Back to the original topic.
The sinking of MS Rigel:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/MS_Rigel
Vasilij Rambovski: The worlds unluckyest man? I found this story in the link below, and put it through google translate. Hope it's understandable.
http://www.norsk-rettsmuseum.no/a/?id=68&vn=736
When we found this picture, we had no other information than the name "Rambowski" which was written in pencil on the back. But thanks to thorough investigations and help and information from Per Jevne, Michael Stokke and Tore Strømøy, we here present the incredible and tragic story of Vasily A. Rambovskij.
Vasily Andrejevich Rambovskij was born in Ukraine, probably in 1918. He grew up in the village Rybki, outside Odessa, as the second youngest in a Christian family of four.
When Vasily was about 11 years, Ukraine went into a humanitarian crisis. Josef Stalin was interested in Ukraine because of the good agricultural opportunities in the country. He closed the borders, banning all imports of food, and demanded that all food products manufactured in Ukraine would be sent out of the country. This led to between 4 and 5 million Ukrainians starved to death in a short period of time.
Vasily and his family survived, but when he at age 20 married and had a son, his son died after a short time. The following year he got a new son, but he died shortly after birth. Vasily was crushed by sorrow, when in 1939 he was drafted into military service.
He served for the Red Army in 1941 when he was captured by the Germans. Large parts of the Red Army had been slaughtered in the face of the enemy, and those who survived underwent a brutal time in the face of war prisoners. Vasily and the other prisoners were forced out of a long and relentless march to Poland, without food and proper clothing. They were then crammed into cramped rail cars that carried them to Auschwitz.
23 year old was Vasily witnessed the systematic slaughter and torture in the camp. Although he was prone to abuse, hunger and organized food poisoning, but survived for almost miraculously.
After a time he was transported to Hamburg, and then to Bergen by ship. War Prisoners were placed outside on the deck and used as human shields against the British bombers. The English abandoned bombing attempts when they caught sight of the emaciated prisoners who sat out on deck without food or shelter from the elements.
Along with 25 other Russians arrived Vasily Levanger and Moan prison camp in 1943. There, the prisoners worked mostly as horse pass for the Germans, and had it better than in many other camps. Some also got to work on private farms in the area. The biggest difference, "said Vasily, was that they got food.
But the escape attempt was knocked down hard, that those who tried to escape were immediately shot, and Vasily saw several of their comrades killed in this way.
One autumn day in 1944 trying Vasily and two other Russians to escape Moan. There are several versions of what happened next.
Vasily says they ran across a field, the forest, while the bullets whistled past their heads. First one fell to the ground, shortly after, also the second hit. Vasily ran for their lives and managed to get into hiding among the trees. The Germans chased after and put sniffer dogs in the search, but Vasily hide their tracks well by running up a river and finally gives up the pursuers.
Other sources believe that Vasily was collected and taken prisoner by the Germans, while the comrades were shot quite right. He was taken to the mission site (Gestapo headquarters) in Trondheim, where he was until the war was over. Then he went back to Levanger, but escaped to the woods for fear of being sent back to the Soviet Union.
Whichever version is correct, it is certain that for Vasily was the start of two to three years on the run in the woods in a foreign country. He lived for periods of a bear, when he roamed around without knowing quite where he was. Eventually he was brought into the Bymarka in Trondheim. Vasily was then has been 27 years old.
During the summer, he wandered around in the woods, in winter he hiding in a barn. After two cold winters in the hayloft, he was discovered, terrified, emaciated and dressed in rags. The lining was smeared with horse manure to keep the cold out. He had survived on grisefòr, turnips, and milk from cows.
Month picture was taken that day in 1947, when he was picked up by police and sent to the hospital. According to him, he had spent three years alone in the forest, not knowing that the war was over. Not until he was handed a copy of a Russian newspaper he could get the good news.
But 13 March he was sent to hospital for Reitgjerdet particularly dangerous mentally ill men, and here he was put in solitary confinement for 2 months. Vasily was marked by what he had been through, and could hardly a word of Norwegian. It was still very clear to the staff at Reitgjerdet that although he was shy, timid and scared, so he was not mentally ill. Nevertheless, he was held there.
In October 1947, a delegation from the Soviet Union to bring him home. Vasily was initially happy, he was homesick and missed his family. But superior in Reitgjerdet, Henrik Lundh, advised him strongly not to go with them. Lundh knew that Stalin had ordered his troops to rather shoot himself than be captured, and that most soldiers who had survived the time in captivity was consistently shot or interned in labor camps in Siberia when they returned to their home country.
Lundhs urgent warning made an impression on St. Basil, and he chose to stay on Reitgjerdet. After two whole years at the institution, he was discharged, and took on different farms in. Farmers tell of a hard-working, but nervous and traumatized man who kept mostly to themselves. After a short time he began to draw to the solitude of the woods again, and eventually he was seen as a savage by the villagers. He broke into the cabin to find food, and people began to demand that the government should intervene.
At the end of the 1950s, it was decided that Vasily had caught. Despite the fact that he had never been violent or approaching people, considered of him as a threat. When police finally able to apprehend him, they were faced with a terrified man who feared for their lives. He believed that one had to send him to the USSR, and that he again would be put in prison camp. He was sent to Rotvoll asylum, and during the entire stay was very poor and afraid. Among other things, he could at times refusing to eat food he was served before anyone else had tasted it first - he had food poisoning in Auschwitz fresh in memory. He tried to escape four times, and was transferred to prison in 1961. On the basis that he had committed nearly 100 hytteinnbrudd over the years, he was tried in 1962.
The court concluded that he was clearly traumatized by their experiences and "possessed of latent anxiety" from the war, but nevertheless considered it not as mitigating. He was sentenced to five years in security at Ila Security Institution, the former Grini camp.
At the same time he meets Birgitte, and falls in love. After a one-year sentence he is released, and Vasily, and Birgitte are a daughter together. Vasili's happy for the first time in over 20 years. The small family buys a small farm and trying to build a new life together. But Vasily keep the past itself, and eventually weigh on him so much that he returned to Reitgjerdet. Eventually, he loses touch with the family.
After four years of Reitgjerdet Vasily was released and declared healthy. 52 years old, he became a Norwegian citizen and bought a small house in Levanger in Nord-Trondelag. Here he lived in solitude, and though he eventually became an accomplished sculptor, he was seen as something of a village idiot. He tried to connect with his family in Ukraine, but not until 1992 that success. His brothers were killed during the war. His father died after an accident in 1946, and his mother died in the 1960s. The mother had been told in 1947 that her youngest son was alive in Norway, but since she had never heard anything. She died in the hope of again seeing him again.
But Vasily little sister Anna lived, and she also had been looking for him. The joy and the expectations were huge, and Vasily would finally come home.
Morning 21 August 1992, Vasily got a unwell and was admitted to the hospital of Levanger. The same evening he fell asleep and died, just 10 days before he would come back home to his beloved Ukraine and family that he had to leave 50 years earlier.