Denmark's Difficulties with its World War II Past

For fifty years after World War II, no one in Denmark investigated in detail the fate of the Jewish refugees who sought asylum there in the 1930s and 1940s. Denmark's status as one of the Allies was a delicate matter, and only the rescue of the Danish Jews to Sweden in October 1943 was widely known. Danish historians averted their gaze from darker aspects of Denmark's policy, which continued even after the war. Since the 1990s, closed archives have been forced open by a new generation of historians, revealing previously concealed aspects of World War II Denmark. It emerges that from 1935 Denmark rejected Jewish refugees at its borders, and that it expelled twenty-one Jewish refugees to Germany in 1940-1943 most of whom were eventually killed. New findings also show that Danish firms used Jewish slave laborers and that Denmark exported agricultural products that helped feed the German army.

The Danish World War II legacy is ostensibly a pleasant one. In most international presentations to date, the Danish chapter of World War II history has been positive. On the international level, the Danish rescue of nearly seven thousand Jews to Sweden in 1943 is probably the most important factor in this favorable assessment. Because of the policy that Denmark adopted immediately after the Nazi invasion in April 1940, Denmark also had fewer losses in lives and treasure than most occupied countries in Europe.

From:
Vilhjálmur Örn Vilhjálmsson and Bent Blüdnikow, Rescue, Expulsion, and Collaboration: Denmark's Difficulties with its World War II Past, Jewish Political Studies Review 18:3-4 (Fall 2006) – link