A humerous family anecdote about Serbian PoWs in Norway during WW2

Context: I am from Bodø, a town just above the artic circle in northern norway. My mothers side have lived here for almost a thousand years as far as we can tell. We have many warcemeteris in the region that i visit about once a year or so, just to clean up the place and pay my respects. I mostly attend the Serbian ones because the russian ones are fairly often visited by russians living in norway. Last time i was there i thought that maybe some serbs would be interested in a little anecdote from my grandma about the serbs and the camps here.During WW2 Norway was (atleast compared to serbia) fairly well treated. Still many ended up in camps in Germany or prison locally. The Nazis imported many prisoners of war to Norway because there were almost as many german soldiers here as there was norwegians so they had a great deal of control, and by deporting prisoners from their home it would be much more difficult for the PoW to get help and escape. We had about 19 concentration camps in my region, many soviet prisoners but mostly Serbs in my area. The prisoners were used to make roads and railroads because of the poor local infrastructure (we are a fishing people). Most famoulsy is the “Blood road” or the “Bloody road” wich is a part of E6 streaching along Norway. Its called the blood road because of the terrible amounts of exicutions carried out during the construction of the road, mostly serbs and other yugoslavs. Now the bodies under the road have been moved to the cemeteries.My grandma was a child but this is what her father and his friends did during the occupation. They had a great deal of sympathy for the Serbs but it was very dangerous to be seen helping them, norwegians got away with more than serbs did, but activly helping prisoners could get you sent to a camp of your own. They did help a few serbs escape over to sweden, but this was few and far between, language barrier and so on made it very difficult to organize anything meaningfull. My great grandpa once used his skis and a sled to drag a Serb (we think, he couldnt tell the diffrence between foreginers of any sort but the majority of them were serbs) over the border, since the guy had been shot in his escape and would be killed if he if he stayed, atleast that how the story goes.Story: But here is the (kinda) fun part. Since the locals saw that the prisoners were starving they wanted to help. They couldnt give any meaningfull amount of food since they could be spotted, insted they trew bottles of “Tran” over the fence. “Tran” is cod liver oil, it is a very common health food in Norway, it contains a bunch of vitamins, fatty oils and Omega-3. Its very common to drink (or nowadays take a pill) once a day to stay healty. In general it was a practial thing to give out. It also tastes like death, atleast it did in the 40ties.The locals used to throw bottles over the fence and hoped that the PoWs would drink it to atleast get some nurishment. The bottles were quicly found, but the PoWs thougth that it was poison because the taste was so horrible, and were unsure wheter is was malice or pity that made the locals give them it. That ended when a friend of my great grandad hid out until the PoWs found a bottle near a fence. He snuck close to them and when spotted made a big show out of chugging half a bottle to make them see that it was not poison. Luckily that convinced many of them and it became fairly popular so they had to throw over allot during the war. Ive also heard that initialy many of the PoWs thought that the bottles were vodka, and that was one of the reason they became so sceptical when it was so oily and terrible, but im not sure about that part.My family didnt keep in contanct with any of the PoWs, all that survived went back to their homeland after the war, only to infrequently return to see the graves of their comrades. But my aunt did once meet a serbian woman who came to the area, and if her claims a true the “tran” helped a great deal of them survive the horrors.Sorry if this is a bit rambly, i just came to think about it when i saw something about Serbia in the news and i wanted to share. I know Serbs like dark humor (atleast according to my friend) so i tought that some of you might like this little story about those poor PoWs thinking even the occupied locals tried to poison them. I hope i have not offended anyone, that is not my intention and i will remove this post if am requested to do so. I have also added some links, unfortunatly most are in norwegian but if there is interest i could try to gather more in english. via /r/serbia https://ift.tt/o3XAYpd