Kai Holst

The question has been asked whether Kai Holst's death could be connected with his task at Lillehammer, a hypothesis primarily put forward by the historian Tore Pryser. Holst might have had with him information from Lillehammer that could damage the operation later known as "Operation Claw" (in Norwegian Lillehammer-kuppet). Odd Feydt stated that when Holst travelled back to Stockholm, he was tailed from the moment he passed the Norwegian-Swedish border. The information about Operation Claw was secret in the years after the war and even today is not all available. A report in the British National Archives is classified until 2020.

The same day he unexpectedly travelled back to Stockholm and on the morning of 27 June was found dead at the top of the staircase in an apartment building at Rindögatan 42 on Gärdet. He was found by the porter's wife, shot in the right side of the head, lying in a pool of blood at the top of the staircase, outside the door to the elevator room. Some hours earlier she had found his rucksack and travel bag outside the entrance. The body was found with 1,200 NOK, a large sum at that time (equal to more than 20,000 NOK, or over $3,000 in 2012), something that seemed to rule out robbery as a motive for murdering him.

The Swedish professor Ingvar Bergström, who had worked for C-byrån in Gothenburg during the war, was of the opinion that Holst had been murdered. He first stated that the liquidation had been ordered at "high levels within Milorg" but later on changed his opinion, in consultation with the retired landshövding and historian Per Nyström, to its having been done by the Swedes in cooperation with the Norwegians. Holst's close colleague during the war, the Milorg leader Jens Christian Hauge, has been criticised for refusing to assist in casting light on the case. In connection with the press coverage of the case in 1994 Hauge issued a press statement in which he stated that he did not have any specific knowledge of the case, and concluded with the following: "It would be a great relief for me and for all of Kai Holst's remaining comrades if this sad case could be solved."

In the 1990s, Holst relatives contacted the lawyer Jan Heftye Blehr. Blehr contacted Rettsmedisinsk institutt (the Norwegian forensic institute) in order to reexamine the autopsy of Holst. The pathologist Olving stated that: "from the findings at the autopsy there is nothing that speaks against that it could be a suicide. There is however nothing that rules out that it could be a murder". On the basis of Major General Paus' statements, the Ministry of Justice and Public Security took up the case and in 1995 the historian Trond Bergh was in Stockholm and got to see what material the Swedish security police Säpo had that was related to Holst's case. According to the Minister of Justice, Grete Faremo, no new information was found.

Kai Holst never received any decoration from Norwegian authorities for his wartime efforts, in spite of his superior Wladimir Mørch Hansson recommending one to the council of the resistance forces in January 1946. He was however posthumously commended by George VI of Great Britain on 24 June 1950 for Brave Conduct. The question has been raised of why Britain chose to honour Holst, as he never officially worked for the British. Tore Pryser has put forward the thesis that Holst, who in addition to his work for Milorg also was in the service of the British SIS, was killed by Swedish intelligence to prevent him from reporting Operation Claw to the SIS.

Holst is remembered both for his work with the Norwegian resistance and for the circumstances surrounding his death in Stockholm in 1945. Holst's demise was so much talked of at the time that the Milorg leadership issued a statement in the Norwegian newspaper Aftenposten in July 1945. Swedish and Norwegian authorities officially concluded that Holst committed suicide, but his family and many of his friends and colleagues were of the opinion that Holst was murdered.

After the German capitulation in May 1945, Holst was working on closing the various storage bases that Norwegian resistance fighters had established on Swedish soil, and travelling back and forth between Sweden and Norway. On 23 June, he arrived in Norway by car from Stockholm and early in the morning of 26 June he accompanied British and Norwegian forces in searches carried out at German military camps at the Wehrmacht headquarters in Lillehammer.

Holst's family did their own research regarding his death. Holst's sister, Else Heyerdahl-Larsen, contacted Norwegian authorities, but was warned against looking into the case as it could be dangerous. Ole Otto Paus, then an army captain, later a major general, was married to the sister of Holst's widow and in 1945 in Oslo he saw the documents from the police investigation when he tried to check the case. Paus found it especially troubling that Holst had bought sleeping car tickets from Stockholm to Oslo for his wife and himself for the day after he was found dead. When he wanted to check the documents again two years later, they were gone.

Holst's superior in Stockholm in 1945, Wladimir Mörch Hansson, said that Holst received death threats, and found the lack of Swedish assistance in solving the case impossible to explain.

From December 1944 until his death he was married to Margarete Corneliussen, daughter of Ragnar Corneliussen, the president of Tiedemann's tobacco factory and a member of the board of Industriforbundet, and Monna Morgenstierne Roll. He was thus brother-in-law to Major General Ole Otto Paus, who was married to his wife's sister Else.

