Update on Ingergerd Holter

In November of 2020, CNS member Alan Humphreys gave the CNS a talk on his mother, Norwegian actress Ingegerd Holter Humphrey’s, experiences as a spy during World War II. Early in the War, she was recruited as a liaison contact between members of Norwegian resistance cells. This was a highly dangerous job, that brought with it a constant fear of danger and the loss of friends. She went on many “dates” with men who would surreptitiously pass messages on slips of paper to her, which she would then hide in her bra, later to be passed on to a radio operator. When a radio operator she had been communicating with was caught transmitting, she was forced to flee Norway, first to Sweden and eventually to London, England.

Alan has informed me that a special exhibit that will include his mother’s story has been set up at the Norwegian Resistance Museum in the Akershus Fortress in Oslo. His mother’s boss, shipowner/director Gabriel Smith, was instrumental in setting up the first radio transmitter, code-named “Oldell,” to send vital high quality information to Britain. Alan and his brother were contacted for information and photos of Smith and their mother, which they sent and which have now been included in the exhibit. 

Alan added this note in his email to me:

Apparently, within days of the invasion, Smith had travelled to Stockholm to meet with the Norwegian and British Naval attaches about setting up a resistance station since Smith was in the Norwegian Naval Reserve and was very high up in Naval Intelligence. The British Naval Intelligence Division, in conjunction with the Secret Intelligence Service, supplied a transmitter which became the first and most successful resistance station. Over 700 messages were sent to Britain in the roughly 9 months of operation from July 1940 until 26 March 1941, when Sigurd Johannessen, one of the operators, was arrested in one of the flats from which transmissions were being made. My mother, who acted as Smith's courier collecting information from different informants and taking it to the radio operators, was the first to know of this arrest as she was carrying more information to the flat and noticed a guard had been placed in front of the door. She also noticed blood on the stairs as the Germans had dragged Johannessen by his feet down the stairs with his head banging on each step. He did not die from those injuries, and even survived torture, but was later executed in Akershus. Smith had to escape to Britain by sea on the "Shetland Bus" and my mother helped his wife escape in April before she herself fled in early May 1941. 

If you are in Oslo, it is worthwhile to stop into the Resistance Museum and reflect on all the ways Norwegians put themselves in danger to resist the occupiers. I have visited the Museum myself a couple of times as my grandparents were involved in the Resistance and my grandfather was imprisoned in Akershus. It is a truly inspiring reminder of the courage and self-sacrifice it can take to protect a nation’s freedom from tyranny.