Priest in Norway —a Nazi Victim

The Rev. Hugo van der Viugt, the parish priest of Hamar, Norway, has died in Oranienburg concentration camp, near Berlin. The news was learnt when a parcel, which had been sent to the priest, was returned to Norway marked " Verstorben," and in this laconic way friends and relatives first learned that Fr. van der Vlugt was dead. Later it was discovered that he died on March 5, The head of the Church in Norway, Bishop J. Mangers, has celebrated a solemn Requiem Mass at Hamar for the Dutch priest. When fighting in Norway ended it was this courageous priest who lowered his Norwegian flag to half-mast and vowed never to hoist it again until Norway once more was free. In a letter he described the mood in Norway after the two trade union leaders, Hansteen and Wickstroem, were executed: " The country is boiling like a kettle whose lid is tied down ; at any moment the bonds may break."
Frankly and without fear he continued to preach from the pulpit what he believed to be right. He was imprisoned on June 29, 1942, and taken the following week to Grin; concentration camp near Oslo. Late in the autumn his sentence expired and he was expelled from the country and sent to Oranienburg concentration camp. There he died—not only the first Catholic priest bet also the first clergyman known to have fallen in Norway's struggle against the enemy.