Skanderborg during the occupation

The Occupation Museum is situated in the Deer Park in Skanderborg, and the exhibitions are shown in authentic surroundings in two air-raid shelters from World War II.

 
    

The exhibitions are divided into two parts:
    
A Danish part based on Skanderborg about the period of occupation locally and in Denmark in general. The topics are for example the 9th of April, the policy of collaboration, resistance with help from the outside, everyday life and the Liberation.

                    

            

       

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A German part focusing on the activities of the Germans in and around Skanderborg where approximately 500 men served in the Luftwaffe which on the 1st of May 1944 set up its administrative headquarters in Denmark in the Deer Park in Skanderborg.

The exhibition describes the building of the air-raid shelters, and how the illegal press saw it, as well as the generals in the Luftwaffe and their staff and the assignments which were handled from here.

Aleksander Holle was Kommandierende General und Befehlshaber der Deutschen Luftwaffe in Dänemark from December 1944 to May 1945. On display in the air-raid shelter is one of the rare examples of the German armed forces’ top secret ENIGMA which was the most important cipher machine for diplomatic and military messages during World War II. The code was broken, even though it was considered unbreakable and it is said, that this break through cut the war short by one year, and formed the basis of the modern computer. In the exhibition guests are invited to write code messages on an ENIGMA simulator.

The final theme of the exhibition is about the approximately 700 German refugees who lived in the refugee camp, Sølund for a year or so after the war. Through photos, artefacts and the spoken word their situation is described from a Danish as well as a German viewpoint.

German refugees in front of the pavilion in the Deer Park, 1946. Number two from the right is Mrs Anna Lintzau who in March 1945 fled from Zollbrück in Pomerania with her two daughters, who were then 18 and 21 years old.

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