PRISON AND HOSPITAL

This Ex Libris belongs to one of the nurses Ingeborg taught while in prison. It shows to chained hands giving books away.

Ingeborg was imprisoned in 1941. She was an NN-prisoner, destined for a German death camp. But she knew the German ideas of system and order: they did not execute someone who could not stand on her legs, nor send someone who was contagiously ill to Germany because they might infect the German troups.

Ingeborg infected herself with diphtheria. She also starved herself until the prison administration had to send her to the Ullevål hospital. Here she collaborated with doctors who managed to keep her so ill that she was kept in hospital. Indeed she sometimes was so ill that they barely could keep her alive.

Ingeborg stayed in hospital for three years. She became so weak that the nazis called her "the woman-corpse"

But Ingeborg Refling Hagen was not dead.

During these three years, the "corpse" taught literature to the nurses while acting insane during constant German inspections!!

"The German guard walked through the corridors while I was mumbling to the nurses about the founders of the spirit we had survived on. On what ideas was the "Norway" the Germans stole from us funded? What were the ideas and values of the "Norway" we didn't want to loose? Of the society we had to rebuild?"

From "Gnister i mørket", IRH autobiography Vol II

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