Trygve Bratteli

(11 January 1910 – 20 November 1984) was a Norwegian newspaper editor, a politician with the Norwegian Labour Party, and Nazi concentration camp survivor. He served as the 26th prime minister of Norway from 1971 to 1972 and again from 1973 to 1976. He was president of the Nordic Council in 1978. Background Bratteli was born on the island of Nøtterøy at Færder in Vestfold, Norway. His parents were Terje Hansen Bratteli (1878–1966) and Martha Barmen (1880–1938). He attended school locally, having many jobs including: work in fishing, as a coal miner and on a building site. Over a 9- to 10-month period, Bratteli travelled with whalers to Antarctica, where he worked in a guano factory at South Georgia Island. He was a student at the socialist school at Malmøya in 1933. Oscar Torp, chairman of the Norwegian Labour Party, asked him to become editor of Folkets Frihet in Kirkenes and later editor of Arbeiderungdommen which was published by the Socialist Youth League of Norway. For a period during 1940, he also served as Secretary of the Norwegian Labour Party. Following the Nazi invasion of Norway, the daily newspaper Arbeiderbladet was closed down during 1940 by Nazi officials. Bratteli subsequently participated in the Norwegian resistance movement. He was arrested by agents of Nazi Germany in 1942, and was a Nacht und Nebel prisoner of various German concentration camps; including Natzweiler-Struthof, from 1943 to 1945. He was also imprisoned in the Sachsenhausen concentration camp, north of Berlin. He was liberated from Vaihingen an der Enz concentration camp on 5 April 1945, by the Swedish Red Cross White Buses along with fifteen other Norwegians who had survived. Political career After the liberation of Norway in 1945, Bratteli was appointed as Secretary of the Labour Party. He became chairman of the Workers' Youth League, vice chairman of the party, served on the newly formed defence commission, and in 1965; was made Chairman of the Labour Party. Bratteli was elected to the Norwegian Parliament from Oslo in 1950, and was re-elected on seven occasions.