Beisfjord massacre

The Beisfjord massacre (Norwegian: Beisfjord-massakren) was a massacre on 18 July 1942 in Beisfjord, Norway of 288 political prisoners who were killed at Lager I Beisfjord (German for "Beisfjord Camp No.1", Norwegian: Beisfjord fangeleir). The massacre had been ordered a few days earlier by the Reichskommissar for Norway Josef Terboven.

In order to build defences in Norway against the Allies, the Germans brought in around 5,000 Yugoslavian political prisoners and prisoners-of-war — in addition to prisoners of other nationalities — to work as forced labour on infrastructure projects. In the summer of 1942 a number of prisoners started arriving in North Norway as a result of the transfer of prisoners from the new Croatian puppet regime to German authorities who needed manpower for projects in Norway. This acquisition of manpower for projects in Norway was under Organisation Todt .

In 2013 Dagbladet quoted a book author (Knut Flovik Thoresen) saying—in regards to the camps that were to cost the lives of 2,368 Yugoslavs—that "Norwegian [camp] guards' [in North Norway] gruesome violations against Yugoslav prisoners in Norway during the war, were so cruel that I have hardly ever read about more brutal acts". Furthermore, that many of the victims were Serbs from the independent state of Croatia (NDH) —not partisans, but chosen based on ethnicity. In the first deployment of camp guards that were sent to North Norway, some used their bayonets so often "that even the Germans had enough of it". The second group were not issued bayonets, for fear that they would become as blood thirsty. (The guards from these groups came from Hirdvaktbataljonen—a battalion within Hirden, that had the responsibility for guarding the prison camps in North Norway, between June 1942 and April 1943. 500 of these guards served at four main camps—Lager 1 Beisfjord, Lager 2 Elsfjord, Lager 3 Rognan and Lager 4 Karasjok—and their satellite prison camps at Korgen, Osen, and at Lake Jernvann on Bjørnfjell.)

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