Russian Brethren and the Electronic Chain of Union

by Christopher Hodapp

Throughout the duration of the COVID-19 Wuhan virus shutdown, Masons all over the world have been doing what they can to continue to strengthen the fraternal bonds through electronic means. Most of these have been informal online gatherings, some have been bare bones business meetings, and there have been lots of educational talks, speeches and presentations. The United Grand Lodge of England continues the global observance of the Nine O'Clock Toast to Absent Brethren (#TimeToToast) each night, and Masons all over the world participate in that tradition, or establish their own to better suit their local time zones. 

But here's one I haven't seen before now.

Not every Masonic lodge in the world closes their meetings by forming a 'Chain of Union' and singing together, but a vast number do. The song we commonly sing is Brother Robert Burns' Auld Lang Syne, and we actually pride ourselves in knowing the words instead of mangling it like the average tipsy New Year's Eve reveler. For those who've never seen the practice in a lodge, the brethren stand in a circle (generally around the altar), cross their arms and link hands as a symbol of the unbroken chain that binds us all together into one common band of brothers. And even if you've traveled far from home to a foreign land, the lyrics are still usually sung in Burns' distinctive Scots gaelic 'auld tongue.' 

Even in Russia.

Grand Master Andrey Bogdanov of the Grand Lodge of Russia (Великая Ложа России) posted a video on Facebook this morning of their brethren linking hands electronically and carrying on this fine tradition from their homes. It was accompanied by the following message:

Brethren,
The pandemic may have forced us to close our temples, putting our brotherly ties and everyone else around the world under pressure...
Let us remember that 75 years ago, we’ [were] under pressure, but our courageous people together, defeated Nazis once and for all.
Together, we shall overcome this pandemic, we will conquer our fears...
Let your hand Join our brotherly chain, let your voice join our choir...

If you have a Facebook account, you can watch the video HERE. 

Moscow Museum Exhibits Soviet-era Masonic and Esoteric Art Through May

The Garage Museum of Contemporary Art in Moscow just opened a new exhibit of esoteric artwork from the Soviet period between 1905 and 1969. 

Freemasonry was banned throughout the Soviet Union after the Bolshevik Revolution in 1917, and unknown numbers of Masons were imprisoned or murdered over their membership (real or alleged) all the way up into the 1970s at least. That makes this an especially fascinating (and poignant) exhibit of very rare artwork. The works on display largely came from Russians who fled to Central Asia and met and worked in secret.

The exhibition also features copies and originals of NKVD (the Soviet secret police who later became the KGB) cases against suspected Freemasons who disappeared into the gulags or were shot. Countless members of Masonic and other esoteric societies in the USSR that had existed since the 19th century didn't survive political persecution, and were frequently betrayed and turned in to the NKVD by fellow members. Theirs are not the fictional tales of spy novels or anti-Soviet propaganda. These arrests, persecutions and killings were very real under Stalin and his successors, and are largely unheard of by historians and researchers today. 

From the Garage Museum website notes on the exhibition:

"We Treasure Our Lucid Dreams." The Other East and Esoteric Knowledge in Russian Art 1905–1969 is the result of a major research project undertaken by the team at Garage together with art critic Alexey Ulko (Samarkand) and artist Alexandra Sukhareva (Moscow/Dubna).

The quote in the title is from Andrei Bely’s 1901 poem “To Sergey Solovyov.” Bringing together over 150 artworks, artefacts, and archive documents, the exhibition takes a close look at the creative projects of artists who were members of secret societies or constructed individual practices informed by their esoteric interests. Many among these bearers of “secret knowledge” fell victim to Stalin-era repressions: they were executed, sent to prison camps, abandoned their beliefs or lost their archives.

Reflecting on the ways in which “secret knowledge” is preserved and passed on, the structure of the exhibition follows the symbolic cycle of “golden age” and “exile:” from the blossoming of various esoteric practices before the Russian Revolution to the banishment and execution of artists in the 1930s and 1940s; from the spiritual revival of the 1920s in the Soviet East (where many representatives of the Soviet creative intelligentsia went to work, for various reasons) to the arrests that followed and a period of “quiet” creative work thereafter.

