You shouldn’t hate, but you shouldn’t forget either

My name is Margit Grome, and I am the daughter of Erik Holger Grome. He was a member of the resistance movement in Denmark and a prisoner in the Neuengamme concentration camp. Over the years, I have made several trips to the memorial, both as a child with my parents, as an adult and now as a retiree, where I am a member of the board of the Danish “Neuengamme Association”. It has always been a great experience and very solemn to take part in these trips. It is a very particular feeling to visit the places where so many people were crammed together in inhumane conditions. It is therefore very unfortunate that we have not been able to visit the memorial site for several years in a row during the Corona pandemic and honor and pay tribute to the people who experienced so much horror in the Neuengamme concentration camp and the many who died there.

This is a report about my father Erik Holger Grome Nielsen, about his stay in the Neuengamme concentration camp, about how he helped to found the national “Neuengamme Association” and why I became a member of the board.

My father as a resistance fighter

In 1940, when Denmark was occupied, my father was 19 years old. He lived in Copenhagen and initially worked as a telegraph messenger before later becoming a civil servant in the postal and telegraph service.

In 1942, he was drafted into the Royal Danish Life Guards, where he became a private. The Germans disbanded the Danish army in August 1943, so my father was sent back to his homeland. Before that, however, the Danish soldiers managed to destroy their own weapons – much to the annoyance of the occupying forces.

From 1940 to February 1944, my father was temporarily active in the resistance movement. Initially he was involved in the German letter censorship at the main post office and at the airport – he did this very leniently by having letters stamped as “censored” without having actually censored them beforehand. Later, my father was directly active in the resistance, including in the “Home Front” (Dannevirke) and in the Holger Danske resistance group.

My father was arrested on February 2, 1944 during an act of railroad sabotage in Helsingør. It is assumed that the action was discovered by an informant. He was sent to Vestre prison, then to Horserød (February 2, 1944 – August 10, 1944) and was transferred to Frøslev camp on August 10, 1944. Here, the occupying power had promised that the imprisoned Danes could stay in the prison. The conditions there were comparatively good – especially when you consider how things were in the concentration camps.

Imprisonment in the Neuengamme and Meppen-Versen concentration camps

But just one month later he was sent to Neuengamme concentration camp (August 20, 1944 – November 15, 1944). His prisoner number there was 60841. The imprisonment in this camp was unimaginably bad, but it got even worse when my father was sent to the Meppen-Versen subcamp between November 15, 1944 and March 15, 1945, where the conditions were even more dreadful than in Neuengamme. Among other things, the prisoners had to dig very deep trenches to prevent tanks from getting through, as the Germans feared an invasion by the Allies. This was done in the very cold winter with shabby wooden shoes on their feet, thin clothing and often standing in freezing water. Many died during that time.

My father didn’t talk much about his time in the concentration camps, but he told me that the commandant sold much of the prisoners’ food (turnips) to the nearby farmers, so that the prisoners’ main meal only consisted of watered-down turnip soup. One of the reasons why he and other Danes survived was undoubtedly the Red Cross parcels they occasionally received from Denmark. The prison guards took their share of the packages’ contents, but fortunately some of it reached the hungry prisoners. Among other things, the parcels contained cigarettes, which were a valuable “commodity”.

Return in the white buses

My father returned to Neuengamme concentration camp on March 15, 1945. The reason for this was a large rescue operation in which the Red Cross and volunteers from Denmark and Sweden, under the leadership of Count Folke Bernadotte, went to the German concentration camps and brought Scandinavians home. This took place in the days around April 20, 1945. The sickest prisoners were transferred to a train in Denmark, as they were to be taken to a hospital/rehabilitation center in Sweden.

A short stay in Copenhagen was announced, and my father’s half-sister, Elly, known as “Sister”, was allowed to meet my father briefly at the train station. She didn’t recognize him at all. He had lost 40 kg and looked terrible. But she recognized the voice when he said: “Come here, sister, and let me give you a hug”. A wonderful experience for Sister – and great joy at home when she came home and told everyone about what had happened.

After the war

After the war, my father initially worked for the Life Guards again. He was very happy to be there, but unfortunately had to give up his career after his stay in a concentration camp due to illness, especially tuberculosis. He played the trombone in the post orchestra for a few years, but unfortunately had to give up this activity too due to a weak lung.

