Howarth, in We Die Alone, proposed what would, for Baalsrud, be the essential question: "Was he right, as a soldier, to let women and children put their lives in such terrible danger?". An avalanche buried him up to his neck. Together, he and the old man stared out at the valley where, 44 years earlier, he had staggered, snow-blind, after an avalanche, making his way to the safety of Marius's farm. Det gjekk to r fr dei . His headstone is modestly situated next to the fence by the entrance to the churchyard, and is no different from any of the other headstones, except for the inscription: Thank you to everyone who helped me to freedom in 1943. Baalsrud tumbled some 90 metres down into the valley, destroying his skis and losing his poles and satchel. Source: Flickr.com/kimberlykv. Not far from the shore is a small shed, about two by three metres, where they left him on a wooden platform, unable to walk, but within reach of food, water, a knife and a bottle of homemade hard liquor. "Next time it's war, it's not me coming down this ice. Jan Baalsrud was born in Kristiania on the 13th December 1917. Walkers with a normal level of fitness will take about 3.54 hours to walk the trail, including a lunch stop. Lise Haug Halvorsen (tel. A team of helpers finally found him again, taking him further south to the Skaidijonni Valley, where he would spend another 17 days in a cave, awaiting another team to transport him across the Swedish border. When he awoke, he was still snow-blind. The 12th Man is the story of Jan Baalsrud, a Norwegian resistance fighter, one of a dozen saboteurs trained by British intelligence to carry out a raid on an air traffic control tower in the . Narrowly escaping the clutches of Nazi soldiers who were just one door away, he was taken in by a family who helped him to freedom. Advertisement After this journey, the villagers left Baalsrud in a 6-foot by 9-foot shed with some supplies, intending to return in a few days. This turned out to be Baalsrud's great stroke of luck. He became an important figure in supporting the rights for Norwegian disabled WW2-veterans (himself partly crippled after his famous escape to neutral Sweden), and from 1957 to 1964, he became the chairman for the Norwegian Disabled Veterans Union (Krigsinvalidforbundet). Biografi[endre| endre wikiteksten] Baalsrud tok svennebrev som geodetisk instrumentmakar i 1939. | Historien er kjent gj. The 12th Man - the film about Jan Baalsrud. When I speak with her, she is 82 and peppy, if a little bashful. Jan Baalsrud(fdd 13. desember1917i Christiania, daud 30. desember1988i Kongsvinger) var ein norsk instrumentmakar og motstandsmann under andre verdskrigen. Baalsrud was handsome, as Dagmar recalls, her face reddening at the memory. There was the father, still mourning the loss of his young son, who rowed Baalsrud in a dinghy through rocky waters in the middle of the night, avoiding German sentries, to deposit him on another shore. One scene sees Stage testing the water's temperature to see how long his target could have lasted in . Even years after the war despite the book, the movie and the indomitable legend some neighbours, Are says, still think of Marius and his family as troublemakers, the ones who had endangered their community, who put everyone at risk. This is where Baalsrud's story loses all recognisable shape. The Gronvoll family's barn, where Baalsrud, snow-blind and lame, recovered after the avalanche, is still standing just up the road. Ten of the remaining men were dragged from the icy water, turned over to the Gestapo, and executed. At the end of March 1943, Jan Baalsrud and 11 other intelligence officers from Kompani Linge and crew were sailing to Troms on the MS Bratholm to organise teams of saboteurs in occupied Norway. They share a gravestone that has the following inscription: "Thank you all, who helped me to freedom in 1943.". "Most young people, they don't know the story.". Virtual International Authority File. There is Baalsrud's gun, the snub-nosed Colt, which Baalsrud's brother had given to a museum near Oslo before it was transported back to Furuflaten. stated in. None of them did, as Haug and Karlsen Scott recount in their book, and many did more than just offer shelter. But then the old soldier grinned grimly, gritting his teeth, and glanced at Are. A small museum in Furuflaten commemorates Baalsrud. Only Jan Baalsrud, the 12th man, managed to get away, escaping across Nord-Troms from 30 March to 1 June. To minimize the risk his presence posed, he promised to never mention where he had come from, or who he had seen. Out of Print--Limited Availability. I look, too. The film has been a hit with audiences and gained rave reviews. She remembers her mother weeping, certain that they needed to surrender or