Beisfjord massacre
The Beisfjord massacre () was a massacre on 18 July 1942 at Beisfjord Camp No.1 (; ) in Beisfjord, Norway of 288 political prisoners. The massacre had been ordered a few days earlier by Josef Terboven, the Reichskommissar for Nazi-occupied Norway. Background In order to build defences in Norway against the Allies, the Germans brought in around 5,000 Yugoslavian political prisoners and prisoners-of-war—in addition to prisoners of other nationalities—to work as forced labour on infrastructure projects. In the summer of 1942 a number of prisoners started arriving in North Norway as a result of the transfer of prisoners from the new Croatian puppet regime to German authorities who needed manpower for projects in Norway. This acquisition of manpower for projects in Norway was under Organisation Todt Einsatzgruppe Wiking. In 2013 Dagbladet quoted Knut Flovik Thoresen saying—in regards to the camps that were to cost the lives of 2,368 Yugoslavs—that "Norwegian [camp] guards' [in North Norway] gruesome violations against Yugoslav prisoners in Norway during the war, were so cruel that I have hardly ever read about more brutal acts". Furthermore, many of the victims were Serbs from the independent state of Croatia (NDH)—not partisans, but chosen based on ethnicity. In the