During the first years of the Second World War I completed my higher school certificate (Studentereksamen) in June 1943. Denmark was at that time shamefully occupied by Germany under the pretext that Great Britain had plans to occupy Denmark. I believe that it is closer to the truth that Germany wanted to secure bases in Denmark for the sea- and airwar against Great Britain and to secure the iron ore transport from Narvik in Norway to German ports at the Baltic Sea.

In the great war in Europe Germany had invaded and occupied Poland in a cruel war of lightening - blitzkrieg - Norway, Holland, Belgium had been overwhelmingly attacked by German forces and occupied. France was conquered mid-June 1940 by German forces and divided into two parts, one occupied by Germany and a second part, not occupied until November 1942, forced to collaborate with Germany. Begin July 1941 German troops invade Greece and Yugoslavia and occupied these two countries in August the same year. German forces invade the Soviet Union begin June 1941 and press their way towards Moscow.

1942 is a catastrophic year for the Allied. The German armies penetrate the Eastern Front and threaten the oilfields at Baku. In North Africa German-Italian forces push their way to almost Alexandria and in the East the Japanese gain on all fronts.

In 1943 the conduct of the war is turning in favour of the Allied. Russia had halted the German onslaught at a terrible price - millions killed, huge areas and towns totally destroyed - and the Wehrmacht had capitulated at Stalingrad in Russia. The Allied were victorious in North Africa, and invaded Sicily. Allied aerial bombardment commenced over Germany, and resistance movements began acting in the occupied countries.

In the area of the Pacific Ocean - after Japan in December 1941 cowardly attacked the US naval bases on Pearl Harbour, Hawaii, the Phillipines and Malaysia - now in 1943 American troops had reconquered the Gilbert and Marshall islands and fought fanatical Japanese resistance on other Japanese occupied islands.

In October 1943 I was arrested by German soldiers in Copenhagen and accused of resistance against the German occupational forces, and participation in "illegal" activities against the German "Wehrmacht", more precisely the bombing of the cafe "Mocca" on Str�get on the 27 October 1943. Interrogated brutally by Gestapo (German Geheime Stats Polizei), and their Danish helpers (HIPO - Hilfspolizei) for about a fortnight, I was imprisoned in Vestre F�ngsel, Copenhagen and in Horser�d, northern Zealand In January 1944 I was transported to the Konzentrationslager "Sachsenhausen" bei Oranienburg near Berlin in northern Germany together with 77 other Danes.

For the records, I want to state that I participated in activities against the German occupational forces, but I had no part in the sabotage of the cafe "Mocca", although accused of participation. Nor did I then know the organization or group, which planted the bomb. Later it has become known that the bombing was an action of revenge for the killing under torture by Gestapo of a member of the sabotage group BOPA (Borgerlige Partisaner = Civilian partisans).

KZ Sachsenhausen was constructed mid July 1936 in the neighbourhood of Oranienburg about 35 km north of Berlin. The work was undertaken under the direct orders of the SS (Schutzstaffel = military unit of protection) by prisoners from other German concentration camps and later extended, as the Nazi regime needed more room for more prisoners. During the Second World War new barracks were constructed and new subsidiary camps were built. End 1940 the camp system housed 10,700 h�ftlinge (prisoners), this number increased to 28,000 end 1943, 47,000 end-1944, 58,000 end January 1945, 36,600 on 20. April 1945.

To administer a camp with a rollcall of 30,000 to 40,000 inmates, the SS-Totenkopfverb�nde (SS skull and bone sections), incharge of the daily order in the camp, needed individuals to do this task. And the Nazis invented a vile system: H�ftlings-Selbstverwaltung, which meant camp administration by the prisoners themselves.

There were groups of prisoners viz., political, jewish, criminal, asocial, homosexual, bible-researchers, latter considered hostile to the State of Germany. Also members of the SS, who had been unfaithful to their oath of obedience to the SS.

Each category had its colour, which had to be shown on a triangle on pieces of cloth on the chest and on the thigh of the striped prison dress. Your nationality was also given. P for Polish, F for French, Dn for Danish etc. The Germans had no identification. The political prisoners� colour was red, jewish: yellow, criminals: green, asocial: black, homosexual: pink, bible-researchers: mauve. My number in the camp was: Red triangle Dn 75142.

The criminals were divided into two groups: SV: Sicherheits-vervarung = Safety risk to society, and BV: Berufsverbrecher = born criminal. The nazis used the criminals to conduct the affairs of the camp under the direct responsability of the SS Totenkopf troops. Thus the "lager�lteste" (inmate chief of the camp), and "block�ltesten" (inmate chiefs of the blocks), total 70 to 80 blocks, had the power to punish and often the right of life and death over the inmates of the camp.

