The Museum of Danish Resistance 1940-1945
The
museum tells the story of Danish resistance during Nazi occupation
1940-1945. It springs from an exhibition
called Fighting Denmark, arranged by the Resistance Council
in the summer of 1945. In 1957 a permanent
museum was opened on the present location. The exhibition
you see today was inaugurated in 1995.
| The
grand hall at the Danish Resistance Museum, with
the upper section covering the last letters from
doomed members of the Resistance before they were
executed by the Nazi slayers at Ryvang, where the
Nazis executed and buried their victims. Ryvang
is today a Memorial Park for the executed patriots.
|
|
| Industrial
sabotage was a common activity among the Danish
resistance movement, who risks there lives to stop
specific factories and selected manufactures to
continue working, by destroying productions facilities
and warehouses that favoured the Nazi constituted
authorities. |
|
Development of the resistance movement
The
exhibition proceeds chronologically as an illustration of how
the resistance movement developed within the
ever-changing framework provided by Danish society and the tides
of battle. Different types of resistance work are presented.
All exhibition texts are given in English as well as Danish.
Videos providing accounts by testimonies of the time have dubbing
in English. Library
The museum contains a special library on the German occupation
of Denmark 1940-1945. It offers public access for study purpose,
but no lending of books.
| A
selection of prison uniforms from various Nazi concentration
camps are exhibited at the Resistance Museum together
with other related items from these extermination
camps. The first concentration camps in Germany
were established in 1933. |
|
| Room
with equipment of an illegal telegraphist exhibited
at the Resistance Museum, who mainly used private
homes to send from. The residence owner would be
sentence to prison or deported to Nazi KZ camps,
if the illicit facilities were spotted. |
|
Liberation
The Nazi army surrendered on May
5, 1945, before the fighting reached Denmark. That
gave the signal to rejoicing at the regaining of freedom as
well as to punishment of guilt and attempts at settling responsibilities.
Location – Resistance Museum
The Museum of Danish Resistance is located beside the Old
Citadel – English Church – Gefion Fountain –
the Little Mermaid – Langelinie Quay and few blocks
away from Amalienborg Palace.
| The
Resistance Museum
Free entrance
Address
The Museum of Danish Resistance
(Frihedsmuseet)
Churchillparken
1263 Copenhagen K.
Busses: 26
Trains
- Østerport Station
|
|
The
Memorial Park in Ryvangen |
The
Memorial Park in Ryvangen
The Memorial Park in Ryvangen is worth a visit, as this spot
was the very place where the Nazis executed and buried their
victims. Visitors can experience the three execution
posts, where the Danish patriots from the resistance
movement were tied and shot.
Where the Nazi shooting squad stood, a memorial plaque has been
set up, with an inscription of words of the national hero and
priest Kaj Munk (1898-1944), who was brutally
murdered by the Nazis. When the Nazis army capitulated, 199
corpses were found and identified here and later buried with
full honour. The Park is a delightful sanctuary
with beautiful grassy ramparts surrounding some of the resistance
members’ final resting place. Site
| The
Memorial Park in Ryvangen
Address
Mindelunden i Ryvangen
(Memorial Park in Ryvangen)
Tuborgvej 33
2900 Hellerup
Bus – 15 to the bus end station
Trains - Hellerup Station - 500 m from the entrance
of Memorial Park in Ryvangen
|
| The
sculptor of - A Mother with her killed son - by
Axel Poulsen from 1950 at the Memorial Park in Ryvangen. |
|
|
