[ The kids in the Hitler Youth were no more deserving of death than these kids at Utoya.

They're all just kids.

What's more disturbing than what Beck said is the fact that it's not so far off the mark. Really, what the hell is with a 'summer camp' whose purpose is teaching kids the correct political viewpoints?

Beck was off the mark with the Hitler Youth comment because this Worker's Youth League more closely resembles the Soviet Union's Young Pioneers.

It's nice to get all lost in how evil or not the Hitler youth were, but it obscures the vile point Beck was making in the first place.

So Beck's a dink. Next topic, please.

The 12th SS Panzer Division Hitlerjugend ?!?

Or all the politically active church group camps?

I don't see how Christian camps are just teaching kids values, but political camps are indoctrination centers? At least these camps, and I'm sure the other parties in Norway have them too, are creating well informed people involved in politics. All of our political parties have a youth wing - how is this different. Don't they have that in the US as well?

They had visions of Norway as a nation that welcomed refugees, where the oil drilling that made the country wealthy would be curbed by environmental concerns, where young adults would get cheaper bus tickets and free condoms.

To someone older, more weary, those might sound like naive, callow visions. But to read about the past activism of the victims of the Utoya massacre is to appreciate the hopes and dreams of young women and men of an affluent, orderly country famous for social democracy and welfare-state generosity.Norway’s future liberal elite had gathered on bucolic Utoya Island for the traditional summer camp of the AUF, the youth wing of the ruling Labour Party.

And now at least 68 of them wouldn’t come back, felled by the guns of Anders Behring Breivik, a staggering loss for a small nation of five million people.

“Utoya is my youth paradise, which yesterday was transformed into Hell,” Norwegian Prime Minister Jens Stoltenberg said after the mass shooting.

That loss of innocence was exemplified by Hanne Kristine Fridtun, a 20-year-old who last year was elected AUF leader for the Sogn og Fjordane region in southwestern Norway.

She had been known as a big-hearted activist who worried about municipal accessibility for people in wheelchairs. She had pushed for free condoms and other contraceptives for young people so they could avoid the trauma of abortion.Now her name was reported around the world as the victim who was on her cellphone, bearing witness to the tragedy until the line went silent.

A reporter with the Norwegian national broadcaster NRK had reached her around 6 p.m. Friday, when the rampage had begun.

“I can’t speak loudly, I have to whisper,” she said, according to Norwegian and Swedish media accounts.

“Twenty of us have hidden down by the reeds. We’ve heard shooting. We don’t know what’s happening.”

Then three shots could be heard nearby. She said she had to hang up because someone was moving toward them. It was the last she was heard from.

The victims ranged from 14-year-old Johannes Buo to Trond Berntsen, 51, an off-duty police officer and stepbrother to Norway’s crown princess, Mette-Marit. Mr. Berntsen was credited with saving his 10-year-old son, taking the boy to safety before confronting the gunman.

Three days after the shooting, many were still officially listed as missing. One exception was 21-year-old Tore Eikeland, UAF chairman for the Hordaland region, whose death was confirmed by Mr. Stoltenberg at a memorial service where he described the young man as “one of our most talented youth politicians.”

At a party convention earlier this year, Mr. Eikeland was wildly applauded for a passionate, articulate speech in which, bucking the party leadership’s position, he warned about the fate of Norway’s postal service in the face of European Union integration. “Return to sender,” he quipped as he successfully called for the rejection of the EU directive that would have ended Norway’s state postal monopoly.

Policy-driven thoughts were also on the mind of Mr. Eikeland’s 18-year-old colleague, the Hordaland UAF vice-chairman, Tarald Mjelde.

“Shall sleep in the only camping spot on Utoya with more than three persons who are for EU,” he wrote on Twitter two days before the attack. He was among the missing, too.

Other victims exuded the same earnest idealism.

Guro Vartdal Håvoll, who cited Nelson Mandela among her inspirations, was a delegate from the town of Orsta. Like many other AUF youth members, she had also been concerned about oil drilling off the unspoiled Lofoten Islands in the Arctic. She also lobbied politicians because Norwegians over 16 have to pay adult bus fare when they aren’t accepted as being of legal age in other areas.

Utoya was also a place for Norway’s newcomers, the children of immigrants and refugees who were finding their niche in their new land.

One of the missing was Jamil Rafal Yasin, a 20-year-old delegate from the port of Egersund, who was born in Iraq.

At a memorial ceremony attended by thousands in Egersund, survivor Frida Ripland Moberg paid tribute to her.

“She is the reason why I support immigration and solidarity. She loved this country! I have never met anyone who expressed such love for our country as she did,” she said.

“Come home.”

I've read the testimony of a 16 yo young boy who was on the island and survived. The reporter said that the ringing on his phone was The Internationale...