The art presented in the exhibition dwells on the periphery—far from the great victories of modernism and the radical Soviet avant-garde—and has remained largely secret and invisible (including to art historians) because it was produced not as an aesthetic experiment but as an artefact of spiritual revelation. The logic of documents has also played an important role in structuring the show: a two-year research project included work in public and private archives and as a result the team reconstructed—from criminal cases and police records of searches—several biographies that had seemed irretrievable, such as that of the artist and anthroposophist Rimma Nikolaeva...

I have been unable to find any photos or examples online of the works and artifacts on display in this new exhibition, but it just opened on Friday, January 31st. It will run through May 10th, 2020.

The Garage Museum is located in Moscow's Gorky Park. For more information, see their English language website at https://garagemca.org/en

Universal League of Freemasons: How Masons and Esperanto Were Going to Save the World

The journal Ritual, Secrecy and Civil Society Volume 6/Spring 2019 included a fascinating paper by Denis LeFabvre about a group of starry-eyed Masons who created the 'Universal League of Freemasons' - a global association of lodges that began in 1905 to help affect the spread of Esperanto,  a newly-created, neutral and purportedly "universal" language. But their ultimate dreams were much greater than that. They hoped that a universal language combined with a universal fraternity would ultimately save the world.

Esperanto is mostly a strange curiosity these days (pre-Star Trek William Shatner starred in the first notable movie ever made in the language, Incubus in 1966, proving he could overact and chew scenery in any language), but it had its enthusiastic supporters in an earlier age. 

L.L. Zamenhoff

Esperanto was created in the 1870s and 80s by a linguist and Polish Jew named L.L. Zamenhoff using elements of Russian, German, English, French, Polish, Hebrew, plus Greek and Latin. His goal was to create an easy to learn and adopt second language that would transcend all national borders, tribal and cultural divisions. His ultimate hope was that Esperanto would be adopted as the new lingua franca for diplomacy, science, commerce and international understanding, and ultimately end, or at least defuse, the dangers of fervent nationalism that had so torn Europe apart for so long. His dream was born in reality, because those very divisions would plague Europe and kill millions for another 70 years. He himself had been raised in the Jewish ghetto and was surrounded on all sides by people who spoke numerous different languages and were in constant conflict. He saw the two issues linked together - that misunderstanding your neighbors' words often led to violent misunderstandings on a much larger scale. Rinse and repeat.

Zamenhof initially called his language Lingvo internacia ('international language') and attempted to publish a book in Russia to introduce it to the public in the mid-1880s. When the Russian government prevented its initial publication, author Leo Tolstoy became a public supporter and the authorities at last relented. 

The book was published under the pseudonym of 'Doktoro Esperanto' ('Doctor Hopeful'), and the growing fan base for the language soon began to call it Esperanto instead. It had a slow but steady increase in popularity over the next three decades, and Zamenhof was even nominated for the Nobel Peace prize in 1910.

7th International Esperanto Congress in Antwerp, Belgium - 1907

Zamenhoff wasn't a lone dreamer, and the horrors of World War I between 1914-18 ushered in a new sense of commitment to find drastic ways to prevent such future devastations from ever happening again. 

Zamenhoff died while the war still raged, but after hostilities ended in 1918, an awful lot of people came to agree with his point of view – that if only stubborn nationalism and artificial divisions could be licked, countries would stop shooting at each other. Esperanto became a sensation. In fact, the newly established League of Nations came within one vote of adopting Esperanto as their official diplomatic language. 

At the same time, some Esperanto utopianists and other advocates sought ways to incorporate Freemasonry and its philosophy of universal brotherhood as one of several ways to unite the people of Europe and the world to prevent future wars. Originally formed in 1905 as 'Esperanto Masona,' ('Hopeful Masonry') the creators of the UFL - Universala Framasona Ligo (Universal League of Freemasons) believed Esperanto, combined with the universal brotherhood of Freemasonry, could ultimately unite the entire world in brotherhood and finally bring global peace. 

The first practical mission of the UFL was to break through Freemasonry's own artificially erected barriers of recognition and regularity and accusations of clandestinism so that Masons could enjoy fellowship with each another in a non­-tyled Masonic environment, all without breaking their respective obligations. The notion was that Freemasons could meet informally from all different jurisdictions and obediences and find that they shared much more in common with one another than what divided them. 

