The Jewish pianist Robert Levin wanted to flee to Sweden after the German Wehrmacht occupied Norway in April 1940, but his wife Solveig wanted to stay close to her family in Oslo. When Jewish men were to be arrested in October 1942, Robert Levin went underground. He found it hard to leave behind his wife and their three-year-old daughter Mona.
To begin with, Robert Levin turned for help to a fellow musician’s father, Professor Andreas Diesen at Oslo’s Ullevål Hospital. Diesen’s colleague Dr. Haakon Sæthre, the head of the psychiatric department, admitted Robert Levin as an alleged patient for a few days. After that, Levin hid for almost two weeks with a family named Ottensen, before managing to escape to Sweden on November 24.
In a reception center near Stockholm, he was reunited shortly later with his wife and daughter, who had also escaped. The family lived in Sweden until the end of the war. Their daughter Sidsel was born there in 1944. They returned to Oslo after 1945.