Back to the Front

The son of this soldier sent photos, taken by his father, to amateur historian Johan B. Siida in hopes he could identify the location where they were taken. Many are from Kirkenes and Jakobsnes.

Karin Johnsen, the local tourist office manager, is often the first person to greet the former German and Austrian soldiers and their families who return to Kirkenes to revisit the town they occupied.

The veterans come with a desire to share photos, memories and apologies, and Johnsen is there to listen.

But this elderly man marched in without a greeting, flanked by a group of men on either side. He silently began to cry.

-I thought he was sick, Johnsen says.

-The others were silent. When he finally spoke, the man apologized.

-He said he was sorry for all the bad things he had done and everybody had done, Johnsen said.

It’s not every day that a former soldier of the Third Reich enters the small tourist office located in Kirkenes’ library, but Johnsen had seen enough men like him to understand why he was apologizing.

German and Austrian soldiers occupied Kirkenes for most of the Second World War. Young soldiers spent their early twenties there, fathered children with local women and stayed until October 1944, just before the war ended.

By then, the town had been bombed to pieces. People had taken to the mountains to live in caves during the summer of 1944, when some of the worst bombing took place. Kirkenes was one of the most-bombed places of all during World War II, enduring more than 300 attacks.

Johnsen’s parents and grandparents lived through the war in Kirkenes and she can often relate to soldiers and their families when they come back to the town. Yet when the man who said sorry came in to her office, she had no idea what to say.

-I was embarrassed, Johnsen says.

-It was only me so I had to stand there and represent the whole of Finnmark. I felt I didn’t know what to do. On behalf of everybody I had to say ‘It’s ok.’

Without saying much else, the man and his group of friends turned and left the office, leaving Johnsen to mull over what just happened.

It’s not unusual for German or Austrian soldiers to come back to Finnmark county in Northern Norway to see the place they spent almost four years. Before barracks were built, many of these soldiers lived in apartments in vacant rooms of people’s homes. The occupying soldiers became a part of the community. When these men return, some of them tell Johnsen that they spent in Kirkenes were the best of their lives.

-It was their teens too, Johnsen says, but the soldiers seem to be afraid the local people don’t look back with the same fondness.

-Some think people here hate them, Johnsen says, but they hesitantly share stories of their time in Kirkenes.

-I never push them to say anything, she says.

Some bring back photos their fathers took in Kirkenes during the war, which are now displayed in the Sør-Varanger museum. Many former soldiers or their relatives come back to talk about and see places they remember, such as the mine.

-It’s like they want to tell somebody. It’s like we have something in common, Johnsen says. And in some ways, they do. Johnsen’s grandmother never seemed to get over the war even years after the occupying soldiers left.

-She was mostly angry about the war, Johnsen says. She never forgot what it was like to live under the constant fear of bombs dropping.

-When the weather was clear she would say, “Oh it’s bomb weather.”

When the end of the war came, Johnsen’s grandmother was hiding in Andersgrotta, a cave carved out of the hillside to protect people from falling bombs.

Not having lived through the war herself, Johnsen doesn’t have the same anger or bad memories. She tries to be understanding when she meets the former soldiers.

-I’m not here to judge, she says.

-I know they did horrible things here but I want to show them respect. It’s not so black and white. Over the years the one side versus another dichotomy of the war has faded and evolved.

The Cold War with the Soviet Union meant much of the cooperative history between Norwegians and Russians and the occupation of Kirkenes during the war went unspoken.

- It’s a pity, Johnsen says, that this history is not shared more widely. No doubt at the tourist office she will continue to learn more about it as visitors come to Kirkenes this summer, but in so many ways these word-of-mouth histories are incomplete.

Johnsen never even got the name of the man who said sorry, let alone a chance to ask questions about the role he played in the occupation. She is still wondering what made him come to her office so many years after the war to give a simple, anonymous apology.

- Maybe just to get the peace of mind for himself.