The results of the November 1997 municipal and regional elections showed a slight swing to the far right. The xenophobic Dansk Folkeparti became the fourth largest party in the country. Seven neo-Nazis were arrested on charges of mailing letter bombs for an international terrorist organization. The most serious anti-Semitic incident was a tear gas attack by a group of Arabs in July on a number of Jews leaving a synagogue service. A Holocaust denial article appeared for the first time in the Danish mainstream press.

THE JEWISH COMMUNITY

EXTREMIST ORGANIZATIONS AND HATE GROUPS

For the first time since World War II, the Nazi Danmarks Nationalsocialistiske Parti (Danish National Socialist Party - DNSP) participated in the November elections, when its leader, Jonni Hansen, contested his home constituency of Greve. He failed to pass the 2 percent threshold, gaining only 137 votes (0.59 percent). The DNSP has close links to the British neo-Nazi group Combat 18 and Austrian right extremists, such as the fugitive Wilhelm Christian Anderle. This was revealed when seven neo-Nazis were arrested on charges of manufacturing and mailing letter bombs for an international terrorist organization (see below). Hansen said he know those arrested, but considered them as belonging to the fringe of his party.

On December 4, 1997 a group of neo-Nazis announced the establishment of a new organization in opposition to Hansen's DNSB. National Aktion denies being an "orthodox Nationalist Socialist right-wing organization," but rather a "Third Position political movement." It planned to set up an Internet site "outside the reach of the ZOG [Zionist Occupation Government]" and claimed a membership of 70.

To highlight their opposition to refugees, Danish neo-Nazis demonstrated in September by patrolling the German border in order to prevent their illegal entry from Germany. Most of the refugees are Bosnians escaping deportation from Germany.

About 150 neo-Nazis participated in the annual march commemorating the death of Rudolf Hess, on 16 August, in the town of Koege. One of their slogans was "The Zionists killed Rudolf Hess." The march had been transferred to Koege from Roskilde because police feared clashes with a leftist anarchist group. Originally, the chief of police in Roskilde had banned the march, but the justice minister overturned it.

The extremist Islamic fundamentalist movement Hizb-ut-Tahrir (Freedom Party -- HUT) continued to operate in Denmark (see also UK). Its organ, Khalifah, printed anti-Jewish texts from the Qur'an in almost every issue.

ANTI-SEMITIC ACTIVITIES

The most serious anti-Semitic act in 1997 was a tear gas attack in July on a group of Jews who were leaving a Friday evening service at the Copenhagen Synagogue. The perpetrators were a group of young Arabs, and as a result of the attack a number of people were injured by inhaling gas. Further, two Arabs accosted a young Jew who was wearing a kippa. One of the Arabs threatened to kill the youth but was held back by his friend.

The controversy surrounding the issue of shechita (Jewish ritual slaughter) occupied a prominent place in anti-Semitic activity in 1997 (see also ASW 1996/7). In January both the Progress Party and the Danish People's Party introduced bills in parliament to ban ritual slaughter. When a compromise was reached between the Jewish community and the Animal Ethical Council, and a law was passed in parliament in June, the People's Party and animal protection groups initiated a press campaign against the law. In the midst of the controversy, Danish TV showed the chief rabbi performing shechita in a bloodstained white coat and wielding a slaughterer's knife. The item aroused a storm of protests. In addition, Jydske Vestkysten, a regional newspaper printed in Jutland, published an anti-shechita article, together with a cartoon showing a sheep dripping with blood, under a slaughterer's knife, a Star of David and a rabbi. Animal rights groups and the People's Party collected 150,000 signatures for a petition against ritual slaughter. The issue is due to be discussed in parliament in early 1998.

A small group belonging to the anti-Jewish, ultra-right-wing Danske Forening (Danish Society -- DDF) was responsible for disseminating anti-Semitic propaganda in 1997. In Dronten, the Internet organ of the DDF, Knud Bjeld Eriksen called on former members, excluded because they were Nazis, to rejoin the society in order to participate in the fight against "the main new enemy," the Jews. He accused B'nai B'rith of plotting against Danish democracy, and of international "lobbying, espionage and propaganda." He also called on the society to participate in the "revision of history" begun by the late Thies Christophersen, and continued by French FN leader Jean-Marie Le Pen, who remarked on more than one occasion that the Holocaust was "a detail in history" (see France and previous reports). He urged the society to join with extreme right forces abroad, such as the Nazionalpartei Deutschland, and the FN in order to advance this struggle.