One block consisted of two rooms. One day room and one dormitory. In the middle a washroom and latrines. Originally a block was intended for 150 prisoners. During the war 500 persons were pressed into the same facilities, sharing washing facilities, which were originally intended for 30 persons. The wooden berths were in three storeys with 2 sometimes 3 prisoners to each berth. As a result of these unhygienic conditions many prisoners caught lice, and tifus, which increased the mortality-rate, again a link in the Nazi mass destruction system. Die Total-Vernichtung des Feindes (Total destruction of the enemy).

The prisoners had to work, 12 or more hours in industries, which had relation to armament and munition production.

During the nine years the Sachsenhausen Konzentrationslager existed, a total of 204,000 prisoners (from most of the countries in Europe) were locked up in the camp. Of this total of prisoners about 100,000 survived.

Towards the end of the war - on the 21 of April 1945 - 33,000 h�ftlinge were marched out of Sachsenhausen KZ towards the Baltic Sea in the north (about 200 km) - 6000 died on this death-march. The Sovjet Army entered Sachsenhausen on the 22 April 1945 and freed 3000 prisoners from the revier (hospital) barracks.

During my stay in Sachsenhausen until March 1945 I witnessed the horrible elimination - the ethnic cleansing - which the Nazi SS hordes undertook against Jewish populations of Poland and Hungary under the loathsome sign of NN (Nacht und Nebel - Night and Fog). Large groups of jews came from the death camps of Lublin-Majdanek. There had not been sufficient time to kill them all.
On entry into Sachsenhausen they were not registered into the camp�s statistics. They were taken directly to the gaschambers. More than 3000 Jews were killed in the Sachsenhausen gaschambers and burned in the camp�s specially constructed crematoria.

In March 1945 I was transferred from Sachsenhausen to Neuengamme Concentration camp near Hamburg - Germany then in last desperate death throes and impending collapse. Scandinavian KZ prisoners and Scandinavian prisoners from various jails in Germany were being gathered in Neuengamme under the auspices of the Swedish Red Cross - the Count Bernadotte intervention - with the intention of transferring all imprisoned Scandinavians to Sweden for internment until the end of the war.

The British Forces in the area were then - March 1945 - pressing their way up north towards Hamburg and the Danish border. US troops were crossing the Rhine. In the East the Russian offensive on its push towards Berlin had reached the Oder-Neisse rivers line on the Polish-German border. Germany was being crushed.

At the time of arrival with the Red Cross buses to Neuengamme from the various KZs and prisons, the Scandinavian prisoners (Danish and Norwegian) found many wooden barracks in a deplorable condition, in some cases with dead putrefying corpses under the matrasses of straw or directly on the wooden planks.

The Swedish Red Cross officials were expected to arrive at Neuengamme camp to inspect the situation, under which the prisoners lived, and commence the transfer of Scandinavians towards Sweden. The German SS-Command wanted to hide the real awful situation in the camp and ordered a twostoried stonebuilding at one end of the camp evacuated for their inmates, so as to give these quarters to Scandinavian prisoners.

The rooms were found partly filled with decomposing dead corpses mixed with human excrements, under dirty blankets and in filthy straw matrasses. The stench was unbearable. The straw and wood-wool were filled with lice.

The cellars - used as airraid shelters - were knee-deep with fetid sewage water. The pumping systems had collapsed under the continued Allied bombardment of the area. No electricity and the water could not be pumped away. Prisoners were ordered to scoop the water out. New water filtered in. Dead corpses were stacked - five to five - outside the crematorium.

Our stay in Neuengamme lasted about one month and we were transferred - again by Red Cross buses - to a hurridly established transfercamp at M�gelkj�r near Horsens in Denmark. Exhausted Hungarian soldiers kept watch.

War-weary and camp-tired I fled from M�gelkj�r end April, found my way back to Copenhagen, where good friends arranged shelter and protection until the liberation May 1945.

On arrival in Copenhagen I was informed that my 3-year younger brother Preben had been condemmed to death by a German court-martial on the 26th of February 1945 for participation in acts of sabotage against the German occupational forces. Preben was a member of the resistance-group BOPA (Borgerlige partisaner=Civil partisans). He was executed by a firing squad the next day. Preben was 19 years old.

Preben rests in the Memorial Grove at Ryvangen in Copenhagen, where many Danes, who lost their lives in the fight against the Huns during World War II, are buried.