The exhibition The Story of My Father by Czech-Finnish artist Petr Řehor and Finnish photographer Paulina Pasanen will open on 16 January 2025 in the gallery of Kladno Castle by Prague and will be open until 16 March 2025.
The exhibition artistically presents the story of Josef Řehoře, who was deployed as forced labour in Norway.
More about the fate of Josef Řehoře see: https://noraci.cz/no/osoba/rehor-josef/
Explore the stories of Czechs in forced labour in Norway.
We would like to thank the descendants of the Noraci and especially Mr. Jar. Šimr, the last Czech survivor of forced labour in Norway, for their warm cooperation.
We have received the sad news that Mr. Jaromír Šimr - the last living surviving survivor of wartime Norway - died at the beginning of November 2024 at the age of 101. It was an honour to have worked with Mr. Šimr.
We will not forget his colourful story and the joy in his eyes when we recalled the names of his friends with whom he spent three years of forced labour behind the Arctic Circle.
You can read an interview with Mr. Šimr about his deployment in Norway in the publication Sent North: 20 Stories.
In August 2020, Anežka M. visited us and brought several war pictures from her grand-grandfather, who was an OT forced laborer in the Alta area during the war. He was there with six other Czechs. He also came to inner Finnmark and met the local population with whom he took pictures. You can see the Sami wedding at Karasjok old church. Thanks to the family for lending the photos. Our Norwegian colleagues are in the process of finding out exactly which places are in the pictures.
(Archive of family Minařík a Trecha)
The National Archives of Norway in Oslo recently made archival documents from World War II available. A central file of forced deployed foreigners in Norway was found among the materials of the German occupation authorities. 1534 personal cards from the Protectorate of Bohemia and Moravia were found in the file cabinet, which register a total of 1366 persons. These were men born between 1890 and 1924. During the team's work meeting at the beginning of October in Oslo, the file was studied and the work cards of Czech workers were scanned. We would like to make the cards available on this website in the coming months. We are negotiating the permission of the National Archives in Oslo.
Petr Řehoř is a painter and has lived in Finland since 1975. He is preparing an art project that themes the story of his father Josef Řehoř, who was sent during the war on forced labor in Trondheim. Finnish photographer Pauliina Pasanen is also collaborating on the exhibition project.
Josef Řehoř (1921 - 1973) graduated from art school after the war and devoted himself, among other things, to book illustration. He gravitated to Scandinavian culture and transferred his love for the North to his son.
Our project based on Czech-Norwegian war relations was presented on March 6, 2020 at a scientific conference in Munich as part of the 26th meeting with lecturers in Czech studies. The event was attended by over 60 experts from Germany, the Czech Republic and Slovakia. The meeting was organized by the Collegium Carolinum Science Center in Munich. Our contribution in German can be downloaded here. It will also be published on the Collegia Carolina website in the Exposé section.
In September 2019, the researchers met with Mr. Švec from Havlíčkův Brod, who organized joint meetings of these ex-forced labourers after 1989. The last meeting took place in 2005. Meetings were attended by these so called Noráci and their family members. Mr. Švec still keeps in his personal archive a number of documentary materials from meetings, period photographs and written memories.
A series of lectures on relations between the Czech Republic and Scandinavia during World War II begins 4.3. at Charles University in Prague. The lectures will be led by members of a research team that focuses on the issues of forced labor in Norway. Lectures are offered as part of an selection subject for students at Charles University. By appointment, it is possible to listen to individual lectures.
A professional colloquium on the topic of forced labor in Scandinavia was planned on 3 April 2020 at the Faculty of Arts, at Charles University in Prague. Due to pandemic measures, Czech-Norwegian researchers could not attend and are postponed until the autumn of 2020.