During World War II, the Danish government chose to cooperate with the Nazi occupation force. Even though this applied to the Danish police as well, many were reluctant to cooperate. As a result, a large number of members of the Danish police force were deported to Nazi concentration camps in Germany. The Gestapo established the collaborationist HIPO Corps to replace them.
Nazi Germany occupied Denmark on 9 April 1940, and the Danish cabinet decided on a policy of collaboration. This applied to all civil servants, including the entire Danish police force, which began cooperation with its German counterparts. [1]
On 12 May 1944, Dr. Werner Best demanded that the Danish police should protect 57 specific enterprises against sabotage from the Danish resistance movement, which was growing in strength. Should the Danish civil service not accept this, the Danish police force would be reduced from 10,000 to 3,000 men.[ citation needed ] The head of the Danish administration, Nils Svenningsen, was inclined to accept this demand, but the organizations of the Danish police were opposed to the idea. The German request was ultimately turned down, and this was reported to Best on 6 June 1944. This reduced the Gestapo's already limited trust in the Danish police even further.
The German army began arresting members of the Danish police in Denmark's main cities on 19 September 1944. The force numbered 10,000 men in that year. [2] 1,960 personnel were arrested and later deported to the Neuengamme concentration camp. [3] Policemen deported to Buchenwald were in two groups, the first group was sent on 29 September, the second was transferred on 5 October, 1944. On 16 December, following pressure from the Danish administration, 1604 men were transferred from Buchenwald to Mühlberg (Stammlager or Stalag IV-B), a camp for prisoners of war (POW)s. That meant an improvement in the situation for the Danish policemen; POWs had some kind of protection due to international conventions, while inmates in concentration camps did not. [4] [5]
Subsequently the policemen were scattered somewhat on various work details.
The Danish ministry of foreign affairs headed by Nils Svenningsen negotiated with the German authorities in Denmark over the release of Danish concentration camp inmates. [6] From late September 1944, transport with Red Cross packs was organized. An agreement was reached on 8 December 1944, for the release (and transport back to Denmark) of 200 sick policemen.
Simultaneously with the Danish negotiations, the Swedish count Folke Bernadotte intended to get all Scandinavian concentration camp prisoners to Sweden. The efforts to get prisoners from Scandinavia out of the German camps continued in the following months. In March and April 1945, 10,000 Danish and Norwegian captives were brought home from Germany in White Buses. The majority of the deported policemen travelled with these vehicles. Some of the returning captives arrived at Frøslev Prison Camp just north of the border between Germany and Denmark.
The number of Danish policemen who died during their incarceration in the German camps varies between 81 and 90, depending on the source. [7] Several died afterwards due to camp-related illnesses. This group is a little more difficult to delimit. According to a calculation in 1968, 131 policemen died. [8]
The mortality rate among the Danish policemen was reduced after they left Buchenwald and were transferred to Mühlberg in December 1944. 62 men died in Buchenwald.
Josef Terboven was a Nazi Party official and politician who was the long-serving Gauleiter of Gau Essen and the Reichskommissar for Norway during the German occupation.
Buchenwald was a Nazi concentration camp established on Ettersberg hill near Weimar, Germany, in July 1937. It was one of the first and the largest of the concentration camps within Germany's 1937 borders. Many actual or suspected communists were among the first internees.
At the outset of World War II in September 1939, Denmark declared itself neutral. For most of the war, the country was a protectorate and then an occupied territory of Germany. The decision to occupy Denmark was taken in Berlin on 17 December 1939. On 9 April 1940, Germany occupied Denmark in Operation Weserübung. The Danish government and king functioned as relatively normal in a de facto protectorate over the country until 29 August 1943, when Germany placed Denmark under direct military occupation, which lasted until the Allied victory on 5 May 1945. Contrary to the situation in other countries under German occupation, most Danish institutions continued to function relatively normally until 1945. Both the Danish government and king remained in the country in an uneasy relationship between a democratic and a totalitarian system until the Danish government stepped down in a protest against German demands to institute the death penalty for sabotage.
Fresnes Prison is the second largest prison in France, located in the town of Fresnes, Val-de-Marne South of Paris. It comprises a large men's prison of about 1200 cells, a smaller one for women and a penitentiary hospital.
The Danish resistance movements were an underground insurgency to resist the German occupation of Denmark during World War II. Due to the initially lenient arrangements, in which the Nazi occupation authority allowed the democratic government to stay in power, the resistance movement was slower to develop effective tactics on a wide scale than in some other countries.
Frøslev Camp was an internment camp in German-occupied Denmark during World War II.
Karl Rudolf Werner Best was a German Nazi, jurist, police chief, SS-Obergruppenführer, and Nazi Party leader and theoretician from Darmstadt. He was the first chief of Department 1 of the Gestapo, Nazi Germany's secret police, and initiated a registry of all Jews in Germany. As a deputy of SS-Obergruppenführer Reinhard Heydrich, he organized the World War II SS-Einsatzgruppen paramilitary death squads that were responsible for mass killings.
