The Danish Jewish Museum

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.