02:05

Ruth Deutschmann

Benamin Epp

Wien

Sylvia Manning - Baumgartner

1944

And then ? we were taken to the prison camp ? oh no, that was later. Then we were deployed to the border between Norway, Sweden and Finland. The last combat base was there at the border triangle. I was there too. We had no more contact with the enemy there, because the Russians were not allowed into Norway. The Norwegian border was the end for them. They really wanted us as prisoners, but the English said: "No, they are on English soil, so they are English prisoners." Otherwise they would have handed us over to the Russians. That’s how we made it through. But all the villages up there ? burnt down one after the other. That's why the Norwegians don’t like the Austrians ? they hate them. Because they .. it was the Gebirgsjäger. There were a lot of Germans there too and so-called bounty Germans.. from Romania, God knows who-all was gathered there. But all of them were part of the Gebirgsjäger, that meant Austrian. And they hate them ? to this day. They are relatively friendly towards the Germans. The Germans didn’t do much damage, but the Gebirgsjäger were there during the whole Norwegian campaign. The first and also the last conquest, and the final pillage down the countryside were conducted by the Gebirgsjäger. They were Austrian. The Norwegians hate us to this day. Yes, a lot of evil things happened.