Dansk Politi bag Pigtraad - The Danish Police Behind Barbed Wire - A report on the imprisonment of the Danish police in the German concentration camps 1944-1945, by Poul Bennit - A Danish policeman himself imprisoned in the death camps. Published by Skandinavisk bogforlag, Odense Denmark [1945]. Danish.
A detailed report on the bitter fate of policemen in the Danish police during World War II who were captured by the SS and thrown into the death camps, by a former prisoner in Buchenwald - a policeman in the Danish police. Live documentation of events one after the other. "The Danish policeman who wrote this book experienced firsthand the Germans' horrible treatment of prisoners, and it is not an exaggeration at all to describe the behavior of the German guards as animalistic" is written. For most of World War II, Denmark was occupied by Nazi Germany. With its conquest on April 9, 1940, some politicians thought the Danish police should cooperate with the occupying German forces. The head of department at the Foreign Ministry, Nils Svenningsen, personally believed the Danish side should accede to the demand. However, there was opposition to this, including from police organizations. During the war years, relations between the Danish police and the SS were complex, hovering between cooperation with the Nazi occupier on the one hand and resistance on the other as recurring threats were voiced against policemen by the occupying SS forces. In 1944 the Danish police numbered about 10,000 people. Of these, 1,960 were apprehended on charges of conspiracy against Nazi Germany. The suspects were apprehended, and initially the prisoners were held at the Neuengamme concentration camp near Hamburg, later some were transferred to Stutthof, but for the longest time, the policemen remained in the Buchenwald camp. Among other things, Poul describes the fate of Jews in the camp: "The Jews in the camp were imprisoned in a separate section from us behind a barbed wire fence, and they were treated worse than animals... The Jews mainly served for forced labor outside the camp, and it was a sad sight to see them returning from such a work detail, starving and exhausted, dressed only in a thin pair of pants and a striped jacket almost like pajamas... They were transported on open railway cars in the cold winter for often several days. When such a transport returned to the camp and was put in line to receive their half liter of soup... some of them would fall dead before reaching the soup, no one helped these poor souls, no one could or dared".
The Danish policemen were transferred from Neuengamme to Buchenwald in two groups, accordingly on September 29, 1944 and October 6, 1944 aboard cattle cars. Poul documents how the SS soldiers apprehended the Danish policemen, the experiences of the Danish policemen in these camps, the torture, death in the camps, the dire sanitary conditions, hunger, the terrible overcrowding, the dysentery epidemic raging in the camp, and also how some survived towards the end of the war.
188 p. 22 cm. Slight bending in spine. Good - Very good condition.
