Collected testimonies
Here you can see testimonies recorded by Holocaust survivors. The stories have been collected in various contexts, including in connection with Auschwitz Day – International Holocaust Remembrance Day – as well as through a number of other dissemination and documentation projects.
The testimonies provide a personal and powerful insight into the experiences that people endured during the persecutions of the Nazi regime. Preserving and communicating these stories is crucial so that future generations can be reminded of the atrocities of the Holocaust and understand the consequences of hatred, anti-Semitism and systematic dehumanization.
In the years 2023 - 2025, new testimonies were collected from Danish Jews living in Israel. The witnesses tell about their experiences during World War II, about the escape to Sweden and the subsequent stay as refugees, or their experiences in Theresienstadt. These are harsh, touching and sometimes surprising stories. Common to all of them is the fundamental fact that escape and persecution always have consequences.
The project is supported by the Danish Embassy in Tel Aviv in close collaboration with the Danish Jewish Museum. The 20 testimonies have all been recorded on video and the raw tapes are now part of the Danish Jewish Museum collection. Here they can be accessed by anyone interested by prior arrangement. See how you can access them right here
The Danish Embassy in Tel Aviv has also ensured that all the testimonies are also available in a short version, which can eventually be used in a dissemination or teaching context. In the videos you can hear an excerpt of Arjeh Kurzweil's, Poul Melchior's, Solveig Gelvan's or Jytte Israel's testimonies.
Testimony recorded in connection with Auschwitz Day - International Holocaust Remembrance Day
January 27th is an international Holocaust Remembrance Day, marked by the UN, the EU, around Europe and elsewhere in the world. In Denmark, the commemoration is called Auschwitz Day, where we remember the victims of the Holocaust and other genocides.
Information about the Holocaust and genocide is crucially important in national and international memory. This applies both to the professional work of uncovering the past and the events, but also to the stories from those who experienced and survived them.
For a number of years, the Municipality of Copenhagen and the Danish Jewish Museum have marked Auschwitz Day – International Holocaust Remembrance Day with a special commemoration in The Black Diamond. One of the regular points of the commemoration is testimonies from survivors of the Holocaust and other genocides. Below you can see or re-watch a selection of testimonies dating back to 2021, when we began recording the commemoration.
Auschwitzdagdanmark.dk
Auschwitz Day Denmark is a nationwide project supported by the Ministry of Children and Education's efforts to promote education and remembrance of the Holocaust and other genocides and to prevent anti-Semitism.
The project's goal is to reach a large number of students in secondary school (8th-10th grade) and in vocational training. In 2024, Auschwitz Day Denmark again offers a unique opportunity to receive free guest teacher visits with Holocaust survivor Ib Katznelson or history-savvy professionals.
Via the website, interested schools can book the two-hour free guest teacher visit, where the students learn about the Holocaust via activating teaching.
The project was developed by the Network for Nazism and Holocaust Studies (NNHS).
The Occupation Museum
The Occupation Museum offers tours and information for school classes and youth programs in the museum's exhibitions and city walks in Aarhus.
The Occupation Museum tells the dramatic story of Aarhus during the occupation. The museum is housed in Aarhus' old town hall and later police station, which from the autumn of 1944 until the liberation was the headquarters of the dreaded German security police, the Gestapo. The preserved cells and basement rooms create an atmospheric setting for an exhibition that tells about everyday life, resistance and Nazi oppression.
The purpose of the museum is to document, preserve and communicate occupation-era Aarhus. The Occupation Museum is a department under Den Gamle By.
The Danish Jewish Museum
The Danish Jewish Museum offers group tours of the museum's exhibitions and architecture. In the design of the Danish Jewish Museum, the architect, Daniel Libeskind, took the starting point in October 1943.
The museum is also current with the special exhibition Flight and Persecution in the 20th Century, which, based on the escape and rescue of the Danish Jews in October 1943, tells a European story about the escape and persecution of Jews.
In addition, the museum offers tours of the two Jewish burial grounds in Copenhagen and city walks in Jewish Copenhagen.
The Freedom Museum
The Freedom Museum offers various teaching courses and city walks for primary and secondary schools about the Danish resistance and the occupation during the Second World War. The students learn, among other things, why resistance was not always black and white.
The Freedom Museum is the museum of Denmark's resistance during the occupation in 1940-45. Through various historical figures who lived during the occupation, the Freedom Museum shows some of the many difficult dilemmas and choices the Danes faced when the country was occupied.
The Freedom Museum belongs to the National Museum.
Skolejenesten.dk
Skoletjenesten.dk is a national website which collects and presents educational offers in external learning environments, so that teachers, pedagogues and trainers in day care, primary school and youth education can find relevant offers in planning their teaching.
The school service has many different educational offers about, among other things, October 1943, the Second World War and escape.