“Digital archive of Norwegian prisoners 1940-45” is a collaborative project between ARKIVET Peace and Human Rights Centre and The Falstad Centre. It comprises the development of an online database of Norwegians who were political prisoners during WW2.
The basis for information on who the 44 000 Norwegian prisoners were is a database owned by the National Archives, which was compiled by a team led by former resistance fighter and prisoner Kristian Ottosen in connection with the publication of the reference work Norwegians in Captivity 1940-45 (published in 1995 and a revised edition in 2004).
The National Archives in Oslo has also helped with the tracking, digitization and publication of tens of thousands of documents from relevant archives.
On this website, each prisoner has their own page with biographical information and information about their captivity. Furthermore, each prison or camp has its own page, with historical information, geographical location and a list of prisoners related to this specific place. An archive of references and an archive of short, contextual articles are under development.
For the time being, the database is in Norwegian only. In the long term, we would like to develop a full multilingual version.