else they would all be killed. He lived there until his death on 30 December 1988, aged 71. The march takes eight days and you can do either all of the march or just part of it. Baalsrud joked to them that it was every bit as nice as the Hotel Savoy. Baalsrud knew the fate of Norway didn't hinge on whether he made it out of the country alive. The motorboat captain has a location saved on his GPS, and he guides the boat there. Germans surrendering to a Norwegian resistance leader, May 11th, 1945. Since the spread of gangrene was continuing, he amputated the rest of his toes, and would later say he seriously contemplated suicide. The story was later told in British author, View agent, publicist, legal and company contact details on IMDbPro. When we arrive, we almost miss the place: the Hotel Savoy is almost an afterthought, sitting along the side of a highway, unmarked. However, many Norwegians bravely fought back against the Germans as part of underground resistance groups. he returned to the life he had started with his wife . Their fishing boat, the Brattholm, carried a secret cargo of bombs and explosive devices. As if all this wasn't enough, an avalanche threw him down the mountainside, leaving him concussed and partially buried in snow. As the Germans opened fire on the dinghy, Baalsrud dove into the frigid Arctic water and swam to shore. VIAF ID. In the footsteps of Jan Baalsrud The Norwegian Broadcasting (NRK) in co-operation with Norwegian Armed Forces and Rune Gjeldnes and Ronny Brattli has finished the filming and editing of Jan Baalsruds amazing escape from the Nazi in Northern Norway during WW2. +47 907 89 699) can provide advice about the road and also organises kayak trips to the island. He is not dating anyone. Marius was no longer alive, but Agnete was. Dagmar Idrupsen is one of the last people still living who saw Baalsrud during his escape. So, they coordinated to transport him to another island first on a concealed stretcher, then on an improvised sled, and finally in a rowboat across the fjord. Everywhere you look, you're in both the middle of nowhere and the centre of the universe. That visit to Furuflaten was the only time Marius and Agnete's children met the man who so profoundly shaped the lives of their family. He returned to Norway during his final years. Baalsrud and his men hastily detonated all eight tons of explosives they had with them, then jumped aboard their dinghy, and sought to flee. Kolker summarises what happened next as follows: What happened over those nine weeks remains one of the wildest, most unfathomable survival stories of World War II. It is 200 kilometres long and crosses the islands of Rebbenesya and Ringvassya, the Lyngen peninsula and the mainland east of Lyngenfjorden. Jan Sigurd Baalsrud, MBE (December 13, 1917 in Kristiania, Norway - December 30, 1988 in Kongsvinger, Norway) was a commando in the Norwegian resistance trained by the British during World War II. The story of Jan Baalsruds escape through occupied Northern Norway in the spring of 1943 has something of the improbable about it. He was weakening by the day, in the grip of starvation and reliant on the goodwill of others. The Gronvoll family stashed Baalsrud in their barn for four days as he tried to recuperate. Then came a blizzard. To better treat the remnants of the gangrene he got (during his escape from the Germans under WW2) in check, he spent the last years of his life living in the Canary Islands (Spain). It houses some of his possessions, including the skis he lost in an avalanche. Haug is Baalsrud's second cousin, but he met the man only once, as a boy; he remembers Baalsrud refusing to talk with his relatives about his wartime experiences. Dagmar's aunt sent a small boat to fetch them to her own place across the fjord. The hole is a slight exaggeration; Baalsrudhula is actually just a crack in the rock. ANMELDELSE: Filmen "Den 12. mand" fortller den autentiske historie om Jan Baalsrud, der i 1943 undslap tyskerne og overlevede mere end to mneders flugt under ufattelige og umenneskelige forhold i Nordnorges vinter. There are Baalsrud's wooden skis, recovered by a local resident in the bottom of the valley in the summer of 1943 and hidden until the end of the war. For decades, his escape made him a national folk hero, even as the man himself remained frustratingly opaque, almost unknowable. Baalsrud and others swam ashore in ice-cold Arctic waters. Baalsrud spent seven months in a Swedish hospital in Boden before he was flown back to Britain in an RAF de Havilland Mosquito aircraft. Baalsrud was visibly frail. "They needed to keep him alive in order to keep the dream of freedom alive. Not far beneath us, at the bottom of the bay, still lies some of the wreckage of the Brattholm. sex or