This article was originally written in Norwegian. You can read a machine-translated version here.

Introductory note: In times where extremism, radical attitudes and war are spreading again, I take a clear distance from any kind of ideology, political direction, support for a particular nation or ideas that can underpin such. The stories depicted here stand solely as a memorial to a dark part of recent history which, unfortunately, all too quickly seems to be forgotten and repeated.

Christmas 2023 is approaching. As every year, the shops are filled with excess goods, carols are spread in performances by happy children and people go about their usual way towards the "festival of love". There is peace in Norway. On the surface. Again there is war and much suffering in Europe and in the world. Just like in 1942. I want to share some depictions in memory of this - the simple man who (Christian or not) endures, lives under harsh conditions, makes the best of life, is an instrument for greater interests, dies and hopes .

The following texts have been translated from German by me:

" On the days listed in the calendar, it was also Christmas in Stalingrad, but as the home country imagined it, it was not. It wasn't Christmas-like at all. On these days, gray skies hung over the snow surfaces of the steppes, merciless cold at night froze everything under the moon's narrow sickle. One must try to make the events at the 42nd parallel comprehensible in a few words.

In front of six simple soldiers in a grenade launcher position at height 137, a man who was once a priest in Dresden had said: "Stalingrad Christmas is a gospel of the front, whoever later hears about it, or who is reminded of it, will with alert eyes and a strong heart go back to the years, to the city on the Volga, the Calvary of the 6th Army ."

They did not sit at long, white-clothed tables in Stalingrad, there were no nuts and no apples, and only a few small fir trees, or such from the field mail packages. 
Whoever had a candle lit it only for five minutes, put it in a bottle-neck, on a small board next to the shooting-slit, on a steel helmet, in a box, on some twig that had once belonged to a bush or a tree. Then he blew the little flame out and saved it for another night. 
It was not at all about fir trees and speeches, but about ammunition and bread. And about the man next. 
They were no longer full and therefore they moved closer together. The tables were planks and crates, the glasses drinking glasses. Whoever was lucky drank schnapps out of it and, if it was good, then wine. But it usually didn't work properly, and then it was German tea or melted water. 
One had learned in the last few weeks to spell the words and has become quieter. 
This was a picture of the outer Christmas. 
What moved the men is difficult to say, feelings can only be described in the moments they exist. What is certain is that with their longing they jumped over the many thousands of kilometers between places of waiting and fulfillment and were with those they loved. 
The community in their situation was the empty hands and shared also the sky that vaulted over them. It was also red from smoke and glow at Christmastime, and it was hard to imagine that it was supposed to be God's cloak. And there was also no question of peace on earth, why, they asked themselves, did God again and again allow a Christmas day to arise, when men, deafening His words, beat each other to death. [...]

On Christmas night, twenty-six men fell. It was easy to remember their names and one stood by their snow hole full of the deepest tremors. Four weeks later, tens of thousands went down and remained unnoticed.

In a wooden house at Woroponowo, eleven men from the 71st Infantry Division celebrated Christmas Eve. First they sang: "Merry Christmas, holy Christmas!" It went well. Then they sang, "Oh, how joyful" and a accordion made the melody. The first verse everyone knew by heart, the second verse only three men sang, by the third there was no one left. Just the accordion. Then suddenly another one sang. In a clear voice and in a soft tone and in German speech:

Oh, how joyfully, Oh, how merrily,
Christmas comes with its life divine!
Angels high in glory, Chant the Christmas story:
Hail, ye Christians, hail the joyous Christmas time!

The voice came from the prison camp and the singer was a Russian. A year later, a black man as a sentry in a German prisoner-of-war camp in Egypt is said to have sung "From Heaven above to earth I come". A strange parallel.

In the night before Christmas Eve, three men had taken a pine tree from the forest at Gumrak, in danger of life. Then cut stars out of silver paper and ornaments out of blackout paper. On Christmas Eve, the tree burned at height 137, you could see it from afar, and it also only "fell" after an hour of grenade launcher fire.

Hundreds of thousands know the "Madonna from Stalingrad" [see main image in the article] without knowing how it came about or who drew it. In the underground caves around Stalingrad, despite the daily danger and proximity to death, preparations were made for Christmas Eve. Dr. Kurt Reuber's medical bunker was divided in two with a blanket. In the cramped room, the doctor drew a picture for his injured and dead comrades for the Christmas Eve celebration. He knew that words do not mean much, but that eyes see. And with quiet consideration, the image of the mother with her child, illuminated by a secret light and safe in the wide cloak, entered the souls of the comrades.

What Kurt Reuber and his comrades had experienced is stated in his last letter:

"The festival has come to an end, with thoughts, acts of war, with lingering and waiting, in composed patience and trust. The days were filled with the sound of guns and medical work. I have thought for a long time, what to draw, and out came a Madonna or mother with child.
My clay cave turned into a studio. This tiny room, no necessary distance to the picture is possible, I have to stand on a stool on my plank bed and look at the picture from above. All the while lurking, falling down, the pencils disappearing in the clay cracks. For the large Madonna drawing, no proper base. Just a tilted, self-laid table, the paper is a Russian map. If I could only say how the work on Madonna moved me and how I was at it.
The image is as follows: The child's and mother's heads are bowed towards each other and covered by a large cloth. "Safety" and "embrace of mother and child". I came upon John's words: Light, life, love. What more can I say? These three things I wish to indicate in the earthly-eternal event of mother and child with their security. When the barred door of our bunker opened and the comrades entered, according to old tradition, they stood as if enchanted, devout and moved, silently before the picture on the clay wall, under which a candle burned on a framed wooden block. The entire celebration was under the influence of the image and they thoughtfully read the words: Light, life, love.
At the end of the day I was in a circle among my patients and medics for a Christmas celebration. The commander had given the sick his last bottle of sparkling wine. We raised our field cups and toasted to what we love. But with cups still full, we throw ourselves on the ground. Bombs outside. I grab my medical bag and run to the impact, to the dead and injured. My nice celebration bunker in the light of Christmas turned into a casualty-collection point. I can no longer help a dying person. Head injury. The dead man who a moment ago went outside of the festive assembly to serve had just said: "But first I will finish singing the song with you: Oh, how joyful!" A moment later he was dead. Sad, hard work in the celebration bunker. It is night, but holy night. And all in all, there was so much misery." "


from "Stalingrad" by Heinz Schröter (1959). Page 117ff. Publisher: Kleins Druck- und Verlagsanstalt GmbH. No ISBN.
All rights remain with the author. A wholehearted attempt was made to track down the publisher or other rights holder (such as Eduard Kaiser publishing house, Klagenfurt who republished the book in the 1970s) as the author no longer is alive. Without luck. The text is published here to the best of my knowledge with regard to the right of quotation in Section 29 of the Norwegian Copyright Act. If the rights holder reads this text, I kindly ask for permission to publish it, otherwise the text will of course be removed.