Jorgen Kieler

Resistance Fighter is the story of Jørgen Kieler, his family, and the Frit Danmark (Free Denmark) resistance movement in Denmark during World War II. At the onset of the war, Kieler was a medical student, sharing an apartment in Copenhagen with his sister. Denmark was officially neutral, but Germany forces occupied the country in April 1940. Throughout the book, Kieler expresses his anger and frustration over the collaborationists in the Danish government, and in Danish society at large.

Kieler begins with a brief summary of life in Europe between the two world wars, and of his college experiences in Munich, Paris, and Cambridge, followed by a description of life under occupation. In November 1941, Hitler’s ultimate victory was beginning to look inevitable, and the Danish government signed the Anti-Comintern Pact, essentially making Denmark an ally of Germany and an enemy of the Allies. The prospect of military engagement on behalf of Germany led to widespread public demonstrations against the Anti-Comintern Pact, after which a number of resistance groups were organized.

At this point the story bogs down, as Kieler introduces numerous characters who have brief but important roles in the resistance movement, but then move on as they are killed, imprisoned, or forced to seek refuge in Sweden. Kieler, his brother, and two sisters initially worked on the production of underground newspapers. Eventually they became involved in the smuggling of Jews (both Danish citizens and refugees from other parts of Europe) out of the country and into neutral Sweden. An amazing 90% of all the Danish Jews were rescued in this way, including several hundred who were rescued from the Theresienstadt concentration camp near the end of the war.

Next Kieler, his siblings, and a number of friends became involved in sabotage of industrial and transportation facilities that were aiding the German war effort. These operations were planned to avoid harming the occupants of the facilities they bombed. The attacks occurred when the facilities were idle, and the guards were typically tied up and sent to air raid shelters. In many cases the saboteurs were assisted by the anti-sabotage guards, the Danish police, and even a few of the German occupiers. However, on several occasions the resistance teams were forced to confront the moral and ethical decisions involved in liquidating informers who might have exposed the entire resistance effort.

Eventually an overly bold attack on two facilities in a small town near the German border, where a substantial minority of the population was of German background, led to the capture of several members of Kieler’s resistance group. They spent several months at the forced labor camp in Porta Westphalica, digging tunnels for the construction of bomb-proof industrial facilities. Kieler spent some of his time at Porta working in the infirmary. Kieler points out that the Danes were considered Aryans and therefore received preferential treatment. Still, the conditions were brutal, and Porta had the highest fatality rate among all of the camps where Danes were interned.

The Danes in concentration camps, including the remaining Danish Jews at Theresienstadt, were rescued in March 1945, after Count Folke Bernadotte, head of the Swedish Red Cross, held direct negotiations with Himmler. By that time, the Allies had liberated Bergen-Belsen, and Himmler was so furious over the publication of photos that he threatened to stop the rescue of the Danes.

Because of his medical background and his fluency in several languages, including German, Kieler was called as a witness in several trials after the war.

Kieler did not rely on his memory alone in writing this book. To the extent possible, he kept diaries throughout the war, and he recorded many of his experiences at the end of the war. He also consulted official police records of the various sabotage attempts, letters and diaries from others in the resistance movement, and other sources. A short bibliography is provided. Overall this book is a moving testament to those who served in the Danish resistance movement. It can be a bit hard to follow at times for someone who is not already somewhat familiar with the geography and politics of Denmark, but it is well worth reading. I received this book through the LibraryThing Early Reviewers program.… (mehr)

This book opens a window to an important aspect of World War II that is little known in the United States – life and resistance by the Danes under the Nazi occupation. Kieler describes unflinchingly the moral and practical difficulties entailed in his decision to resist the Nazi occupation. Kieler’s career in the resistance while he was a medical student in Copenhagen began with publication of an underground newspaper, moved on to the evacuation of Danish Jews to Sweden when the Nazis moved to persecute them (Denmark is famous for alone among European nations saving nearly all of its Jews from the holocaust), and culminated as a leader of a bold group of saboteurs destroying industrial and transportation facilities being used by the Nazis for the war effort. Kieler was eventually captured, endured starvation and disease in a Nazi concentration camp, and narrowly avoided execution thanks to the collapse of Germany under the Allied advance in 1945. Kieler especially deserves credit for not romanticizing what remains a very compelling story.

Gripping as much of the book is, it is a bit problematic as an introductory history to the Danish resistance movement – at least for American readers. Mostly this is no fault of Kieler’s. He is clearly writing primarily for a Danish audience, and assumes that his readers will have a basic knowledge of political events leading up to and during the occupation. It seems that the relationship of the Danish government to the Nazis and the actions of resistance fighters like Kieler remain controversial issues in Danish society, but without a background knowledge of the events under discussion, I was unable to really grasp the import of the points Kieler was trying to make here. More broadly, I think Kieler’s book perhaps is a bit uneasily poised between memoir and history.
I enjoyed reading this book, and found much of it very moving. But to really get some understanding of the Danish resistance movement it would probably be better to start with a broader history – perhaps Ellen Levine’s Darkness Over Denmark: The Danish Resistance and the Rescue of the Jews. (Holiday House, 2002).… (mehr)

Resistance Fighter by Jorgen Kieler is a commanding, first-hand account of the Danish Resistance movement during World War Two. After Germany invaded Denmark in April 1940 and a collaborationist government took control of the country, resistance fighters organized an underground opposition to occupation and collaboration.

Kieler, a medical student when the Nazis invaded, began his involvement by operating an underground press in Copenhagen with two of his sisters, his brother, and others. As the war intensified, they expanded their efforts – first by ferrying Jews and other refugees to neutral Sweden, then through increasing acts of sabotage against Danish factories producing Nazi war materials.

Keiler’s straightforward account of this unfamiliar part of the war is as interesting as it is inspiring. The efforts of Keiler’s group and others resulted in over 90% of Denmark’s Jews escaping to Sweden and the hampering of German war efforts. While Keiler is thorough in his identification of the key players in the resistance movement, the book does not become bogged down in exhaustive detail about the inner workings of the various resistance factions.

Eventually, the Nazis cracked down on the Danish resistance fighters, leading to the arrests of Keiler, his brother, two of his sisters, and their father. He and his brother spent six months as slave laborers in a concentration camp in Porta Westphalica. The camp was not one of the infamous death camps used for the mass execution of the Jews, but housed political prisoners, captured soldiers, and common criminals all being worked to death building bomb-proof underground factories for the Nazis. Keiler’s unadorned description of life in the camp is heart wrenching.

After surviving the war, Keiler became a doctor and spent years studying the effects of starvation and the stress-related disorder he labeled “Concentration Camp Syndrome.” He also testified at several war criminal trials and researched archival materials for this and an earlier history book.

His intimate chronicle is tribute to those involved in Denmark’s struggle against the Nazis. But it is much more than that. By focusing on a lesser-known aspect of World War Two, Resistance Fighter also provides a fresh perspective on the harsh facts of German occupation and concentration camps, and the related ethical and political issues of collaboration, resistance, liberty, and citizenship.… (mehr)