He met my mother and married her in 1948. In 1949 they had two children (the twins Margit and Martin Grome).

My father worked at the post office until his death in 1981. He was ill for a long time (tuberculosis, KZ syndrome, etc.). It was good that my father had that position at the post office, because no matter how many sick notes he had, his illnesses were respected by the state, his employer. In the last years of his life, he had a part-time job and worked part-time at the parcel post.

My father was very active, especially in the years right after he returned home. Immediately after the war he helped to build up the Home Army and became company commander with the rank of captain for the Amager region.

The surviving prisoners of the concentration camps returned home both mentally and physically weakened. Their physical illnesses were taken care of, but when it came to their mental illnesses, they were told: “You should be happy that you survived; stop thinking about it and get on with life.” But of course, that was impossible.

Small groups of former concentration camp prisoners formed all over Denmark, where they could come together and try to help each other. Many also had financial problems as they could not work. Over the years, however, it became clear that simply meeting with other former concentration camp prisoners was by no means enough. Much greater efforts were needed.

My father therefore co-founded the Danish association “Landsforeningen af KZ-fanger fra Neuengamme” on May 26, 1962 and was chairman until his death. This association enabled us to talk to politicians, initiate financial and psychological aid measures and, last but not least, make the enormous problems of the former concentration camp prisoners visible.

My father was also involved in international cooperation – among other things in the AIN (Amicale International KZ Neuengamme) and was on the board of the Kammeratrenes Hjælpefond (a Danish organization that provides financial support to vulnerable people).

He also helped to organize annual trips to Neuengamme and other camps for former concentration camp prisoners, their relatives and other interested parties. He called the trips “pilgrimages”. Initially they traveled in private cars, later in buses. The trips lasted around five days. There was usually a tour of the Neuengamme camp, also to see whether the construction of the memorial site lived up to its promises.

Leif, who accompanied the pilgrimages as a bus driver, told us that on the way to Meppen-Versen, for example, there was usually a good mood on the bus at first, but as they approached the former camp site, the atmosphere changed completely and many former concentration camp prisoners withdrew into themselves and no longer wished to talk at all.

One might ask why they went on these journeys, where they relived the hell they had lived through. One former concentration camp prisoner, Ib Lærche, put it in a nutshell: “Don’t think we do it out of self-pity. We don’t come here to crush our souls, but because of the companionship with the people with whom we shared so much evil and so little good in the hated camp. We are a kind of Masonic lodge – and it is the suffering of the war that keeps us together.” So did my father have a good life after the concentration camp? Yes and no. He was often cheerful, had a fine sense of humor and could form funny words and sentences. He was very sociable and a good husband and father.

Aftermath

But imprisonment in a concentration camp came at a price, of course. There were times when his tuberculosis was particularly rampant and he spent several months in sanatoriums. He often had nightmares and woke up drenched in sweat. His mental health was not particularly good and he had several “nervous breakdowns”, as they were called at the time. The term “post-traumatic stress disorder” was not yet known at the time.

When his thoughts became too intense, he resorted to self-medicating with alcohol. Sometimes he would sit there for hours, staring into space and smoking cigarettes. Today I can understand that, but as a teenager it was hard to grasp.

My mother once said: “Of course it’s completely understandable that we honor former resistance fighters/ concentration camp prisoners and award them with medals, but we should also honor the wives who stayed in the marriage and supported and helped. That wasn’t easy.”

My father died suddenly in December 1981, when he was 60 years old. I remember him saying: “You shouldn’t hate, but you shouldn’t forget either.”

The Neuengamme Association

Nowadays, there are not many of the former prisoners left in our association. At the moment there is one.

The Danish board of the Neuengamme Association was initially mostly formed by former concentration camp inmates and has been replaced over the years by their relatives and other interested parties. I myself was invited to join the board and have been a member for more than 10 years. Over the years, I have read a lot about the concentration camps and the terrible conditions there. I can actually understand why people didn’t talk about it so much immediately after the liberation. Former concentration camp prisoners used to say: “Nobody believes what we say anyway”.

It has meant a lot to me that I can contribute a little to ensuring that the history of the terrible concentration camps is not forgotten – and that we still remember the many who suffered so unimaginably – and perhaps sacrificed their lives – so that we can be free and live in a democratic country. I have great respect for the great work that the AIN does. It is invaluable.