Diesen Andreas

Dr. Haakon Sæthre Dr. Andreas Diesen When the Germans first occupied Norway in April of 1940, Robert Levin knew he should try to escape to Sweden – like some other Norwegian Jews had; but his wife Solveig did not want to leave her parents and siblings behind. “We were actually very stupid.” Levin said in an interview in 1971, “but for God’s sake, it was beyond human imagination to envisage what was in store for us. Who could have predicted what eventually happened”. Levin, a pianist by profession, went on living in Oslo and working as the musical director of the Chat Noir, a cabaret theatre. But in October 1942 a German was assassinated in Oslo by the Norwegian resistance movement, and the Jews now feared reprisals. That same evening Levin had a visit from Dr. Diesen – Chief Medical Doctor of Oslo, and the father of Ernst Diesen, a famous cabaret performer at the Chat Noir. In order to protect Levin, Dr. Diesen had Levin hospitalized in the Ullevål Hospital under a false diagnosis. He instructed Levin to pretend he was suffering from a nervous breakdown, and assigned him to Department 6, which he felt was the safest. The chief physician of that department, Dr. Haakon Sæthre, made sure that the “patient” was looked after and kept from harm's way. Several days after Levin was admitted, all Jewish men in Oslo were arrested. In the absence of her husband, Levin’s wife Solveig had to report to the police every day. She had to vacate her apartment, so instead she rented a room where she lived with her three-year-old daughter Mona. One day a policeman warned Solveig of the impending arrests of Oslo's remaining Jewish women and children. Luckily, she managed to contact the Resistance and was smuggled out of Norway to Sweden. Years later, Levin described his situation at the hospital: "I had almost daily conversations with the department head, Dr. Sæthre, who, as I later found out, was a member of the resistance movement… One day he came in and asked: ‘have you decided whether you want to stay or disappear?’ When I responded: ‘I’m staying’, he said: ‘this is a foolish position’… Sæthre told me: ‘I have 60 beds and 12 Jews. Even an idiot German will realize that something is wrong when one fifth of the beds are occupied by Jews". Eventually, after spending several days in the hospital, Levin was smuggled out by the Norwegian resistance movement; shortly after he left, the police raided the hospital. Levin was taken from one place to the other. For approximately ten days he stayed in an apartment in Oslo. He did not know what the address was because his eyes were covered during the transfer there, but he managed to see the name Ottesen on the door of the apartment. Levin finally reached Sweden by the end of November, shortly before the first transport of Jews from Oslo left to Auschwitz. Mona Levin told Yad Vashem of what she had heard about the crossing into Sweden from her father: “They walked quietly across the border - my father devastated at the thought of my mother and me. What was he doing there without us? He fell into depression. A few days later (I don’t know how many) we crossed over as well…” Robert, Solveig and their daughter Mona survived the Holocaust, and returned to Norway at the end of the war. In addition to hiding 12 other Jews in the Ullevål Hoopital, Dr. Sæthre was involved in other activities of the Resistance. In February 1945 he was seized in his home and taken hostage in retaliation for an assassination attempt by the Norwegian Resistance movement. He was shot to death on 9 February 1944. On 12 March 2013 Yad Vashem recognized Dr. Haakon Sæthre and Dr. Andreas Diesen as Righteous Among the Nations.