gender. The annual Jan Baalsrud March takes place in late July each year. Jan Sigurd Baalsrud died in Oslo on December 30th, 1988. V Norsku obdrel medaili svatho Olafa s Dubovou ratolest. Rapparen og programleiaren Thomas Fingern Gullestad skal spele motstandsmannen Jan Baalsrud i filmen Den tolvte mann av Harald Zwart. He was put in the care of some Sami (the native people of northern Fenno-Scandinavia). On the other side of the fjord, which Jan Baalsrud reached on 12 April after being taken across the water, is a small basic cabin with no heating, ironically named the Hotel Savoy. Before he died on December 30, 1988, he was moved to a rehabilitation centre near Oslo that his own donations and support had helped to create. www.opendialoguemediations.com. The folk hero would not return to the fjords again until 1987. While investigating facts about Jan Baalsrud, I found out little known, but curios details like:. He eventually found himself at the foot of Jaeggevarre, a 900m mountain near the Lyngen River. Baalsrud was a 25-year-old son of an instrument maker who escaped his country after the German invasion in 1940 and returned three years later as a saboteur. David Howarths book We Die Alone (1955) retells Baalsruds story and was made into a film soon after its release. We Die Alone: A WWII Epic of Escape and Endurance. Thank you! He graduated as a cartographical instrument-maker in 1939. "I had forgotten the whole story, or rather I had tried to forget it all," Baalsrud said in a radio interview years later, "and it was completely forgotten when David Howarth came." We Die Alone, the first book-length account, published in 1955 by the British journalist David Howarth, became an instant classic in Norway. Due to weather and German patrols in the town of Manndalen, Kfjord, he was there for 27 days and was close to death for lack of food. The only survivor and wounded, Baalsrud begins a perilous journey to freedom, swimming icy fjords, climbing snow-covered peaks, enduring snowstorms, and getting caught in a monstrous avalanche. He wandered in a snowstorm for three days. The northern Norwegian fjord where a crippled Jan Baalsrud was taken across on a stretcher to a shed he called the "Hotel Savoy". June 12, 2022 . The museum tells the story not of a man lucky enough to escape death, but instead that of kindness and humanity. He spent the last several weeks tied on a stretcher, near death, as teams of Norwegian villagers dragged him up and down hills and snowy mountains. By Dagney McKinney. The "subscriptable" message says you are trying to access a value using indexing from an object as if it were a sequence object, like a string, a list, or a tuple. Jan Baalsrud is a well known Celebrity. first read this incredible tale of one man's refusal to die alone forty years ago--have been recommending to people ever since. Without realising it, he was climbing an almost 900-metre mountain. His remaining toes were succumbing to frostbite, risking severe infection. When the crew sought contact with the Resistance, they made a life-altering mistake. On foot, wearing only one boot in the snow, he stumbled upon a house and took the risk of banging on the door. After a long struggle to learn to walk without his toes, Baalsrud eventually was sent to Norway as an agent at his request. He married an American woman, started a family, and served as Chairman of the Norwegian Disabled Veterans Union. EVELYN WATSON, JAN BAALSRUD MARRY Dec. 28, 1951 The New York Times Archives See the article in its original context from December 28, 1951, Page 14 Buy Reprints View on timesmachine TimesMachine. The teacher made it in pieces, and it was assembled on the other side of the fjord. Unknown Binding. One bullet shears off a big toe. Were sorry, this feature is currently unavailable. A few framed black-and-white photos of Baalsrud's earlier visit in the 1950s, during production of Ni Liv, hang on the wall of the parlour. Jan married Teres Balmaseda in 1951, at age 33. Jan Sigurd Baalsrud Birth 13 Dec 1917 Oslo, Oslo kommune, Oslo fylke, Norway Death 30 Dec 1988 (aged 71) Kongsvinger, Kongsvinger kommune, Hedmark fylke, Norway Burial Cremated, Other. 