This is the first time I am hearing of this tragedy. Thank you for putting it on the forum.

AA
"History Buff" all.com> wrote in message news:m%%qFj.167232$FE.108216@fe05.news.easynews.com...
Why 7000 Children Had to Die

Second World War:
The Cruel Fate of German Refugees in Denmark

Article from the Hamburger Abendblatt, May 26, 1999;
translated by Arnim Johannis and published here with permission.
This translation © 1999 by The Scriptorium.

(dpa/fis) A new study about the deaths of more than 10,000 German refugees in Denmark shortly before and after the end of the Second World War has startled the public of this Scandinavian country. The discovery that the refugee casualties from 1945 to 1949 included more than 7,000 toddlers and babies who were denied not only adequate rations but also any and all medical aid was described by the Copenhagen newspaper Politiken as "shocking and inhumane".

Equally bad, the newspaper said, is the "massive repression of awareness" of the refugees' fate in Denmark, since to date the Danish have considered it common knowledge and a point of national credit that the 200,000 to 250,000 people who fled to Denmark from the advancing Soviet troops had been accorded highly decent treatment.

Senior physician Kirsten Lylloff has taken a closer look at this myth. Studying history is her hobby, and she had become curious about the great number of graves of German babies and children in a cemetery in Åalborg where she used to live. When she spent six months gathering information, the relevant archives were readily opened to her. The amateur historian was all the more surprised to find numerous shocking statistics and reports, which had never been mentioned in standard historiography to date. And this despite the fact that the time of German occupation of Denmark from April 1940 to May 1945 is more thoroughly researched than any other historical period.

At first, the refugees - 85 percent of them women and children - had been quartered in schools or meeting houses; then, in 1945, 142 camps were set up for these people. The Danish civilians were strictly forbidden to have any contact with the German expellees.

Lylloff's research has shown that in 1945 alone, 13,492 German refugees died in Danish refugee camps. More than 7,000 of them were children under five years of age; most of them died of malnutrition and dehydration and - according to Lylloff - of "perfectly curable" illnesses such as stomach and intestinal infections and scarlet fever. But until 1949 the Danish medical board, as well as the Red Cross, consistently denied the refugees interned in these camps any medical assistance.

"How can one consider babies and toddlers to be enemies?" Kirsten Lylloff counters the argument, routine at war's end, that the Germans were enemies regardless of their age. Jörgen Poulsen, the present Secretary General of the Danish Red Cross, commented on this new study: "It hurts to read this. I hope that we've grown smarter by now." The Copenhagen medical board also stated that the refusal of all pleas for medical attention in those days "cannot be justified, no matter how good the excuses."

Medical board spokesman Torben Pedersen nonetheless joined historians in warning against drawing rash conclusions. He says that after five years' occupation by National Socialist Germany, with a world war and ever-worsening reports about the systematic destruction of the Jews, the political mood in Denmark perforce played a powerful role in determining the attitude towards German refugees.

However, according to Kirsten Lylloff's findings, there was also a pragmatic consideration to the merciless attitude the Danish authorities took towards the refugees: "The medical board stated officially that helping German refugees would harm Denmark's relations with the Allies."

In fact, at the war's end Denmark found it very difficult to dissuade the victorious powers from classifying it as "collaborator". Instead of offering armed resistance, like its Norwegian neighbors for example, the government at Copenhagen had surrendered without a fight to the German Wehrmacht in 1940 and placed their country at Hitler's disposal as a willing supplier of foodstuffs for the Wehrmacht. In return, Denmark was treated relatively mildly by the occupiers and was spared any involvement in the war itself.

Why 7000 Children Had to Die

Second World War:
The Cruel Fate of German Refugees in Denmark

Article from the Hamburger Abendblatt, May 26, 1999;
translated by Arnim Johannis and published here with permission.
This translation © 1999 by The Scriptorium.

(dpa/fis) A new study about the deaths of more than 10,000 German refugees in Denmark shortly before and after the end of the Second World War has startled the public of this Scandinavian country. The discovery that the refugee casualties from 1945 to 1949 included more than 7,000 toddlers and babies who were denied not only adequate rations but also any and all medical aid was described by the Copenhagen newspaper Politiken as "shocking and inhumane".

