Jørgen Kieler was a member of the Danish resistance. Arrested in 1944, he was transported to the subcamp in Barkhausen, where he was imprisoned from September 1944 to March 1945. After the end of the war, he completed his medical studies and became one of Denmark's most prominent contemporary witnesses.
"We were taken to a hotel. Very quickly, the initial positive impression faded into fear as I read an engraving etched in charcoal along the blank wall in the courtyard. HIC MORTUI VIVUNT was inscribed in block capital letters. We could only just grasp the connotations of the words HERE LIVE THE DECEASED read more, and it was only in the months that followed that their true meaning was revealed in all of its horror." read less
Jørgen Kieler: Dänischer Widerstand im Nationalsozialismus. Ein Zeitzeuge berichtet über die Geschichte der dänischen Widerstandsbewegung 1940-1945. Hanover: Offizin 2011. Quote translated from German.
Jørgen Kieler - Prisoner photograph from the Frøslev internment camp, taken in August or September 1944.
Source: Picture collection of the Frihedsmuseet, Copenhagen
Biography
Jørgen Kieler was born on 23 August 1919 in the small Danish town of Horsens. His father was a general practitioner there. Kieler had four siblings and the family travelled all over Europe. They often travelled to Germany with tents and cars. In addition to Latin, the Kieler siblings had also learnt French, English and German as foreign languages at school, which made communication easier when they were travelling. Jørgen Kieler graduated from the state school in Horsens before starting to study medicine in Copenhagen in 1939. In the time between his first school leaving certificate and the start of his studies, he attended lectures at the universities in Munich, Paris and Cambridge. From the late summer of 1940, Jørgen Kieler shared a student flat in Copenhagen with his siblings Elsebet, Bente and Flemming.
read moreAs a student in the resistance
On 9 April 1940, the Wehrmacht invaded Denmark. From spring 1942, Jørgen Kieler took part in the distribution of the illegal student newspaper Frit Danmark (Free Denmark), and later issues of the newspaper were also printed in the Kieler siblings' flat. In the autumn of 1943, Kieler's resistance group supported the escape of Danish Jews in fishing boats to Sweden. At the same time, Jørgen and Flemming Kieler joined the armed resistance movement Holger Danske, which carried out sabotage operations throughout the country.Arrest
After a failed sabotage operation in Aabenraa at the beginning of February 1944, Kieler was injured while trying to escape and was arrested along with his brother. In September 1944, he was transported to Neuengamme concentration camp together with a large group of Danish prisoners from the Frøslev camp on the German-Danish border. Just a few days later, Kieler left Neuengamme again together with 97 other Danish prisoners for the satellite camp in Barkhausen, again including his brother Flemming.In Porta Westfalica
Kieler was subsequently forced to perform hard labour in the construction of the tunnels around Porta Westfalica. Due to his previous training, he was also temporarily deployed as an auxiliary prisoner doctor in the camp's infirmary. In March 1945, the Danish concentration camp prisoners still in Barkhausen were brought back to Neuengamme as part of the so-called “White Buses” operation. About a month later, he was able to leave Neuengamme via Denmark for Sweden on the last bus transport of the Action.After the war - researcher and important contemporary witness
He completed his studies in Copenhagen in 1947 and married his wife Eva in the same year, with whom he lived until her death in 2008. Between 1947 and 1951, he and six colleagues conducted research into the starvation syndrome in concentration camps. In 1965 he became head of the Fibiger Laboratories, in 1980 head of research at the Danish Cancer Research Society and in 1984 head of the Fibiger Institute for Cancer Research.Throughout his life, he was active in remembrance work for the Danish resistance fighters. He continued to publish texts and give lectures on this subject into old age.
Jørgen Kieler died on 19 February 2017 at the age of 97.
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"The stones piled up around us, the foreman grumbled. In the end, he took a shovel and lent a hand himself. But I soon realised that it wasn't about loading a tipper lorry: Two Danish prisoners were to be stoned read more{...} We tried to defend ourselves with our shovels and hands, but we were inexorably hit by sharp pieces of rock - first on our legs, then on our bodies and finally on our faces." read less
Jørgen Kieler: Dänischer Widerstand im Nationalsozialismus. Ein Zeitzeuge berichtet über die Geschichte der dänischen Widerstandsbewegung 1940-1945. Hanover: Offizin 2011. Quote translated from German.
"I was questioned at length about the food situation and the hunger syndrome, which prompted one of the defence lawyers to make the derisive remark that the German civilian population was not much better off in the spring of 1948. However, he himself did not look like a Muselmann, nor did the defendants."
Jørgen Kieler, Danish Resistance under National Socialism. A contemporary witness reports on the history of the Danish resistance movement 1940-1945, Hanover 2001
Since 2017, the Porta Westfalica Concentration Camp Memorial and Documentation Centre has awarded the Dr Jørgen Kieler Medal for special services to humanity, peace and international understanding. Previous award winners include the initiatives of the refugee aid organisation in Porta Westfalica (2017), the Jewish cemetery working group of the Porta Westfalica comprehensive school (2019), the group of "contemporary witnesses at Porta Westfalica" (2021) and Wilhelm Gerntrup (2023).
