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May to mid-Sept Tues-Sat 10am-4pm, Sun 10am-5pm; mid-Sept to April Tues-Sat 11am-3pm, Sun 11am-4pm; free. Bus #1, #6, #9, #19, #29 or Osterport S-Tog. Situated within Churchillparken - a small park named after the British wartime leader - the Resistance Museum (Frihedsmuseet) offers a comprehensive account of Denmark's role in World War II, using video displays (with English dubbed versions), personal accounts and exhibits such as resistance broadsheets, home-made weapons and printing presses. The museum also grasps the thorny issue of the Danish government's collusion with German rule. Denmark, uniquely amongst the countries invaded by the Nazis, was afforded a kind of independence. The price of this was a large degree of collaboration: the Danish government was convinced that a Europe-wide Nazi victory was inevitable, and displays show the signed agreements between the two countries, while uniforms of the Danish Freikorps - volunteers who joined the German army - bear witness to the degree to which some Danes aligned themselves with the invaders. Initially slow to offer armed resistance, the first acts of sabotage were carried out in 1942 by a group of teenage boys from Aarhus called the Churchill Gang (photographs and filmed interviews with them are on display). These acts of sabotage gave impetus to other groups, largely made up of illegal Danish communists, and the period of collusion ended with a number of uprisings in 1943, which led to the Germans imposing martial law, imprisoning hundreds and engaging in acts of terror against the Danish population. There are some dramatic photographs (and mundane police reports) of these first acts of sabotage, along with home-made printing devices, machine guns and bombs. Another act that infuriated the Nazis was the mass evacuation of Denmark's Jewish population - all but a tiny percentage were saved from the death camps by the Danish government's refusal to collaborate on this issue and the efforts of ordinary Danes, who helped Jews escape to neutral Sweden. Personal accounts, video interviews and original maps showing the escape routes attest to the courage shown during this episode of the war. One of the most moving parts of the exhibition is just in front of the large stained-glass windows in a section called "The Dead" , showing the original wooden posts to which arrested resistance fighters were tied and shot, along with last letters to loved ones from those sentenced to death.
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