IVAR BØYUM

Ivar Bøyum married Mimmi Thorkildsen and moved to Oslo. He got a job as a car mechanic at Fram Motor, which at the time was the biggest car company in Norway and had e.g. responsible for the maintenance of the King's cars. During his time at Fram Motor, he was among other things involved in setting up the Car Workers' Association. When we get to 1940, Ivar had moved on and started his own car workshop called Etterstadgaten Bilverksted.

The arrest

During the Second World War there was a strong resistance movement in Norway. This meant that the German occupying power arrested and imprisoned many Norwegians and many were executed. On 7 June 1943 there was a raid in Ivar's car workshop and they found weapons. This led to Ivar being imprisoned, but fortunately not interrogated (which often entailed torture).

Grini Prison Camp

He was sent to Grini prison camp just outside Oslo (pictured above). Here he was imprisoned for about 6 months before he was sent on. In the Grini camp his prisonear number was: 12009

Sachsenhausen concentration camp

Sachsenhausen concentration camp is a camp just outside of Berlin. In this area there were many businesses that were important for German war industry. In the concentration camp there were people from all over Europe. In 1943, this camp was not part of the extermination of Jews, but the Russian prisoners of war were extremely badly treated and many were executed. Prisoners were used in slave labor / forced labor in the factories around Sachsenhausen. The Norwegians who were held captive here were not the worst off, but they received little and bad food, and had to do slave labor like everyone else. Ivar arrived at the camp on 9 December 1943 and was put to forced labor as a car builder in a car workshop during the time he was there (until the end of the war). He had prisoner number 73880 in Sachsenhausen.

The relase

When the war was over and the prisoners were released by allied forces, it turned out that most of the prisoners in Sachsenhausen were in very bad shape. Because of little and bad food at the same time as they had hard work, even the Norwegians had to receive treatment, and be fed with nutritious food so that they gained weight before it was safe to send them home. For Ivar, this meant that he spent some time gaining weight, and was then sent to Norway with Red Cross buses called "the white buses". Unfortunately, the health burdens on Ivar, like so many others, had been so severe that he never recovered when he returned home. He died a few years after the war.