THE HOLOCAUST AND THE UNITED NATIONS OUTREACH PROGRAMME

The Legacy of the Danish Rescue 41
Additionally, during the past ten years, newly developed research
has taught us more about local perpetrators, particularly in Eastern
European countries. Naturally, Holocaust historians knew about the
local perpetrators and the mass shootings that took place on the
Eastern front at the beginning of the war. But the increased activity
that followed the Stockholm International Forum in January 2000
led to an increased interest and expanded knowledge in the general
public about the different aspects and phases of the murder of European
Jews.
As such, the Holocaust has, for the past decade, become more than
Auschwitz and the gas chambers. The public knows more about the
intimate killings that occurred in places like Ukraine and Belarus,
as illustrated in the debate following Timothy Snyder’s book Bloodlands.
And today we know much more about the local perpetrators.
We know more about Jewish life before and during the Holocaust.
This development also includes the case of
Denmark, where, for many decades, the rescue
of the Danish Jews overshadowed the
less heroic aspects of Danish Holocaust history.
Today, thanks in part to the Stockholm
Declaration and the globalization of Holocaust
memory, we know more about Jews
who fled Nazi Germany only to be denied
entry to Denmark (Banke 2005; Kirchhoff
2005; Rünitz 2005; Kirchhoff & Rünitz 2007).
And we know about those Jews in Denmark
who were not rescued in October 1943, but
were deported to Theresienstadt (Levin
2001; Lundtofte 2004; Sode-Madsen 1995 &
2003).
“Thus, after a decade
of intense activity, it
may be time to evaluate
our efforts and, based
on gained experience
and new research,
readdress how to teach
and learn about the
Holocaust in a way
that makes sense for
the next generation
as well.”
Also, thanks to a new generation of historians, we know that Danish
industries and the Danish agricultural sector among other things collaborated
with the Germans during the war (Lund 2005; Andersen
2003). A recent study has also provided us with more knowledge