The Danish People's Party was the most successful extreme right-wing party
in the March 1998 elections, gaining 7.4 percent of the vote. Although
banned from demonstrating in the main cities, over 100 neo-Nazis marked
Rudolf Hess's birthday on 5 August by marching to the Nazi headquarters in
Greve. There was one violent anti-Semitic incident recorded in 1998,
involving vandalism. The most serious cases of anti-Semitism were connected
with Holocaust denial, much of it disseminated on the Internet, in Danish. In
response to increasing public expressions of anti-Semitism and Holocaust
denial, the Danish parliament voted to set up a Danish Center for Holocaust
and Genocide Studies.

THE JEWISH COMMUNITY
There are 8,000 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 anti-Semitic campaign in 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 PARTIES AND EXTRA-PARLIAMENTARY GROUPS
Political Parties
The call for stronger control of immigration was again a central theme in the
national elections held in March 1998. The Dansk Folkeparti (Danish
People's Party), led by Pia Kjaersgaard, was the the most successful extreme
right-wing party, gaining 7.4 percent of the vote (13 seats). The
Fremskridtpartiet (Progress Party), which retained some seats in parliament
but lost others to Kjaersgaard's party, has remained an insignificant
fringe party since the Danish People's Party split from it in 1996. The only
incident of note concerning this party in 1998 was the statement by Tom
Behnke, one of its leaders, on national television in connection with the
attempt to repatriate Somalians who had been refused refuge in Denmark
and denied entry into Somalia. Behnke's suggestion that they be thrown out
of airplanes over their country did not arouse a wave of protest and was
indicative of the strong swing to the right in Danish politics.
The Nationalpartiet Danmark (Danish National Party -- NPD) was
characterized by one of the authors of its program, Tony Bjeldbak, as the
Danish National Socialist Movement without the swastika. The program
focuses entirely on advocating a Denmark without foreigners.
Some members of the extremely xenophobic Dansk Centerparti
(Danish Center Party), which broke away from the Central Democrats in
1992, have expressed anti-Semitic views. One of its leading figures, Erik
Dagoe, stated that it was a mistake for the Danes to have helped the Jewish
population to escape to Sweden in 1943 in light of the sympathetic Jewish
attitude toward refugees and immigrants. The party has never attracted much
public attention and only a few hundred votes in municipal elections.
The Danmarks Nationalsocialistiske Bevegelse (Danish National
Socialist Movement -- DNSB) is the largest formalized Nazi movement in
Denmark. In the 1997 municipal elections they obtained 137 votes. It is
estimated that there are fewer than 200 party members and perhaps 1,500
sympathizers.

Neo-Nazi and Racist Activities
On 15 August, the birthday of Rudolf Hess, over 100 neo-Nazis, including
several from Sweden, Belgium and Germany, marched to the Greve town
hall where they heard speeches by their leaders. Greve, about 40 km south
of Copenhagen is the location of the Danish Nazi headquarters. Some of the
marchers wore T-shirts with the slogans "Smash the Jews" and "Kill 'em all!"
For security reasons, the neo-Nazis were not allowed to march in Copenhagen
and in Koege, and the demonstration took place in the very early
hours of the morning. Moreover, a relatively small number of neo-Nazis
participated in the march because police at the border detained 150 neo-Nazis
when they attempted to cross into Denmark from Germany. A heated
discussion had taken place in the media prior to the march on the limits to
freedom of expression.
Denmark continued to be a production and distribution center for Nazi
propaganda and music. In a widely publicized case in 1998, a video, Kriegsberichier
4, showed the mock execution by shooting of four perons involved
in anti-Nazi activity. All four were named and their pictures shown. As of early 1999
it was not known whether the producers of the video would be prosecuted.
The right wing was particularly active against Muslim refugees, portraying
them as a threat to Denmark. Muslims were attacked in connection with
hallal (Muslim ritual slaughter), the laying of a Muslim burial ground, the
erection of mosques and the claim that Muslim schools were used as a
breeding ground for terrorism. The Muslim religion itself was criticized as
being primitive, repressive, hostile, expansionist and incompatible with
Danish society. In several cases individuals were found guilty of breaking the
law against racism because of the extreme nature of their statements.

ANTI-SEMITIC ACTIVITIES
One violent anti-Semitic incident was recorded: on Christmas Eve, six granite
rocks were thrown at the Great Synagogue in Copenhagen. On each rock a
Magen David and a swastika were drawn.
Anti-Semitic and racist propaganda appeared on a number of occasions
in the Danish printed press and on TV. A new talk show on the Danish main
channel DR1, which began in fall 1998, provided a forum for racist and anti-Semitic
expressions. Mogens Camre, of the ruling Social Democrats, was
openly hostile toward the presence of immigrants in Danish society. Another
speaker on the program accused the Jewish lobby in Denmark of protesting
every time Israel was criticized in the media and complained that one could
not express one's opinion on Jews and blacks honestly without being called
a racist. Revisionist views were also expressed. Marianne Herlufsdatter (see
below) claimed there was no Holocaust, while others, such as Ole Kreiberg
(see also below), stated that the number of people exterminated in the Nazi
gas chambers was exaggerated and that the existence of the gas chambers
was never proven. Jewish representatives present were not allowed to rebut
these arguments.

