The day Torstein Axelsen was arrested was the start of a more than two-year journey that took him to a number of prisons and detention camps in Norway and Germany. Although his time at Grini was difficult, what he witnessed in the concentration camps in Germany was far worse. At Sachsenhausen, starvation, suffering and death were part of daily life. But Torstein was determined not to end up in a pile of corpses along with thousands of other prisoners. To survive, he had to shut out the gruesome sights and sounds.  

In the spring of 1945, he was put on one of the White Buses and was soon able to return to his family in Risør.

“If I had allowed all the camp’s barbarity and misery to enter my mind, I’m afraid I would quickly have gone under.”

Torstein Axelsen