The "White Buses" was an operation undertaken by the Swedish Red Cross and the Danish government in the spring of 1945 to rescue concentration camp inmates in areas under Nazi control and transport them to Sweden, a neutral country. Although the initial aim of the operation was to save citizens of Scandinavian countries, it rapidly expanded to include citizens of other countries. Folke Bernadotte, Count of Wisborg, a Swedish nobleman and diplomat who was then vice-president of the Swedish Red Cross, negotiated the release of about 31,000 prisoners from German concentration camps.
Amersfoort concentration camp was a Nazi concentration camp near the city of Amersfoort, the Netherlands. The official name was "Polizeiliches Durchgangslager Amersfoort", P.D.A. or Amersfoort Police Transit Camp. 37,000 prisoners were held there between 1941 to 1945. The camp was situated in the northern part of the municipality of Leusden, on the municipal boundary between Leusden and Amersfoort in the central Netherlands.
The number of deaths in the Buchenwald concentration camp is estimated to have been 56,545, a mortality rate of 20% averaged over all prisoners transferred to the camp between its founding in 1937 and its liberation in 1945. Deaths were due both to the harsh conditions of life in the camp and also to the executions carried out by camp overseers.
The German occupation of Norway began on 9 April 1940. In 1942, there were at least 2,173 Jews in Norway. At least 775 of them were arrested, detained and/or deported. More than half of the Norwegians who died in camps in Germany were Jews. 742 Jews were murdered in the camps and 23 Jews died as a result of extrajudicial execution, murder and suicide during the war, bringing the total of Jewish Norwegian dead to at least 765, comprising 230 complete households.
Prior to the deportation of individuals of Jewish background to the concentration camps there were at least 2,173 Jews in Norway. During the Nazi occupation of Norway 772 of these were arrested, detained, and/or deported, most of them sent to Auschwitz. 742 were murdered in the camps, 23 died as a result of extrajudicial execution, murder, and suicide during the war. Between 28 and 34 of those deported survived their continued imprisonment. The Norwegian police and German authorities kept records of these victims, and so, researchers were able to compile information about the deportees.
Milly Elise "Lise" Børsum was a Norwegian resistance member during World War II, survivor from the Ravensbrück concentration camp, and known for her writings and organizing work after the war.
Horserød Camp is an open state prison at Horserød, Denmark located in North Zealand, approximately seven kilometers from Helsingør. Built in 1917, Horserød was originally a prison camp, and in local parlance the site is still referred to as Horserødlejren.
Borghild Hammerich was a Norwegian activist most known for her humanitarian efforts during World War II.
The NKVD Special Camp No. 1 was a special camp operated by the NKVD from 1945-1948, during the Soviet occupation of parts of Germany. It was located 4 km to the east of Mühlberg, Brandenburg using the shacks of the former German run prisoners-of-war camp Stalag IV-B. The prisoners mainly consisted of members of the lower and medium ranks of the nazi party, German military personnel, youth wrongly accused of belonging to the Werwolf and other persons who were regarded by the Soviets as being potentially dangerous like journalists, teachers, policemen, farmers, factory owners and politicians in addition to a number of arbitrarily accused people. Conditions in the camp were characterized by bad sanitary conditions, malnutrition and lack of basic medical service. The camp had over 21,800 prisoners during its existence, including 1,490 women and over 1,300 teenagers. At most, it held 12,000 prisoners at a time. In 1946, around 3,000 prisoners were deported to the Gulag in the Soviet Union. On 8 February 1947, a further 1,000 prisoners, mostly youth, were also deported to an NKVD Gulag camp in Siberia, the NKVD Camp No. 7503/11 in Anschero-Sudschensk. In summer 1948, two thirds of the prisoners were released. On 17 September 1948, the remaining 3,000 prisoners were transferred to another NKVD camp, Special Camp No. 2 in Buchenwald. From there, a part was released in 1950, the remaining prisoners were handed over from the Soviets to the East German Communist government and brought to Waldheim on 9 and 13 February 1950, only to be "convicted" in the infamous Waldheim Processes. The camp in Mühlberg ceased operations in 1948.
Erik Seidenfaden was a Danish journalist and editor. He was a co-founder of the Danish newspaper Dagbladet Information.
Karl Paul Kristian Gylche was a detective of the Danish police force who died in the Buchenwald concentration camp following the deportation of the Danish police. He is the father of Preben Gylche and brother of Vilhelm Gylche.
"Pløjeren" is one of the early short stories by the Danish author Karen Blixen. Published in the journal Gads danske Magasin in October 1907 under the pen name Osceola, it followed the publication of "Eneboerne" two months earlier although it was in fact the first of the two to be written.
Frants Hvass was a Danish diplomat.
