THE JEWISH COMMUNITY

There are 7,000 Jews in Denmark, out of a total population of 5.25 million. Most Jews are concentrated in Copenhagen, but smaller communities exist in Odense and Aarhus. About one-third are Polish Jews (or their children) who found sanctuary in Denmark after the antisemitic campaign in communist Poland in 1968. The central communal organization is the Mosaiske Troessamfund. The community operates several synagogues as well as the Caroline Jewish Day School (established in 1805). Jodisk Orientering is the main Jewish publication.

POLITICAL ORGANIZATIONS AND EXTRA-PARLIAMENTARY GROUPS

Despite the relatively low percentage of immigrants in Denmark compared with other EU countries, anti-foreigner feeling is reflected in the strong support for the Dansk Folkeparti (Danish People’s Party – DPP), now the third largest party in Denmark (see ASW 1999/2000). Fearful of losing votes to the DPP, which has been highlighting street violence by young Muslim Arabs, the Danish government, under Social Democratic Prime Minister Poul Nyrup Rasmussen, submitted a bill, on 10 February 2000, tightening Denmark’s immigration laws. Inter alia, the law granting automatic citizenship after a certain period in the country would be repealed.

A few members of the neo-Nazi Danish Front are concentrated in the town of Svendborg on the island of Fyn. After an anti-Nazi group called Rebel demonstrated against them, the neo-Nazis broke windows in their homes and were probably behind anonymous phone threats received by members of Rebel. It should be noted that the Danish Front, which has about 50 members, split from Jonni Hansen’s antisemitic and racist Danish National Socialist Party (DNSB), and is more violent and radical than the latter.

Student members of Dansk Forum (Danish Forum), founded by members of the youth wing of the moribund neo-Nazi Danske Forening (Danish Society), have been allowed to resume distributing their magazine Alaetheia at the University of Copenhagen. In 1999 the university ordered them to cease distribution after they were involved in violent clashes with anti-racist students.

ANTISEMITIC ACTIVITY

The most serious antisemitic incident was the desecration of the Jewish cemetery in the provincial town of Randers, in Jutland in February. About 70 gravestones were damaged; the perpetrators are unknown. In addition, a window of the Great Synagogue in Copenhagen was smashed on the night of Hitler’s birthday, 20 April.

The al-Aqsa intifada generated violent anti-Israel demonstrations and speeches, which included antisemitic manifestations. On 4 October, 5,000 Palestinians demonstrated in the center of Copenhagen. At the parliament building demonstrators burned the Israeli and American flags as well as an effigy of Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Barak. Firearms were brandished and police and random individuals were attacked with rocks, sticks and bottles. A day later an elderly Jewish woman was confronted by three Muslim girls at the gate of a synagogue. The girls spat on her and called her ”Jew-bitch.”

Under the title “Jews Slaughter Muslims in Palestine – Is There a Savior?” the trans-national Islamist organization Hizb ut-Tahrir (see United Kingdom) held a meeting in Copenhagen on 21 October. About 200 people heard speakers call on Palestinians living in Denmark to jihad. The Palestinian imam Ahmad Abu Laban of the Danish Islamic Society is one of the most militant Islamist activists. Omar ‘Abd al-Rahman, who masterminded the World Trade Center bombing in New York, spoke in Abu Laban’s mosque in the late 1980s.

After the outbreak of the intifada there was a heated debate on who was to blame for the violence. One Arab accused Denmark of responsibility for the plight of the Palestinians because Denmark voted for the establishment of Israel in 1948. The far left Unity List party suggested in the city council that Israel Square in Copenhagen be renamed Palestine Square. It received support in the council only from the other left-wing party, the Socialist Peoples’ Party.

Some inflammatory expressions were reported prior to the outbreak of the intifada. In March the Danish Church Emergency Help group, which is unaffiliated with any established church, published a pamphlet portraying the three religions of Jerusalem. Christianity was represented by a cross, Islam by the Dome of the Rock and Judaism by barbed wire and the inscription on the grave of Baruch Goldstein, the 1994 murderer of 29 Muslim worshippers in Hebron. The church organization rejected protests by the Jewish community

Anne Grethe Holmsgaard, a militant leftist and for many years a pro-Palestinian activist, announced that she would run for parliament as a candidate of the Socialist Peoples’ Party in 2002. It was brought to public attention that Holmsgaard had expressed antisemitic views in her 1983 book Zionism’s Israel, where she described the Jews as the natural enemy of “progressive” ideas. Holmsgaard was also criticized for her sympathy with the Palestinian murderers of Israeli athletes at the 1972 Munich Olympics.

The Danish aid organization Immigranthjaelpen (Immigrant Aid), which supports the integration of Jewish immigrants in Israel, received threatening letters at their Internet address, apparently from Danish neo-Nazis (the name of DNSB leader Jonni Hansen is mentioned). The messages referred to the staff of the organization as ”Jewish pigs” and other epithets, and ended with a swastika. The police are investigating.

ATTITUDES TOWARD THE HOLOCAUST AND THE NAZI ERA

The Danish Center for the Study of Holocaust and Genocide opened in Copenhagen in August. Center Democratic Party member Peter Duetoft and Prime Minister Poul Nyrup Rasmussen had initiated the project. The center will document the Holocaust and carry out research on genocide in general.

A study of Denmark’s treatment of Jewish refugees prior to and during World War II by the Icelandic historian Viljhjalmur Örn Vilhalmsson (see also ASW 1999/2000) came out in 2000. Vilhalmsson claims that Denmark returned at least 21 Jewish refugees to Nazi Germany in the late 1930s, although it had not been asked to do so by Germany.

Also published in 2000 was the book Denmark and the Jewish Refugees, 1933–1940, by the Danish historian Lone Rünitz. The study revealed that several groups and individuals, including a group of Danish police detectives, had smuggled Jews to safety at great personal risk to themselves.

The website run by Mikkel Andersson combats Holocaust denial.

RESPONSES TO RACISM AND ANTISEMITISM

DNSB leader Jonni Hansen was convicted and given a one and a half year sentence and loss of his driving license for attempted manslaughter, after he drove his car into a left-wing group engaged in sawing down the fence around his house, which serves as the neo-Nazi headquarters in Greve, south of Copenhagen, in late 1999.

The German-Danish Nazi Marcel Schilf was acquitted by a court in Helsingbor of the charge of distributing racist and antisemitic music CDs.

The public prosecutor for Sealland has begun legal proceedings against Danish and Swedish neo-Nazis for wearing T-shirts at the Rudolph Hess march in Roskilde in 1998, with the inscription “Smash the Jews – Kill ‘em all.”

The Danish town Farum has signed a friendship agreement with the Israeli regional council of Emek Hefer. The mayor of Farum Peter Brixtofte has allotted a portion of the 2001 budget to send all of the town’s 6th grade classes to Israel as part of the curriculum.

In February over 500 people participated in a “sing-in” to mark the one-year anniversary of protests against a disputed neo-Nazi house in Aalborg, northern Jutland. The house had been bequeathed by the late Nazi Gennar Gram to the DNSB. In a civil action, a local court, declaring the will null void, handed the house over to the half-sister ofthe deceased in the US, who has no neo-Nazi connections.