Although Axel Hopstock was arrested for espionage and sentenced to death, he avoided both death and deportation to Germany. At Grini, he was put in charge of the camp pharmacy and newly established herb garden, where vital medicines were to be grown for the Germans. The job gave him not only a high status among the prisoners but probably also saved his life. His name was called out for deportation several times, but each time he was declared “unfit for transport” by Grini’s German physician, who did not want to lose his pharmacist.

After 28 long months at Grini, the war was finally over and Hopstock could travel home a free man. But he remembers the transition from imprisonment to liberty and return to his family in Kragerø as a difficult time.

“My father demanded that I work through the summer and take my exams that same autumn. They didn’t understand. My parents didn’t understand what I had been through.”

Axel Hopstock