But the harsh realities of the 1930s and the rapid rise of fascism in Germany, Spain and Italy, the atrocities and deprivations of Communism in Soviet Russia, along with the brutal spread of the Japanese Empire in the East, briefly brought the UFL's lofty dreams to a halt. In Mein Kampf, Hitler had declared that 'Esperatism' was a tool of the dreaded world-wide 'Jewish-Masonic Conspiracy.' During the WWII, only the Swiss group of the UFL remained active and their headquarters remained in Geneva.

Bust of Zamenhoff in Budapest

Both the Nazis and Josef Stalin's Russia persecuted and killed advocates for Esperanto. Zamenhof himself died of a heart attack in 1917, but he and his wife Klara Silbernik raised three children, a son, Adam, and two daughters, Sofia and Lidia. All three children were murdered in the Holocaust.

Nevertheless, there are still some 2 million people around the world today who speak or read Esperanto, and it's commonly known enough in pop culture that it even appeared in a Simpsons episode. The Internet has breathed new life into the spread of the language, and some foreign language programs teach Esperanto first as a stepping stone for then teaching more difficult languages. It's a simple one to master with few basic grammar rules that have no irregular exceptions, and advocates say teaching it to toddlers makes mastering many other languages later in life much faster. They regard Esperanto almost as the next step after learning the basic alphabet.

The Universal League of Freemasons didn't die after WWII, but very few Masons know about it these days. While you may never have heard of it, this was not some insignificant little discussion club — at their peak, the Universal League of Freemasons was spread into 72 countries with upwards of 12,000 members worldwide. 

Back in the 1960’s and 70’s the UFL generated an uproar in mainstream U.S. grand lodges who condemned the organization as clandestine because its members associated with irregular and unrecognized, clandestine Masons. There was an American group of the UFL founded by Harvey Newton Brown, who was also a major force behind bringing awareness to mainstream Masons about Prince Hall Freemasonry. Harvey Brown was a powerful advocate for broaching the artificial divisions of regularity and recognition among the world's Freemasons, so naturally he was treated by many American Masons like he had horns and a forked tail sprouting from his body. 

Interestingly, California's own Past Grand Secretary and 2014 PGM, John L. Cooper III (photo) was the last official Secretary for the American wing of the UFL in the 1980s when he was forced by the GL of California to drop out of it. 

The U.S group died soon afterwards, but John wrote his own paper about them. 

See 'The Universal .League of Freemasons: A Twentieth Century Experiment in Masonic Dialogue.'

Although they were pretty free-wheeling in their makeup, the UFL nevertheless restricted their membership to male Masons for a variety of practical reasons — not the least of which being that they knew accepting female Masons into the group would kill it in the cradle among even the most progressive-minded jurisdictions throughout the 20th century. At their World Congress in Berlin in 1992, the UFL voted to also include female and co-Masons for the first time. But they were already diminishing in popularity.

After the UFL faded, the international research group The Philalethes Society took on this same sort of role in the 1980s and 90s after the UFL disappeared, and they frequently invited "irregular and unrecognized" Masons to participate in their conferences and contribute to its magazine. PSOC presidents and editors Allen E. Roberts and later, Nelson King were both strong advocates of encouraging these types of cooperation, participation, education and understanding. It was this sort of informal Masonic interaction that both promoted Prince Hall recognition and stirred up a major brouhaha in the early 2000s in Minnesota over recognizing multiple French grand lodges.

In truth, the Internet did what the UFL couldn't do by the end of the 20th century. Masons from every jurisdiction — regular, recognized or not — began to communicate through online BBS systems, instant messages, chat rooms and forums, much to the chagrin and frustration of grand masters everywhere. 

Those freewheeling years of the CompuServe Masonry Forum and the later PSOC (Philalethes Society) Mailing List did more to advance international communication, understanding and scholarship between mutually unrecognized Masons all over the world than anything in the previous 275 years. Issues like Prince Hall recognition, almost the entire basis for so-called 'traditional observance' and 'European concept' lodges and practices, 'Chambers of Reflection,' and much more that are commonplace topics today would not exist had it not been for those early resources.

If you believe Internet websites, the Universal League of Freemasons still hangs on today. Last updated in 2011, there appear to be groups in Switzerland, Germany, Italy and Canada.

