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'Bodies hung like rag dolls': Norway SS man

Richard Orange
Richard Orange - [email protected]
'Bodies hung like rag dolls': Norway SS man
Rally of Nasjonal Samling, Norway's Nazi party, during World War II

A 91-year-old Norwegian who served with the notorious Nazi SS regiment has spoken for the first time of the appalling crimes he witnessed in Ukraine in 1942.

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In an interview with Norway's NRK, to be broadcast on Tuesday night, Olav Tuff, 91, recalled entering the Ukrainian city of Lvov to find the bodies of murdered Jews hanging from trees and lamp-posts. 
 
"The bodies hung like rag dolls," he told the interviewer.
 
Tuff, who served more than three years in prison for treason at the end of the war, admitted that he too had participated in crimes. 
 
In 1941, his unit had herded as many as three hundre Ukrainian civilians into a church, poured petrol on it, and then set it alight. 
 
"I stood and watched, and there was no one coming out," he said.  "There was a lot of yelling and screaming, and we could hardly believe what we were a part of. But there was little we could do. We had to do what we were ordered." 
 
As far as the Nazi's were concerned Norwegians were part of the same Germanic race and around 6,000 Norwegians joined the German army during the Second World War. But Tuff is the first to agree to be interviewed about his experiences.

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