4.5 out of 5 stars 1,019. He spent seven months there, putting on weight, regaining his eyesight, and learning how to walk again on his disfigured feet. Norway wanted to stay neutral, but Britain wanted Norway to join its blockade of Germany and to transport British goods at cheap rates. He had no map, no food, no water and no plan. Are, just a teenager, had to ask the great man a question: of all the homes in the valley, how did he find his way here? Haug shuts the door. Haug is among the many Norwegians of his generation who grew up on the tale of Baalsrud's escape. Now unable to walk unaided, he wondered if he would be best to end his suffering and ease the risk to those helping him. It is not currently marked, but the GPS coordinates are as follows:69.467396, 20.325756 There is a reasonable parking area next to the fjord, and you then follow a short path down to the cabin. He ran. Further away, others in his unit were being rounded up or killed by the Germans. Baalsrud vokste opp i Oslo, men 1934, ret etter at moren dde, flyttet familien til Kolbotn. Source: Anders Beer Wilse / Galleri NOR. Inside the hut is a wooden platform, like the one Baalsrud was lying on when, half-mad with agony, he took a knife to his own feet. The Scandinavian country had been neutral during the entirety of the First World War, and maintained this position as Hitler's grip began to tighten on continental Europe. He had only one boot, his soaked clothes were beginning to freeze, and he didnt have any provisions. Kjellaug still lives in Furuflaten, working as a nurse in a neighbouring town. One lonely day inside the cave, he took out his pocket knife again and amputated the rest of them. In early 1943, he, three other commandos, and a boat crew of eight, all Norwegians, embarked on a mission to destroy a German airfield control tower at Bardufoss, and recruit for the Norwegian resistance movement. TODAY, FURUFLATEN IS STILL very small, with about 250 people. Seint om ettermiddagen, fredag 2. april 1943 blei tte motstandsmenn avretta av tyskarane p skytebana p Grnnsen nord p Tromsya. "No one else knew about him," Haug says. The Jan Baalsrud March. Baalsrud was the only commando to evade capture and, soaking wet and missing one sea boot, he escaped into a snow gully, where he shot and killed a German Gestapo officer with his pistol. He joined the Norwegian Company Linge. Get premium, high resolution news photos at Getty Images For Jorunn Aase og Steinar Kverrhellen var dette dramaet ein grufull realitet. He jokingly dubbed the shed his Hotel Savoy, after the world-renowned luxury hotel in London. Toftefjorden, on the island of Rebbenesya, where the dramatic escape began, is uninhabited today. By 1938, he had completed his military service and became an instrument-maker. After consulting on the production of Ni Liv, he returned to the life he had started with his wife, Evie, an American from a wealthy family. Gjennom 5 episoder fortelles Baalsrudhistorien p en ny mte og s sannferdig som vi kjenner den i dag. Dagmar saw the man's gun the snub-nosed Colt and a shiver of fear ran through her. Ballsruds ashes are buried in a grave in Manndalen that he shares with one of the local men who helped him escape. From Furuflaten, Marius and his three friends had rowed Baalsrud across the fjord to a hamlet called Revdal. The new film about the drama, The 12th Man, is generating considerable interest in the story, so we sought out the locations where it all happened. The house on the island of Hersya is run by Karlsy Jeger og Fisk. [3] He was awarded the St. Olav's medal with Oak Branch by Norway. But the frostbite had taken hold, and Baalsrud was no longer able to walk on his own. But something inside him kept fighting to survive. Stunned Silence: The woman who was supposed to wrote down Baalsrud`s story for the record, is seen with her sheet completely blank at the end of the movie. There was the midwife who offered to hide him upstairs, disguising him as a woman in labour. Based on a true story that's well known in Norway but not so much elsewhere, THE 12th MAN tells the story of Jan Baalsrud, a member of the Norwegian Resistance who spent months on the run from the Nazis after his mission was compromised. Alone for two more weeks in a cave, he used a knife to amputate several of his own frostbitten toes to stop the spread of gangrene. Jan Baalsruds longest stay anywhere during his escape was in a mountain fissure at the top of the Manndalen valley. richard matvichuk wife. The film The 12th Man, which depicts Jan Baalsrud's dramatic escape from the Germans during World War II, premiered on Christmas Day 2017. Publisert 22. feb. 2016 kl. BAALSRUD HIMSELF REJECTED that myth, time and again. They had seven children, three of whom meet me at the barn: two sons, Are and Dag, and a daughter, Kjellaug. Baalsrud var utdannet geodetisk instrumentmaker. She was 10 when Baalsrud tore through Toftefjord. He was sure he would be next. Jaeggevarre, a 3,000-foot peak. He was also ice-cold and soaking wet, his Norwegian commando uniform frozen solid. By the time a group of Sami, Norway's indigenous people, came to take him across the border, Baalsrud weighed just 36 kilograms. Baalsrud began to see the signs of gangrene in his frost-damaged feet, so he sterilized his pocket knife in the flame of a lantern and did what he knew he had to do.