Deportation of the Danish police officers

The Danish police officers were deported to German concentration camps in 1944 after the Danish police were disarmed and dissolved ( Operation Möwe on September 19). Danish police officers who were arrested in 1960 were transported in several transports, first to the Neuengamme concentration camp and then on to the Buchenwald concentration camp .

deportation

Since the Danish police did not act tough enough against the Danish resistance in the German opinion and Hitler feared that the majority of its members - as happened with the Paris police - could switch fronts, they were disarmed on September 19, 1944 as part of the Möwe military operation , disbanded and some of the police arrested. The Danish Freedom Council called for this reason the same day for a general strike on.

On September 20, 1944, 1,480 police officers from Copenhagen were brought onto the waiting ship “Cometa” and brought via Lübeck to Neuengamme concentration camp. In Zealand, the prisoners were first transported to Vestre Prison and then from Gedser on the Schwerin ferry to Warnemünde and from there to Neuengamme. 287 police officers from Funen and Jutland first came to the internment camp Frøslev and via Harrislee to Neuengamme.

The executives of the Danish and Copenhagen police were held as honorary prisoners at the Gestapo headquarters in the Shellhaus. 251 border guards came to Frøslev and were brought to Germany on October 5th.

In German camps

Danish policemen on their way to Sweden, 1945

At the end of September 1943, police officers were brought to the notorious, small camp in Buchenwald concentration camp. Following the intervention of the Danish authorities, they received food and clothing from Denmark, but 60 police officers died - mostly as a result of a scarlet fever epidemic .

As of December, following negotiations by the Danish authorities, the police were treated as civilian internees with prisoners of war of approximate status and 211 sick people were brought to the Frøslev camp in Denmark. On December 17 and 18, the others were transferred to the Stalag IV B prisoner-of-war camp in Mühlberg on the Elbe , where they were picked up in April 1945 as part of the rescue operation of the White Buses arranged by Folke Bernadotte and brought to Sweden. According to Matthias Bath, 78 police officers and 39 border police were killed and 268 suffered serious damage to their health.

Legal processing

The crime was dealt with at the Nuremberg Trial of Major War Criminals and the Great Copenhagen War Crimes Trial .

literature

Matthias Bath: Danebrog against swastika , Wachholz, 2011, ISBN 978-3-529-02817-5

Web links

Police Museum Denmark , (Danish)

Individual evidence

^ Matthias Bath: Danebrog against swastika , p. 227 ff.
^ Matthias Bath: Danebrog against swastika , p. 234
^ Matthias Bath: Danebrog against swastika , p. 234 f.
^ Harry Stein: Buchenwald Concentration Camp 1937-1945 , Wallstein 1999, 9th edition, ISBN 978-3-89244-222-6 , p. 175
^ Matthias Bath: Danebrog against swastika , p. 238 f.
^ Matthias Bath: Danebrog against swastika , p. 239
^ Matthias Bath: Danebrog against swastika , p. 239
↑ Karl Christian Lammers: Denmark: The “great” war criminals trial and its consequences , published in Transnational Past Policy , Ed. Norbert Frei, Wallstein 2006, ISBN 978-3-89244-940-9 . P. 361 ff.

[1] Matthias Bath: Danebrog against swastika , p. 227 ff.

[2] Matthias Bath: Danebrog against swastika , p. 234

[3] Matthias Bath: Danebrog against swastika , p. 234 f.

[4] Harry Stein: Buchenwald Concentration Camp 1937-1945 , Wallstein 1999, 9th edition, ISBN 978-3-89244-222-6 , p. 175

[5] Matthias Bath: Danebrog against swastika , p. 238 f.

[6] Matthias Bath: Danebrog against swastika , p. 239

[7] Matthias Bath: Danebrog against swastika , p. 239

[8] Karl Christian Lammers: Denmark: The “great” war criminals trial and its consequences , published in Transnational Past Policy , Ed. Norbert Frei, Wallstein 2006, ISBN 978-3-89244-940-9 . P. 361 ff.