In 1945, shortly after his liberation from the Neuengamme concentration camp, Aage Jørgensen wrote down his experiences during the imprisonment. These notes remained unread for over 40 years, until they were found again. On Friday, the survivor visited the Memorial with his son and a Canadian film crew. The Dane who lives in Canada today was arrested as a resistance fighter in Copenhagen in 1944, deported to Dachau and later to Neuengamme. He was a prisoner of the so-called “Scandinavian camp” until his liberation in 1945. A documentary about his life is being made at the moment.

The 93-year-old was a member of the Danish resistance movement at the time and fought against the Nazis until 1944 [Unbekannt1]  when he was arrested and deported to the Dachau concentration camp. A year later, Count Folke Bernadotte, Vice President of the Swedish Red Cross, reached an agreement with Heinrich Himmler to have all the Norwegian and Danish prisoners transported to the Neuengamme concentration camp, where their living conditions improved significantly. When the Red Cross entered the “Scandinavian camp” which was separated from the rest of the concentration camp, the prisoners got access to medications, dressing material and hygiene products. After Bernadotte’s visit on March 30, 1945, Scandinavian prisoners started hoping for an imminent liberation. Aage Jørgensen was one of them. By his own account, he not only met Bernadotte himself, but also was on the last of the White Buses headed to Denmark.

Immediately following his liberation, the 19-year-old wrote down his experiences, hoping this would help him process what he had lived through and start a new life free of memories. It was only 40 years later, that he returned to the 50 pages he had written in Danish and translated them into English. His nephew found them and was so touched that he decided to have a documentary made about Jørgensens’s life, which would show his experiences during the war but also his way of dealing with them after the liberation.

For the purpose of making the documentary, Peter Aage Jørgensen visited the Neuengamme Concentration Camp Memorial on Friday, accompanied by an international film crew.