In November 1944 Holst was involved in an illegal weapons purchase and received a warning from the Swedish security police, Säpo. Around the same time Holst was mentioned by Säpo in connection with an espionage affair in which the Norwegian intelligence agent Finn Jacobsen was involved. It was however not possible for the Swedish authorities to interrogate Holst as he had diplomatic immunity. Finn Jacobsen was working for the British Secret Intelligence Service (SIS) and cooperated with Holst in supplying the British with intelligence from Norway, without the knowledge of the Norwegian legation in Stockholm, which the SIS did not fully trust. Holst was an activist and probably had sympathy with the action-connected resistance groups, such as 2A and the Osvald Group and the so-called sports office (Idrettskontoret) at the Norwegian legation, led by Harald Gram.

Holst married Margarete Corneliussen on 19 December 1944 in Stockholm.

In addition to being the link between the Milorg leadership and its district organisations, Holst was also the link to resistance groups independent of Milorg. They included Oslogjengen with Gunnar Sønsteby, XU, Asbjørn Bryhn' groups, 2A and the Osvald Group (also known as the Sunde Group after its leader Asbjørn Sunde). The cooperation with the communists and their inferior security almost resulted in Holst being caught by the Gestapo. Holst had an important role during the Osvald Group's fire-bombing of the work-service office in Pilestredet in Oslo on 20 March 1943, which Milorg hesitantly agreed to, whose aim was to destroy archives of people assigned to work service for the Nazi regime.

In the summer of 1943 Holst had to flee to neutral Sweden. After hiding at a fur-farm in Mesnali he was accompanied over the border by a border guide at Svinesund on 5 August. He was arrested on entering Sweden and explained that he had to flee as he had been in possession of a radio without permission, had listened to news from London, and had spread it to others. He did not say anything about his work with Milorg. After being questioned by the Swedish authorities in Strömstad, as a refugee from Norway he was sent to Kjesäter and after further questioning there given permission to travel to Stockholm.

Odd Feydt, active in the resistance group 2A and in 1943 leader of Sambandskontoret (a Norwegian intelligence office in neutral Sweden) stated that Holst was followed (tailed) during his last trip from Lillehammer to Stockholm and that Holst's death might be connected with cooperation between the Norwegian Rettskontoret and the Swedish intelligence organisation C-byrån.

Even though he never had any formal executive position in Milorg, Kai Holst had an important role in the practical work in the organisation, and he was especially important for Milorg in the autumn of 1942 when several of the leaders were arrested by the Gestapo or had to flee to Sweden. Holst participated in the meeting at the turn of the year 1942 when Milorg was reorganised with Jens Christian Hauge as Inspector General (known as "big I").

After Norway was invaded and occupied by Nazi Germany Holst soon, despite his bad health, started working with the main Norwegian resistance organisation, Milorg. He was recruited in 1941 by his brother-in-law, the officer Lars Heyerdahl-Larsen and was soon given important tasks and gained a reputation as the most action-oriented man in the secretariat of the central leadership (Sentralledelsen). From 1942 Holst worked as a courier, established Milorg's system for hiding refugees (apartments where resistance fighters went into hiding before being "exported" to neutral Sweden) and had close contact with such central resistance figures as Ole Borge and Jens Christian Hauge. Kai Holst was, according to professor Tore Pryser, instrumental in teaching Hauge the various skills needed: "In many ways it was actually Holst who trained the inexperienced Hauge."

In 1933 he finished working as a seaman and became a fur farmer in Mesnali, east of Lillehammer. Holst contracted tuberculosis and just before the outbreak of World War II he had a major operation related to his pulmonary tuberculosis.

Kai Holst was born and grew up in the town of Lillehammer. He was the son of businessman Christian Holst and Inga Holst, born Rasmussen, both originally from Stavanger. After elementary school Holst attended secondary school and vocational training in Lillehammer. A couple of years after his confirmation he found work as a seaman, and in the years 1930–1933 he sailed on MS Brageland, owned by the Norwegian shipping company Sydamerikalinjen, then transferred to MS Daghild, owned by the Norwegian shipowner Ditlev-Simonsen.

Kai Christian Middelthon Holst (24 February 1913 – 27 June 1945) was a Norwegian seaman, fur farmer and resistance fighter during World War II. When the leadership of Milorg was torn up by the Gestapo in 1942, he acquired a leading role in the organisation and participated in re-establishing the central leadership (Sentralledelsen, SL) of Milorg together with Jens Christian Hauge. Holst had to flee Norway in the autumn of 1943 and stayed in Sweden until the liberation of Norway in 1945.