in men's hearts?
Myrtle Wright (Norw.) married Quaker educator Philip Radley in 1951 and was then known as Myrtle Radley. She died in 1991. More about Myrtle and Philip.
Meanwhile, in Russia: Meduza's Lilia Yapporova and colleagues survey the realities and dysfunctions of the Russian opposition inside and outside Russia.
Trump and Musk aren't just tiptoeing toward autocracy.
Pope Francis denounces inhumanity to refugees.
From Tim Gee at Friends World Committee for Consultation, a letter to Friends for 2025.
Friday PS: "They won't let me down." On the anniversary of Navalny's death.
Evan Nicole Bell performs Albert King's classic "Crosscut Saw."
