War Years
Robert and Solveig Levin were married in 1938 and had their first daughter in 1939. After Norway was occupied by Nazi Germany in 1940, Levin continued to perform but was subjected to daily threats and restrictions on the venues and music he could play. Some of his best friends joined the Nazi party, a terrible disappointment for him.
When Nazi authorities in occupied Norway started arresting and deporting Jews, Levin went under cover with friends and eventually fled to Sweden. The rest of his family arrived in Sweden a few days later, but many of Levin's closest relatives were deported from Norway and murdered in Auschwitz.
Levin became a proponent of Norwegian music and culture while in exile in Sweden. He wrote the music to several patriotic Norwegian songs, including Kirkenesmarsjen, a march to commemorate the liberation of the Northern Norwegian town of Kirkenes by Soviet troops on 25 October 1944.
Sponsored by the Norwegian exile government or Svenska Norgeshjälpen, Levin performed for Norwegian resistance fighters in Sweden along with Herberth Ballarini and his wife Solveig, Randi Heide Steen, Ernst Glaser, Gunnar Sønstevold, Hugo Kramm, Gunnar Reiss Andersen, Axel Kielland, Lauritz Falk, Sonja Mjøen, and others. Levin also sent packages to musical colleagues in Oslo under the pseudonym Banjo-Lasse.
When the family Levin returned to one of the central train stations in Oslo in June 1945, the orchestra Robert had to leave nearly three years earlier awaited him at the platform, performing at their arrival.
Read more about this topic: Robert Levin (Norwegian Pianist)
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