OG SÅ KOM BEFRIERNE Utdrag av min dagbok gjennom – “And Then the Liberators Came – Excerpts from My Diary Over 5 Years” by Albert Jaern – a documentary diary of the years of horror written by Albert Jæren during the Nazi occupation in Norway, accompanied by dozens of woodcuts he produced during the events. Published by Ekko Forlag. Oslo – 1945 – First edition. Norwegian.
“Today a prisoner escaped from the Gestapo at Victoria Terrace, jumping over the railing and down Russeløkkveien. Several shots were fired after him. Did the Gestapo think the man would continue fleeing after falling from a height of 20 meters?”
Albert Jæren (1893–1949) was a Norwegian book designer and illustrator. Throughout the five years of the war, he kept a secret diary in which he expressed, through brief descriptions accompanied by woodcuts, the horrors that took place in Norway during the five-year occupation of the country by Hitler’s forces, from 1940 to 1945. Jæren created woodcuts or linocuts, and with simple lines and surfaces, he consistently managed to convey his message with striking clarity. He began his diary on April 8, with the German invasion of Norway, simply to document the unimaginable daily events. Each spread in the book presents on the right a woodcut depicting an event that occurred before his eyes, and on the left a vivid description of that scene, as well as his experiences during the war years. In this way, a series of over 100 woodcuts was created, each one a living testimony to the horrors of those times.
Among other events, he documents a corpse being removed from a coffin and thrown onto the sidewalk in silence by the Nazis; the flight of civilians from Oslo following a rumor that the city was about to be bombed at any moment; farmers gathering to fight the approaching Nazis armed only with sickles and axes — their work tools turned into weapons of war; animals fleeing from a forest fire set by the Nazis; Jews emerging from their hiding places in search of food; the manager of an Oslo restaurant greeting new guests with a “Heil Hitler” salute; Oslo’s walls plastered with posters in support of the Germans, hung by collaborators; and the Germans consistently taking revenge on the civilian population whenever they failed in their military missions. Equally moving are the scenes of liberation described by Jæren: “Monday, May 7, at 17:45. Peace, peace, peace. It’s hard to believe it’s true. It’s a feeling I’ve never known before. I’m not just happy — I’m strange. I see people crying. I understand and I don’t understand. There are flags everywhere. G-d knows where they came from. I saw the first flag at the University Library, and then they appeared everywhere. It’s red, blue and white — it’s burning. Something strange must have happened. I pinch my arm — yes, I’m alive, I’m awake — and then I’m allowed to speak out loud.”
And many more deeply moving diary entries.
Jæren published his diary at the end of the war in the hope that his countrymen would never forget the horrors of the Holocaust:
“I hope the youngest generation will find in it something that can preserve the memory of tyranny and oppression. We must not forget what happened, ” he writes in the introduction.
111 [3] leaves. Hardcover with the original dust jacket and protective nylon wrapper. Printed on thick paper. A perfect copy with the pre-title engraving (lacking in most known copies). Very good condition.