Meanwhile, Denis LeFabvre's paper in Ritual, Secrecy and Civil Society is a fascinating snapshot of these early UFL Masons who gallantly – albeit naively – attempted to use their fraternalism to achieve what politics, religion and traditional avenues of diplomacy could not. And it helps to explain some of the differing attitudes about Freemasonry's role in society between what we in the U.S. and the wider "regular, recognized" Masonic world practice, versus the very politically- and policy-minded attitudes in unrecognized obediences like the Grand Orient de France that developed in Europe. Those differences in philosophies about Freemasonry's proper role in the world and society didn't grow out of a vacuum, and this paper goes a long way in putting that into its proper perspective.

It's just one of the many fascinating papers you will find in the journals of  Ritual, Secrecy, and Civil Society

As I said, John Cooper's paper on the ULF is also well worth reading. He poignantly ended it with a quotation from Socrates to Meno in about 400 B.C., that appeared in the December, 1972, issue of the U.S. Group of the ULF's Newsletter, La Heroldo:

“That we shall be better and braver and less helpless if we think that we ought to enquire, than we should have been if we indulged in the idle fancy that there was no knowing and no use in seeking to know what we do not know; ­­ that is a theme upon which I am ready to fight, in word and deed, to the utmost of my power.”

For a list of back issues of the Journal, SEE HERE.

Or pick them up through Amazon HERE.

Huge Stash of Nazi-Confiscated Masonic and Occult Books Discovered

The grand lodge building of the Norwegian Order of Freemasons in Oslo.

A collection of 13,000 books on occult subjects, including Freemasonry, were amassed by Nazi SS-Reichsfuhrer Heinrich Himmler's forces during Germany's wartime occupation of Norway. The collection was stolen, in part, from the Norwegian Order of Freemasons' grand lodge library in Oslo. 

Shortly after the war ended, the collection was put into a storage building near Prague, Czechoslovakia.  In 1948, the Communists took power, and as part of the Warsaw Pact nations, they were effectively lost behind the Iron Curtain for many years.  Even after Czechoslovakia's opening to the West, they remained hidden away without any record since the 1950s.

These were just a small part of an enormous library of works on Masonic, occult, esoteric and witchcraft subjects that were confiscated throughout occupied Europe by a division of the Nazi SS.

From a story on the Prague Post website:

Books on witchcraft and the occult collected by SS chief Heinrich Himmler were found in a storage depot near Prague used by the Czech National Library.

The depot has not been accessed since the 1950s, according to UK tabloid the Daily Mail, which cited Norwegian newspaper Verdens Gang. 

Bjørn Helge Horrisland, a Norwegian Freemason historian, told Verdens Gang he was involved in identifying some of the books. “Many of them belonged to the central Norwegian Order of Freemasons library in Oslo,” he said.

The collection of books totals some 13,000 volumes, some 6,000 of which allegedly came from a library of books owned by the Norwegian Order of Freemasons. The Masonic library [was] seized by Nazis when Norway was occupied during World War II.

Himmler began amassing the collection in 1935 and had a strong interest in the occult, He had a special unit within the SS to collect and manage information on witchcraft.

Many of the books deal with witchcraft trials in Germany, and Himmler reportedly believed that the trials were part of historical plot to weaken the Germans. He also claimed to be descended from a witch that was executed.

 Himmler also believed that knowledge of the occult could be used to benefit the Third Reich.

The books were not meant for Prague but for Wewelsburg Castle in Germany. Himmler intended to make that castle a modern-day Camelot with a round table of SS officers in the place of knights. Himmler signed a 100-year lease on the triangular castle in 1934. The building is now a museum.

The books will now be examined by scholars, and a Norwegian TV company is planning a documentary.

The project to recover the library of books received European Economic Area funds from Norway and is a result of a cooperation between Stiftelsen Arkivet, the National Library of Norway and the Czech National Library, according to Norwegian new server TheLocal.no.

Himmler's interest in collecting occult items has been well-documented and has inspired works of fiction including the 1981 film 'Raiders of the Lost Ark.'

Himmler was captured May 21, 1945. He committed suicide with a cyanide capsule May 23 and was buried in an unmarked grave near near Lüneburg, Germany. The exact location is not known.

In 1935, Himmler founded the Ahnenerbe Forschungs-und Lehrgemeinschaft (the Ancestral Heritage Research and Teaching Society), to use the methods of science to bend history and archeology enough to back up the Nazis’ racial and cultural policies. (In the film Raiders of the Lost Ark, the Nazi group looking for the Ark of the Covenant is supposed to be a contingent of Ahnenerbe archeologists.)

