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Norwegian World War 2 hero dies aged 99

Norwegian war veteran, writer and historian Ragnar Leif Ulstein has died at the age of 99.

Published: 4 December 2019 17:50 CET
Norwegian World War 2 hero dies aged 99
Photo: Depositphotos

News of Ulstein’s passing was given by his son Anders Ulstein to news agency NTB on Wednesday.

Born on April 19th, 1920 in Møre and Romsdal countr, Ulstein was a prominent figure in the Norwegian resistance during World War 2.

He was a lieutenant in the British military division Linge Company, also known as Norwegian Independent Company 1.

The division consisted of Norwegian volunteers who participated in British-led operations in Norway during the war as well as the organization and leadership of the Norwegian resistance.

Norway’s defence minister Frank Bakke-Jensen expressed his regret at the news and noted Ulstein was one of the last surviving witnesses of the period.

“He experienced some of the most dramatic episodes in Norwegian war history and was a highly decorated commander in the Linge Company,” Bakke-Jensen said to NTB.

Ulstein participated in several operations, including Operation Anklet, a raid on the Lofoten Islands in December 1941; and in a sabotage campaign against a supply and troop ship in the Nordgulen fjord in 1943.

After the war, he worked as a journalist, writer and scholar, and wrote several books on Norwegian participation in World War 2.

READ ALSO: Resistance hero Gunnar Sønsteby dies aged 94

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TODAY IN FRANCE

France to compensate relatives of Algerian Harki fighters

France has paved the way towards paying reparations to more relatives of Algerians who sided with France in their country's independence war but were then interned in French camps.

Published: 16 May 2023 08:29 CEST
France to compensate relatives of Algerian Harki fighters

More than 200,000 Algerians fought with the French army in the war that pitted Algerian independence fighters against their French colonial masters from 1954 to 1962.

At the end of the war, the French government left the loyalist fighters known as Harkis to fend for themselves, despite earlier promises it would look after them.

Trapped in Algeria, many were massacred as the new authorities took revenge.

Thousands of others who fled to France were held in camps, often with their families, in deplorable conditions that an AFP investigation recently found led to the deaths of dozens of children, most of them babies.

READ ALSO Who are the Harkis and why are they still a sore subject in France?

French President Emmanuel Macron in 2021 asked for “forgiveness” on behalf of his country for abandoning the Harkis and their families after independence.

The following year, a law was passed to recognise the state’s responsibility for the “indignity of the hosting and living conditions on its territory”, which caused “exclusion, suffering and lasting trauma”, and recognised the right to reparations for those who had lived in 89 of the internment camps.

But following a new report, 45 new sites – including military camps, slums and shacks – were added on Monday to that list of places the Harkis and their relatives were forced to live, the government said.

Now “up to 14,000 (more) people could receive compensation after transiting through one of these structures,” it said, signalling possible reparations for both the Harkis and their descendants.

Secretary of state Patricia Miralles said the decision hoped to “make amends for a new injustice, including in regions where until now the prejudices suffered by the Harkis living there were not recognised”.

Macron has spoken out on a number of France’s unresolved colonial legacies, including nuclear testing in Polynesia, its role in the Rwandan genocide and war crimes in Algeria.

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