Internet. The Internet constitutes the main means for Danish extremists to
disseminate racist and anti-Semitic material. In April, the Wiesenthal Center
warned of the existence of several Danish sites, including the Glistrup
Homepage, The site is run by Bo Warming, a follower of the anti-Muslim
spokesman and far-right founder of the Progress Party, Mogens Glistrup. Ole
Kreiberg runs a Holocaust denial site called Denmark's First Patriotic
Homepage, which includes links to the following pages: Dronten (the Dodo)
of Knud Eriksen (see below), where translations into Danish of various anti-Semitic
and Holocaust denial works appear, among them, The Protocols of
the Elders of Zion and papers of the Institute for Historical Review; the anti-Semitic
Vestlig Samisdat of Marianne Herlufsdatter and her husband Lars
Thirslund; the tiny (ten-member) National Party, led by Kai Wilhemsen; the
anti-immigrant Danish Forum; and the Joint List Against Immigration,
which has posted "death lists" with the names of prominent Danes who
speak out for immigrants' rights (the president of the Jewish community,
Jacques Blum, appeared on such a list in October 1998). In addition,
Kreiberg's homepage provides links to the French Front National and the
Russian Pamyat.

ATTITUDES TOWARD THE HOLOCAUST AND THE NAZI ERA
The book Under the Swastika and the Dannebrog [Danish flag]: Danes in the
Waffen-SS 1944-44 (1998), based on the research report by the Rosskilde
University researchers Claus Bundgaard-Christensen, Niels Bo Poulsen and
Peter Scharff Smith (see ASW 1997/ 8), documents the role of the 12,000
Danish volunteers in German active service during World War II. They
debunk the national myth of decent Danish behavior toward the Jews on the
Eastern Front. In fact, write the authors, there was often a "direct link
between the volunteers and the Holocaust."
In 1998 the Icelandic historian Wilhjalmur Ôrn Wilhjalmsson discovered,
during research in the archives in Bonn, ten cases involving Jewish refugees
who were returned by the Danish authorities to Germany during the German
occupation of Denmark, without having being requested to do so by
Germany. In 1998 the Danish authorities refused to give Wilhjalmsson access
to files documenting 23 cases of Jewish refugees in Denmark during the
German occupation.
The issue of payment to concentration camp prisoners used as slave
laborers during the war years gained considerable publicity in Denmark. The
P. L. Smith concern (holder of the patent for Portland cement), whose headquarters
are in Copenhagen and which had a cement factory in Estonia
during the war years, initially refused to pay out any compensation when the
matter became public in early 1998. It was only after intense pressure had
been exerted on the company that it finally agreed to compensate only
the laborers themselves, few of whom remain alive today, but not their
families.
In December 1998 the great majority of the Danish parliament decided on
the establishment of a Danish Center for Holocaust and Genocide Studies, to
be located in Copenhagen. The center, initiated by MP Peter Duetoft, will
operate independently, as part of the Danish Center for Human Rights.
Several hundred people commemorated the victims of Nazism and
warned against contemporary racism and discrimination at a Kristallnacht
march on 9 November 1998 in Copenhagen. The march was promoted by
Jewish and anti-racist groups, trade unions and ethnic associations.

Holocaust Denial
The most serious cases of anti-Semitism in 1998 were connected with
Holocaust denial. In late 1997 right extremists including Christian Lindtner,
Ole Kreiberg and the lawyer Kund Bjeld Eriksen formed the Society for Free
Historical Research. In May members of the group interrupted a lecture given
at the University of Copenhagen by the distinguished German historian
Professor Eberhard Jackel, by asking questions from the infamous "66
Questions and Answers about the Holocaust," and in November, they invited
the Swiss Holocaust denier Jürgen Graf (a convert to Islam) to Denmark for
the second time (the first was in November 1997). Further, in January and
February Lindtner published revisionist articles in the center-right newspaper
Berlingske Tidende. The first was translated into German, probably by Jürgen
Graf, and disseminated on the website of Nationalzeitung. The second
article was an attack on the entry on Auschwitz in the Danish Encyclopedia.
In it he claimed that it would have been impossible to kill so many people.
Both can be found on Denmark's First Patriotic Homepage, the website of
Ole Kreiberg. Lindtner, a former senior lecturer in Old Indian philology at
Copenhagen University who was fired in 1992 for tax fraud, is the first Dane
to have become successful in promoting Holocaust denial views.

RESPONSES TO RACISM AND ANTI-SEMITISM
Cases involving the spread of Nazi propaganda or racist expressions almost
never reach the courts in Denmark unless they constitute a monumental
breach of the article on racism, a senior police official told the national
newspaper Kristeligt Dagblad (14 August 1998). Moreover, because of
Denmark's law on freedom of expression, neo-Nazis who sport a swastika
or other Nazi symbols, or shout Sieg Heil, can only be charged if they use
clearly racist expressions, Public Prosecutor Henning Fode told the paper.
On the other hand, Denmark is active in the struggle against racism.
Some 2,000 demonstrators from various organizations, including Danish
Jews, coordinated by the anti-racist network, demonstrated on Rudolf Hess
day outside the parliament, and urged politicians to ban Nazi
demonstrations.
On the initiative of a Danish high-school student, Mikkel Andersson, a
website has been set up to combat Holocaust denial. The website cooperates
closely with the Norwegian Monitor, the Swedish Expo, Nizkor and the
American Holocaust History Project group.