Museum of the Frøslev Camp

Frøslevlejrens Museum

Since 1965, a memorial site in Frøslev - located in close vicinity to the German border - has been commemorating the former »Police Internment Camp Frøslev«. From here, the SS deported many members of the Danish resistance in the years 1944/45.

History

Denmark was under German occupation between April 9, 1940 and May 5, 1945. The government felt compelled to cooperate with the German occupying forces.
At the same time, however, the resistance movement began to grow and gained significant strength by spring 1943. The existence of an illegal underground press as well as strikes and sabotage caused tension between Germans and Danes. New demands of the occupiers forced the Danish government to resign on August 29, 1943.
In 1944, the German Sicherheitspolizei (security police) established a »police internment camp« in Frøslev, which was initially meant for 1,500 prisoners, but quickly became overcrowded. Due to the particular occupation policy of the Germans in Denmark, conditions in the prison camp remained relatively humane: the Danish prison administration, not the SS, was responsible for providing the prisoners with supplies.
According to a previous agreement between the Danish government and the German occupiers, Danish prisoners were not to be taken outside of the country. The SS broke this agreement and deported around 1,600 of the camp's 12,000 prisoners to German concentration camps. 220 of them perished.

Frøslev, 1944, View of the camp from the guard tower, Frøslevlejrens Museum

Frøslev, 2000, Prison cell in its original state, Frøslevlejrens Museum

Victims

In all, around 12,000 Danish citizens were held captive by the German Sicherheitspolizei (security police) in Frøslev prison camp. About 1,600 of them were deported to concentration camps outside of Denmark. 220 resistance fighters who were deported from Frøslev perished in German camps.

At the start of the German occupation in April 1940 there were 7,500 Jews living in Denmark, of whom 1,500 were refugees. The government in Copenhagen saw no choice but to cooperate with the German occupying forces and sections of the population also collaborated. However, the German occupiers assured the Danes that they would refrain from attacks on the Jewish population. The number of Danish volunteers in the Waffen SS was initially much greater than the number of Danish resistance fighters. A quarter of these volunteers were members of the German-speaking minority in North Schleswig. The Danish underground movement increasingly gained strength from spring 1943 onwards. Strikes and acts of sabotage led to tension between Danes and Germans. Faced with fresh demands from the occupation administration, the Danish government resigned in August 1943. Werner Best (1903–1989), German Plenipotentiary in Denmark, declared a state of emergency and proposed to the leaders in Berlin that the Danish Jews be deported. The Danes became aware of these plans. With broad support from the population, 7,000 Danish Jews subsequently managed to escape to Sweden between September and November 1943. Around 480 Jews who were unable to flee were arrested by German police and deported to the Theresienstadt ghetto. 52 of them did not survive. A total of 116 Jews died as a result of the German occupation. From 1944 onwards, members of the resistance were deported primarily via the Frøslev detention camp in southern Denmark to the German concentration camps at Neuengamme, Sachsenhausen, Dachau and Ravensbrück. Around 900 Danish resistance fighters were executed, lost their lives during acts of sabotage, raids or targeted killings, or died in German camps. Around 6,300 Danes out of a then population of around four million died as a result of the war. For a long time, Danish memory of the Second World War was dominated by the resistance and a unilateral hostility towards the Germans. This is still reflected in the culture of remembrance. The main sites of memory are the »Frihedsmuseet« (Liberation Museum) in Copenhagen, founded in 1957 and dedicated to the resistance; the museum established in 1965 on the site of the former Fröslee detention camp; and the national Memorial Park to the »The Fallen Danish Resistance Fighters« in Ryvangen, inaugurated in 1950. Holocaust remembrance was initially a matter for the Jewish community, but attitudes changed in the 1970s as a result of international interest in the rescue of the Danish Jews. The culture and politics of remembrance in Denmark continue to be characterised by conflicting attitudes towards resistance and collaboration.

Remembrance

Directly after the war, the Danish government interned collaborators at the prison camp site; many of them were members of the German minority. After 1949, the Danish military used the camp buildings as barracks. In 1965, former prisoners of the camp established a small museum on the camp site.
Today, the museum is in the former administration building and one of the former barracks of the camp. Both buildings are in their original state. Central themes of the exhibition are the political background for the establishment of the camp, everyday life of the prisoners and the conditions in German concentration camps, to which prisoners from Frøslev were deported.

Frøslev, 1944, Prisoners conducting forced labour in the Frøslev camp, Frøslevlejrens Museum

Possibilities

Exhibition, library and database containing information on the over 9,000 inmates, lectures by surviving former prisoners

Open

Tuesday to Friday: 9 a.m. to 4 p.m.
Saturday, Sunday and holidays: 10 a.m. to 5 p.m.
June 18 till August 10: 10 a.m. to 5 p.m.
Closed in December and January. Free admission.

Contact

https://froeslevlejren.dk/

froeslevlejren@aabenraa.dk

+45 (0) 746 765 57

Lejrvej 83
6330 Frøslev

Frøslev, 1997, Aerial view of the Frøslev Camp, Frøslevlejrens Museum

Gomadingen

Grafeneck Memorial

From 1940 on, a »euthanasia killing centre« was located on the premises of the Grafeneck castle, in the Württembergian town of Gomadingen. Thousands of mentally handicapped and ill people were murdere...

Bremen

Memorial Submarine Bunker »Valentin«

Since May 2011, the Memorial Submarine Bunker »Valentin« commemorates the victims of the satellite concentration camp in Bremen-Farge and six other camps in the region. Between 1938 and 1945, the pris...

Weimar

Buchenwald Memorial

Located on the Ettersberg (Etter Mountain) near Weimar, the Buchenwald concentration camp was one of the largest concentration camps in the German Reich. Between 1937 and 1945, the SS held hundreds of...