In February 1938, Annie Sachs, who lived in Berlin with her mother Ida, was able to travel to visit her sister in Oslo on a tourist visa. When her visa expired her mother advised her to stay in Oslo illegally. After several months, she found a way to evade being expelled to Germany when the young actor Kåre Wicklund was prepared to marry her.
The two of them married at the end of 1938 and then went their separate ways. One day, they happened to meet on a tram. Annie was learning Norwegian and the shared language brought them together. In 1939 they moved into an Oslo apartment together.
That summer, Annie’s mother was able to join them after Kåre provided a financial guarantee for her. The three of them moved to the countryside in the fall of 1940.
When the two Jewish women were obliged to report to the local police station twice a day from October 1942, Annie, Kåre, and Ida laid plans to escape. After a long march at freezing temperatures and overnight car and boat journeys, they finally reached Sweden in a horse-drawn sleigh.