When film director Morten Conradi´s father met Igor Trapitsin, a Russian prisoner of war, for the first time in Brønnøysund in Norway 1945, it was the beginning of a friendship that lasted until Morten’s father died in 1977. Morten always wanted to find Igor and find out how he survived the barbaric conditions in the camps during the Second World War. So in 2009 Morten went to Moscow to meet him. The answer Igor gave was unexpected, he simply said: "Singing saved my life".

Singing Saved my Life

The girls here received more punishment than the boys on Bastøy. Now four of them tell about the humiliations they experienced and as psychologist Gori Gunvald warned about in 1960.