Equally bad, the newspaper said, is the "massive repression of awareness" of the refugees' fate in Denmark, since to date the Danish have considered it common knowledge and a point of national credit that the 200,000 to 250,000 people who fled to Denmark from the advancing Soviet troops had been accorded highly decent treatment.

Senior physician Kirsten Lylloff has taken a closer look at this myth. Studying history is her hobby, and she had become curious about the great number of graves of German babies and children in a cemetery in Åalborg where she used to live. When she spent six months gathering information, the relevant archives were readily opened to her. The amateur historian was all the more surprised to find numerous shocking statistics and reports, which had never been mentioned in standard historiography to date. And this despite the fact that the time of German occupation of Denmark from April 1940 to May 1945 is more thoroughly researched than any other historical period.

At first, the refugees - 85 percent of them women and children - had been quartered in schools or meeting houses; then, in 1945, 142 camps were set up for these people. The Danish civilians were strictly forbidden to have any contact with the German expellees.

Lylloff's research has shown that in 1945 alone, 13,492 German refugees died in Danish refugee camps. More than 7,000 of them were children under five years of age; most of them died of malnutrition and dehydration and - according to Lylloff - of "perfectly curable" illnesses such as stomach and intestinal infections and scarlet fever. But until 1949 the Danish medical board, as well as the Red Cross, consistently denied the refugees interned in these camps any medical assistance.

"How can one consider babies and toddlers to be enemies?" Kirsten Lylloff counters the argument, routine at war's end, that the Germans were enemies regardless of their age. Jörgen Poulsen, the present Secretary General of the Danish Red Cross, commented on this new study: "It hurts to read this. I hope that we've grown smarter by now." The Copenhagen medical board also stated that the refusal of all pleas for medical attention in those days "cannot be justified, no matter how good the excuses."

Medical board spokesman Torben Pedersen nonetheless joined historians in warning against drawing rash conclusions. He says that after five years' occupation by National Socialist Germany, with a world war and ever-worsening reports about the systematic destruction of the Jews, the political mood in Denmark perforce played a powerful role in determining the attitude towards German refugees.

However, according to Kirsten Lylloff's findings, there was also a pragmatic consideration to the merciless attitude the Danish authorities took towards the refugees: "The medical board stated officially that helping German refugees would harm Denmark's relations with the Allies."

In fact, at the war's end Denmark found it very difficult to dissuade the victorious powers from classifying it as "collaborator". Instead of offering armed resistance, like its Norwegian neighbors for example, the government at Copenhagen had surrendered without a fight to the German Wehrmacht in 1940 and placed their country at Hitler's disposal as a willing supplier of foodstuffs for the Wehrmacht. In return, Denmark was treated relatively mildly by the occupiers and was spared any involvement in the war itself.

Why
7000 Children Had to Die

Second
World War:The Cruel Fate of German Refugees in Denmark

Death in Poland
The Fate of the Ethnic Germans.

Postscript by The Scriptorium:
65 Years Later

"But I already know today exactly what the other nations will say to all of this:...What else could the poor Poles do but get rid of [the German minority] as quickly as possible - seeing as now they were being attacked not only from the front, but also from within! The fact that their anger at this treacherous attack led to some excesses, well, who could possibly blame them for that..."

That was what Dr. Kohnert predicted in September 1939 (Chapter 13). And how did reality turn out? The following article from February 3, 2003, published in a prestigious mainstream German news periodical, gives a glimpse:

Poland

Compensation for Death Sentences?

The Federal Republic of Germany is facing a new wave of demands for compensation for Nazi crimes - this time from Poland. Before the Wehrmacht marched in to the city of Bydgoszcz (Bromberg) in September...

Death in Poland
The Fate of the Ethnic Germans.

Chapter 1:
The Beginning - September 3, 1939

September 3rd was one of those summer days one only finds in the East: the sky devoid of clouds, its blue a bit faded, and with a dry wind blowing in from Russia. In the gardens the trees were weighed down by fruit, along the fences the dahlias were bursting into bloom - if this weather held a bit longer it would make for a bountiful harvest. But would there even be time to bring it in, seeing as war with Germany had broken out two days ago?

Just as an impending thunderstorm on a hot day makes itself known in advance, a strange, gloomy tension lay in the air. For months already the Germans had suffered under Polish trespasses, but now there...