Similar propaganda appeared in several numbers of a publication called Vestlig Samisdat (Western Samisdat), issued by Marianne Herlufsdatter and Lars Thirslund, also members of this wing. The Jewish community asked the state attorney in Aarhus to prosecute Herlufsdatter and Thirslund for spreading racist ideas, but he did not find sufficient grounds to initate proceedings against them. Thirslund and Eriksen disrupted the yearly gathering of the Danish Society by insisting that the "Jewish world conspiracy" be put on the agenda.

ATTITUDES TOWARD THE HOLOCAUST AND THE NAZI ERA

Two weeks later another mainstream publication, Weekendavisen (26 September 1997), printed a half-page article by the French writer, former Resistance fighter and head of the French military government in Germany, Edgar Morin, who described Auschwitz as simply a "ghetto."

Disclosures about the involvement of Danish volunteers in war crimes were made in the research report "Danes in the Waffen SS 1940-45: An Analysis of the Service of Danish Volunteers on the Eastern Front during the Second World War." The researchers, Claus Bundgaard-Christensen, Niels Bo Poulsen and Peter Scharff Smith from the University of Roskilde, claimed that Danish Waffen SS volunteers had virtually monopolized the writing of their own history, resulting in the absence of proper studies on Danish participation in, and knowledge of, war crimes. The Committee for Legal Affairs in the Danish parliament expressed its intention to indict anyone whose war crimes were documented in the report. Further, in February the German authorities offered the Danish Ministry of Foreign Affairs a list of the names of 185 Danish recipients of military pensions from Germany. A German official said that the pensions may be discontinued if there is "substantial suspicion" that a soldier from the Waffen SS participated in war crimes.

RESPONSES TO RACISM AND ANTI-SEMITISM

The trial of three of the neo-Nazis held in connection with the mailing of letter bombs and other terrorism charges began in August. In September Thomas Nakaba was jailed for eight years, the heaviest sentence ever given to a neo-Nazi activist. His two accomplices received three years each. In January 1997 Nakaba had traveled from Copenhagen to Malm? in Sweden, where he posted three letter bombs to addresses he received from Combat 18. The letters were destined for known left-wing politicians and leading white sportsmen married to black spouses in London. He was caught following tip-offs from the British and German police. It should be noted that Wilf Browning of Combat 18 visited Nakaba during 1997 to discuss the possibility of moving the Combat 18-associated record company ISD to Denmark.

This case renewed police interest in an unsolved bombing carried out in 1992, when a young socialist was killed. The police interrogated a 26-year-old German-born Nazi, Marcel Shilf, co-founder of the Danish branch of NS88 (National Socialist Heil Hitler) and owner of the record company NS Records, the largest distributor of Nazi video clips and CDs. In addition, the anti-Nazi organization DEMOS asked the police to determine whether NS88 and Marcel Shilf were infringing the law against racial incitement. By the end of 1997 no decision had been taken.

Denmark remains one of the most liberal European countries in its interpretation of the right to freedom of expression and is thus one of the main centers for the distribution of racist propaganda throughout Europe. The Danish police were planning to bring a test case for banning the dissemination of racist propaganda, on the basis of Article 266 of the Danish constitution forbidding racial incitement. This followed their confiscation of CDs, videos and other materials in a raid in September of the post office mailbox of NS88, in the city of Hillerod. One of the confiscated CDs was entitled "The only solution is the Final Solution." In August, the UN Committee on the Elimination of Racial Discrimination sent a memorandum to the Danish government expressing its concern about the degree of freedom allowed Danish Nazis to engage in racial incitement. It specifically mentioned the Nazi radio station Oasis (which ceased operating in August 1996 when its license was revoked) and the mass production and export of racist propaganda materials.

Public Activity

The debate about whether to ban extremist organizations (see ASW 1996/7) re-emerged after the arrest of the Danish neo-Nazis in the letter bomb affair. An editorial in the influential newspaper Politikan called on Danes to be prepared to deny Nazis their civil rights.

In October a book summarizing anti-Semitism throughout the ages appeared in Denmark. With Their Backs against the Wall, written by the priest Hans P. Pedersen, concluded that anti-Semitism was not just an attack on the Jewish people but also on the fundamentals of democracy in that it often leads to attacks on the principles of a free society.

On Kristallnacht, November 9, thousands demonstrated in Copenhagen against racial hatred, and on November 14 a rally was held calling for "respect between people."