Built on the site of a camp for World War II German refugees, a new Danish museum opening on Wednesday sheds new light on personal stories of forced migration past and present.
Denmark’s new FLUGT (‘to flee’ in Danish) Refugee Museum, located in the small town of Oksbol on the Jutland west coast near the German border, focuses mainly on German refugees as well as others who have come to Denmark over the years.
Exhibits include personal items — from a tent to a teddy bear — that tell the intimate stories of people fleeing war and oppression from Afghanistan, Bosnia, Chile, Germany, Hungary, Iran, Lebanon, Russia, Syria and Vietnam, among others others have fled.
“We want to tell the story behind these numbers, there are real people,” said museum director Claus Kjeld Jensen of the AFP news agency before the opening on Wednesday.
But for some, the museum’s open philosophy contrasts with Denmark’s approach to refugees, where successive governments of the right and left have pursued some of Europe’s toughest immigration policies.
– ‘More updated than ever’ –
When the Second World War came to a bloody end, around 250,000 Germans fled to Denmark to escape the approaching Russian Red Army.
Around 35,000 of them found their way to the refugee camp in Oksbol, which immediately made the location the fifth largest city in Denmark by population.
The camp, which operated from 1945 to 1949, had schools, a theater and a workshop, all behind barbed wire.
Little remains of the camp today, apart from two former hospital buildings and a cemetery, tucked away amidst a dense, green forest.
“This part of world history is actually taking place right here where we are. But then there is an actual situation today,” said Kjeld Jensen.
“We have many more refugees worldwide than at the end of World War II. So I suppose the issue is much more relevant today than it has ever been.”
Denmark’s Queen Margrethe II attended the official inauguration of the museum on June 25 with Germany’s Vice Chancellor Robert Habeck. The German state contributed around 1.5 million euros to the 16 million euro project.
“None of us would have thought that talking about refugees and flight was such a sad topic,” said the 82-year-old monarch.
– fresh movement –
In 2021, the total number of people forced to flee their homes due to conflict, violence, fear of persecution and human rights violations was 89.3 million, according to UNHCR, the United Nations refugee agency.
Russia’s invasion of Ukraine sparked new movements across Europe, with more than six million refugees fleeing the borders, according to UNHCR.
The new museum was designed by world-renowned Danish architect Bjarke Ingels, who recently completed Google’s new Silicon Valley headquarters and will design a new US slavery museum in Fort Worth, Texas.
Ingels’ design connects the two surviving hospital buildings with a new, circular structure clad in rusty steel. Inside, soaring timber frames soar into the sky, creating a large, open foyer from which visitors can explore the exhibits.
“If you come here from the outside, you see a closed corrugated wall made of Corten steel,” explains Ingels.
“But when you go in, you realize there’s this oasis or refuge that opens onto the forest, which in a way the refugees hopefully have found here — a refuge from war and a glimpse of a brighter future.”
– Fortress Denmark –
In mid-2020, Denmark became the first country in the European Union to re-examine the asylum cases of several hundred Syrians from Damascus and deemed it safe to return. There are also plans to open asylum centers outside of Europe where applicants will be sent to live.
In 2021, only 2,099 people sought asylum in Denmark.
UNHCR representative Henrik Nordentoft acknowledged that there are “challenges” to Danish refugee policy.
“These are very politically driven and of course we hope that there is a way to change that,” he said.
The museum’s inauguration was attended by 82-year-old Jörg Baden, who fled Germany for Denmark in 1945 at the age of five, as well as younger arrivals, including a 16-year-old who fled Syria in 2015, and a group of Ukrainian classical musicians , which arrived earlier this year.
It’s a reminder, as Baden put it, that “Flying is not just a topic of the past, it reaches into our lives today.”
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