The tales of Himmler's alleged fascination with the occult have waxed and waned over the years. The Reich Security Main Office (RSHA) was formed in 1939 as part of the SS, combined with the SD, and was subordinate to Himmler.  It's purpose was to fight all enemies of the Reich both inside and outside of Germany.  It eventually grew to become a massive bureaucracy with close to one hundred sub-sections, divided into seven main divisions. Amt II was headed up by SS-Brigadefuhrer Professor Franz Albert Six, and was dedicated to "Ideological Investigation." 

Not long afterwards, Amt II was reorganized and split off as Amt VII for "Ideological Research and Evaluation," again headed by Franz Six (and after 1943 by SS-Obersturmbannführer Paul Dittel.) Their mission was partially to create anti-semetic and anti-Masonic propaganda, as well as surveying occupied Nazi population's public opinion.

Modern scholarship has dug into captured Nazi documents long held by Warsaw Pact countries, which have revealed Amt VII's other activities, including the collection of stolen  esoteric libraries. They also, allegedly, created an extensive card catalog on publications and other resources regarding witchcraft, a special interest of Himmler's (it was long whispered that a relative of his had been burned at the stake for being a witch). 

After the Soviets took parts of Berlin, and Germany was divided into East and West after the war, many of the records and books from their confiscation of occult, esoteric and Masonic libraries eventually wound up in Russia, the Silesia region of Poland, and Czechoslovakia, and were not researched until the 1990's.

In 2002, 750 crates of Masonic objects and papers stolen from occupied lodges and Grand Lodges across Europe and held by the Russian Military State Archive were delivered to the Museum of Freemasonry of the Grand Orient of France in Paris. These included membership lists that were used to help round up Freemasons to be sent to concentration camps. (The entire library of the Grand Orient of France was confiscated when the Nazis occupied Paris, and the books were taken to Berlin and subsequently burned.) 

A lengthy work, Restitution of Confiscated Art Works - Wish Or Reality?, was published in Czechoslovakia in 2008 as a collection of presentations from a conference in the city of Liberec. Buried in it are several references to the RSHA Amt VII unit's activities in assembling a vast library on the occult, witchcraft, esoteric, and Masonic books, eventually estimated to be in excess of 160,000 volumes:

Most of the books that traversed Sudeten crossroads had been held before August 1943 as part of the RSHA Amt VII (Seventh Office) library in Berlin, seized by the SD Main Office (Hauptamt) and the Gestapo starting in 1936. With the merger of the security services in late 1939, most of the collected books and archives preserved by the SD Main Office came under control of the newly formed RSHA Amt II (Second Office), headed by SS-Brigadeführer Franz Alfred Six, charged with investigation of political opponents (Gegnerforschung).

Starting in December 1941, Six organized the Seventh Office (Amt VII), specially for “Ideological Research and Evaluation” (Welt- anschauliche Forschung und Auswertung), split off from the other more  operational offices. Having inherited most of the SD/RSHA library and archival loot, Amt VII was responsible for organizing the RSHA library and archival centers, although some of the books went to other RSHA units. Most of the Amt VII staff, which Six headed until 1943, were members of the SS. Most of the books and archives were held in the buildings of two liquidated Masonic lodges the Gestapo had commandeered (Emserstrasse 12/13, and Eisenacherstasse 11/13), although some were stored in other depots in Berlin. From the spring of 1943, SS-Obersturmbannführer Paul Dittel, who from the start had been particularly involved with the collected Masonic materials, was the last head of Amt VII. Yet his title remained “acting,” indicative of the reduced importance and “mysterious twilight” of that unit towards the end of the war, as he made clear to his British interrogators afterwards.

During the Cold War, little was known about Amt VII, because its major surviving records were not publicly accessible. The Soviets found many SD Main Office administrative files among the massive RSHA-plundered archives they captured in Silesia (Wölfelsdorf), along with those of later Amt VII operations, and they seized a few more in the bombed-out RSHA Eisenacherstasse building in Berlin. Some of those files they passed on to the Stasi in the 1950s, and those are now being processed with other Stasi RSHA holdings by the Bundesarchiv in Berlin. Others were captured in Silesia by the Poles, came out of hiding in 1989, and were traded to the Bundesarchiv in 1997. However, many important SD Main Office and subsequent RSHA Amt VII files remain in Moscow, not all of them open for research. Combining clues from documents now in Moscow and Berlin provides hitherto unknown revelations about RSHA library operations, especially those in the Sudeten castles.

