12. A political prisoner’s secret diary described the food provided at one camp
Odd Nansen was a Norwegian who joined in the resistance movement, providing written denouncements of the Nazis, for which he was arrested by the Gestapo and sent to Sachsenhausen as a political prisoner. He was later sent to Veidal Prison Camp in Norway to be used as a forced laborer during the construction of snow fences and snow sheds along a roadway. Nansen kept a diary describing the conditions at Sachsenhausen and at the forced labor camp, which was later published as a memoir in Norway under the title Day after Day in 1946. He survived the war.
In his diary, he described the food which was served in an entry dated Wednesday, 3 November, 1943. The meal was ladled out for consumption outdoors, and according to Nansen between where it was doled out and where it was meant to be consumed, it became quite cold. “The soup, which is degenerating more and more – it now consists of boiled rutabaga and a little cabbage with potatoes added…” Nansen described being surrounded by Russian and Ukrainian prisoners while consuming his soup, all of them begging for scraps from his “aluminum dishes”.