The Long Norwegian Night

This SPECIAL EDITION for the iPad features WWII archival video and over 100 original illustrations.


O.M. Magnussen of the WWII Norwegian resistance is picked up by the Gestapo (the Nazis took over Norway in 1940) in '41 and endures three prisons and two concentration camps. He secretly records prison life in notes and drawings, smuggled out after his release in '45, which he expands into the narrative, Vi Ventet (We Are Waiting) under his prison name. In 2005, an English interpretation of the narrative entitled The Long Norwegian Night by Kaare Bolgen, a childhood friend of Magnussen's, is found in Mr. Bolgen's papers after his death (Bolgen emigrated to the U.S. in the 1930s). His account traces the physical and psychological levels of Magnussen's survival and meticulously observes the senseless routines and atrocities of the S.S. and prison administrations. Techniques on when to adapt or work the system to the prisoners' advantage are reported, occasionally with humor, but always committed to not giving up.