Frederiksberg

is a city surrounded by another city which is Copenhagen. A few hundred years ago it was the countryside outside of Copenhagen. The two cities have grown together, and you don’t see clearly if you are in one city or the other.

There is a certain old fashioned likeable sensation in Frederiksberg I will show you a part of it with my photos from this past Monday.

The agriculture science students had begun their studies this Monday, and for the first time, I was shown the old faculty where my husband had studied fifty years ago. I got the feeling that I am not old, but the students are young and regard us as old people.

Stolpersteine or Stumbling Stones

Connected to the institution is a botanical garden which is a popular place to take a break from work or from studies. The surrounding streets are paved with impressive villas and bigger buildings from the pre- world-war I era when architecture was still beautiful.

I have mentioned Stolpersteine before, and in a short diameter, we localised four different ones nearly invisible among the cobblestones in the pavements. Each stone represents a tragedy as a human being was murdered because of ethnicity. The German occupation power took action on October 1, 1943, matching the Jewish holiday of Jom Kippur.

From Wikipedia

The rescue of the Danish Jews occurred during Nazi Germany’s occupation of Denmark during World War II. On October 1, 1943, Nazi leader Adolf Hitler ordered Danish Jews to be arrested and deported. The Danish resistance movement, with the assistance of many Danish citizens, managed to evacuate 7,220 of Denmark’s 7,800 Jews, plus 686 non-Jewish spouses, by sea to nearby neutral Sweden.

The rescue allowed the vast majority of Denmark’s Jewish population to avoid capture by the Nazis, and is considered one of the largest actions of collective resistance to aggression in the countries occupied by Nazi Germany. As a result of the rescue, and of the following Danish intercession on behalf of the 464 Danish Jews who were captured and deported to the Theresienstadt transit camp in the Protectorate of Bohemia and Moravia, over 99% of Denmark’s Jewish population survived the Holocaust.

From Wikipedia

The Helpers

In our search for stumble stones, we came across a memorial plaque on the wall of Forchammervej. Two resistance fighters had been shot at that spot. It matches the theme as the Jews couldn’t have saved themselves without the help of many volunteers.

Walking around in a beautiful old city carries many emotions longing back to our youth but also shows the dark history of unwanted but innocent persons getting caught and sent to their death.