end of August 2024

Vajswerk’s research on Nazi forced labour in Northern Norway began in 2018. We invited historians from Berlin and Belgrade, Narvik, Arkhangelsk and Stockholm to participate in a colloquium. It took place at the Museum Berlin-Karlshorst, a historical place where WW II in Europe came to an end with the unconditional German surrender. We worked in tandems and the result was a research theatre play that was shown, either in its entirety or in excerpts, in Germany, Norway, Serbia, Russia and Sweden.

In Summer 2021 we started a bus-trip in Belgrade. Our goal was to cover the 4000 kilometres from the Sava and Danube across the Arctic Circle to the Atlantic coast. We intended to follow in the footsteps of forced labourers who were deported from German-occupied Serbia to German-occupied Norway. Our bus-trip ended up in an accident south of Berlin.

In late summer 2024, we started again and finally reached the sites of the former forced labourers camps for Serbian (Yugoslavian) prisoners in Beisfjord and Bjørnfjell in Northern Norway.

Three of us, who were unable to manage the two day-and-night-long train trip, travelled with the others in mind! We kept in close mobile phone contact, sent photos and met digitally when the travellers reached the memorial in Beisfjord.