[SNIP]

Alleged occult elements in the Nazi ideology and Himmler’s interest in neo-paganism and Masonic rituals have aroused widespread interest since the defeat of the National Socialist regime. Even the History TV Channel produced a documentary on“Hitler and the Occult,”suggesting what would seemingly be a sensationalist theme. The popular internet Wikipedia suggests that ‘Nazism and Occultism’ is usually “a topic for sensational authors in pursuit of strong sales,” but it prominently cites Nicholas Goodrick-Clarke, and his serious Oxford doctoral thesis on the Austrian Arisophists. Other important scholarly studies have analyzed occult themes in Nazi circles, especially under Heinrich Himmler, and the Masonic Library, confiscated from one of the alleged ‘enemies of the regime,’ was one of the most important components in the RSHA Amt VII holdings. Himmler’s interest in witchcraft and the supernatural was highlighted in Amt VII’s special unit devoted to Witchcraft (C 3), Sonderauftrag H, and Himmler’s card file on witches (Hexenkartothek), all of which are well documented. Reportedly, the materials gathered for the Witchcraft unit were sent to Schlesiersee [in Poland] with the Masonic collections, rather than the Sudeten castles, and that unit had ceased to function by the time of evacuation.

In the Sudeten castles, on the other hand, we find Amt VII SS specialists busily sorting and cataloguing occult literature, which the SD Main Office and Amt VII library had been collecting. Suddenly, that section of the library assumed a major prominence, and a top- secret project was launched on its basis—another important example of Nazi preoccupation with the occult. 

Himmler saw the SS as a kind of reimagining of the of the chivalric Teutonic Order, who were originally founded  in 1190, much like the Templars, to protect crusading pilgrims to the Holy Land.

Wewelsburg castle in Germany

He came to the town of Buren in the Westphalia region of western Germany in 1934, and took over the imposing castle of Wewelsburg. The castle was to become the center of a college for new SS officers and Himmler’s own elite Knightly Order. The castle became the place of initiation of his new order and the new spiritual center of the Nazi paganism that was based on Germanic legends. Ahnenerbe’s headquarters were based in Wewelsburg Castle.

Himmler planned very big. His goal was to make the surrounding village a complete SS colony, only for members of the SS and their families. In 1939, a concentration camp was established to provide 3,900 prisoners to work on the project. More than 1,200 were worked or starved to death building Himmler’s dream.

Himmler saw Wewelsburg as his own private Camelot which, of course, needed a Round Table for its knights. In the north tower, a round chamber was constructed, with a sunken area in the floor and a round, oak table.

There were just twelve seats around it, for the top dozen officers of the SS. In the domed ceiling a stylized, golden swastika set in stone can still be seen today, modified with the symbol of the SS at each corner. A different subterranean round chamber immediately below it was to be a crypt for the ashes of all dead SS members, complete with an eternal flame. Another one of Himmler’s goals was to find the Holy Grail, and a special room in the castle was set aside for the Grail when it was found.

The Nazis went to great lengths to engineer an elaborate explanation that Jesus was descended from Jacob, who, they said, was not Jewish at all, but an Aryan. Another part of Ahnenerbe’s mission was to prove the origin of the Aryans, and they even sent archeological expeditions to India, Tibet to seek evidence of the earliest appearance of their “Master Race”.

As a footnote to this post, I came across a brief account of Freemasonry in Norway under the Occupation, and especially about the grand lodge building in Oslo. From Freemasonry Under The Nazis by David Lewis, published in 2012:

When Norway was invaded in 1940 the Masonic temple in Oslo was converted to an army barracks and the order dissolved. Major Vidkun Quisling, the Nazi collaborator, had Freemasonry as point no. 1 for action on his agenda and emptied Masonic buildings and destroyed some of them. The main Temple in Oslo was converted to officers’ quarters but, according to one brother who visited it recently, amazingly it was not vandalised -- the only one in Europe known to have been left untouched by the Nazis. A number of masons were murdered. When he was tried after the war his trial, ironically, took place in a former Masonic temple before he was convicted and shot. 

“I was personally involved in identifying some of the books. Many of them belonged to the central Norwegian Order of Freemasons library in Oslo,” Bjørn Helge Horrisland, a Norwegian Freemason historian, told VG.