Genealogy and the Resistance

Unfortunately it is not easy to find out in which way a certain person may have taken part in the Resistance. In most cases it simply proves impossible.

During the occupation very little was put on paper, for obvious reasons. Upon Liberation in 1945 individual resistance groups built up archives, including lists of members etc. But those archives were made for current ‘administrative’ purposes, not with the aim of documenting the group’s or individual members’ activities for posterity. Furthermore there were no rules as to what should be done with such archives once the groups were demobilized. Some were handed over to the Central State Archives (Rigsarkivet), some to The Museum of Danish Resistance 1940-1945 (Friheds­museet) and some to regional or local archives. Many papers have gone lost when those who kept them died.

There does not exist a joint, public archive for the Resistance. The institution which came closest was the Freedom Foundation (Frihedsfonden). It administered payments by the State to former members of the Resistance who had suffered physically or psychically. Because of this limited pur­pose not all former members of the Resistance have been registered, and since the individual files contains very sensitive information, the Foundation has always declined to give information to out­siders, even close relatives. The Freedom Foundation ended its activities in 1996, and its archives were handed over to the Danish National Archives (Rigsarkivet) where access will remain restricted for another 80 years, i.e. until 2076.

As a general rule it is easier to find information on a person the worse he has fared.

Biographies on those members of the Resistance who were killed during the occupation can be found in Faldne i Danmarks Frihedskamp 1940-45 [Those who fell during Denmark’s Resistance 1940-45] (2. edition, 1990). The book is in Danish only. It contains references to further material.

Those who were deported to Concentration Camps outside Denmark are listed in Helvede har mange navne [Hell has got many names] by Jørgen Barfod (2. edition, 1994). This book too is in Danish only. Many of those prisoners who survived have filled in questionnaires that are kept in The Museum of Danish Resistance.

No equivalent register exists regarding those imprisoned in Denmark - for instance in the Horserød Camp or the Frøslev Camp - who avoided deportation. For some – but by far not all – information on time and place of their imprisonment can be found in application forms for membership to one of the associations formed by former prisoners after the War. These forms are kept by The Museum of Danish Resistance. They do not however contain information on resistance activities prior to imprisonment.

Other records of former inmates in Horserød and Frøslev are kept in the Frøslev Camp Museum. These include parts of the original photo archive of the prisoners.

For those who had the good fortune never to be arrested, there is no obvious place to start looking for information. The Museum of Danish Resistance is curretnly working to establish a database of members of the Resistance that are mentioned in the extensive - though mainly in Danish - litterature on the years of occupation. This database is expected to be made accessible from the Internet in the summer of 2009.

But of course, only a percentage of all members of the Resistance are mentioned in the litterature. Finding traces of those not mentioned through the archives is more troublesome, and it is indeed possible that there is nothing at all to be found in public archives. Even if some material shows up, it will in most cases only establish simple facts, for example that the person in question belonged to this or that resistance organization. A detailed account of activi­ties in which the person has taken part is normally only at hand if the person himself has ventured to write it down after the War. Many have done so, either invited by historians or as a contribution to family history, and many have deposited a copy of their personal accounts in The Museum of Dan­ish Resistance to the benefit of general research. But even more former members of the Resistance have never put their experiences into writing, and in such cases it is virtually impossible to find in­formation.

In the archives of The Museum of Danish Resistance, the inventory is subdivided according to sub­jects, not according to persons. To find out whether material regarding a specific person is being kept in the museum, on has to know, if this person participated in the printing of illegal leaflets or rather in the reception of arms dropped by parachute by allied planes, if he was a saboteur or if he was active in a smaller town where things were not that separated, and where the ‘subject’ to look for would be the name of the town.

When starting to research one has to realize that up till 1943 the Resistance consisted of relatively few people. Recruitment on a larger scale did not take place until 1944 when the setting up of an underground army started. These so-called stand-by groups were not to go into action before the front had moved to Denmark, and fortunately the Germans surrendered on May 5, 1945 before it came to any such fighting. The stand-by groups were therefore employed by tasks such as guard duty, arresting collaborators etc. The term stand-by groups does not however imply that the groups did nothing but wait. They were trained to use weapons and sabotage equipment, and some of this ‘training’ amounted to virtual acts of sabotage. If a family-member has told about his participation in sabotage it therefore does not necessarily imply that he has been a member of one of the well known sabotage-organizations (BOPA, Holger Danske). He might have been part of a stand-by group that was not content with merely waiting.

Useful addresses:

The Museum of Danish Resistance (Frihedsmuseet)

Churchillparken, DK-1263 Copenhagen K.

phone: +45-3313 7714, fax: -45-3314 0314, email:

Danish National Archives (Rigsarkivet)

Rigsdagsgården 9, DK-1218 Copenhagen K.

phone: +45-3392 3310, fax: +45-3315 3239, email:

Information brochure in Danish: Kilder om deltagelse i modstandsbevægelsen [Source material regarding participation in the Resistance]

Frøslev Camp Museum (Frøslevlejrens Museum)

Lejrvejen 83 (barak H6), DK-6330 Padborg

phone: +45-7467 6557, fax: +45-7467 6077, email:

Please click here For useful hints on genealogical research in general.