A brand new Danish museum is telling the story of refugees from the positioning of a World Battle II refugee camp.
The museum known as Flugt, which implies “flee” or “escape” in Danish.
Located in Oksbøl, on the western coast of Denmark, the museum is on the positioning of a refugee camp which took in 1000's of Germans escaping from the falling Nazi regime.
Because the Second World Battle got here to a detailed and the Soviet Pink Military tore by way of Germany, round 250,000 Germans fled to Denmark.
About 35,000 of these refugees got here to Oksbøl, turning it into Denmark’s fifth greatest metropolis on the time.
Operational between 1945 and 1949, the positioning had a faculty, theatre, and workshop, all behind barbed wire.
Now, there's little left of the unique web site aside from two hospital buildings and a cemetery among the many dense surrounding forest.
"We need to inform the story, behind the numbers, of the actual folks," director of the museum Claus Kjeld Jensen explains.
"There may be this era of world historical past that passed off proper right here, the place we're. However there's additionally the state of affairs as we speak," he says.
"We've got many extra refugees on the planet than we had on the finish of World Battle II. So I suppose the difficulty is extra related than ever," Kjeld Jensen provides.
Refugees internationally
As of 2021, virtually 90 million folks have been both refugees or displaced, in line with the UN Refugee Company (UNHC).
12 million extra folks have been uprooted by the Russian invasion of Ukraine, reviews the UNHC.
"Once we began this mission, we thought it was a factor of the previous for Western Europe," Danish architect Bjarke Ingels stated on the opening.
Ingles is a world-renowned architect who designed the museum and lately accomplished the brand new Google headquarters in Silicon Valley.
Inside his work, towering picket frames stretch skyward, creating a big open lobby from which guests discover the reveals.
A spot conceived as "an oasis or sanctuary that opens to the forest," in line with the designer. "That is in a approach what I hope the refugees have discovered right here - a sanctuary and a glimpse of a greater future."
The museum opened on Saturday June 25 to a price of €16 million. The opening was inaugurated by Denmark's Queen Margrethe II and German Vice-Chancellor Robert Habeck.
"Nobody would have thought that it might be so sadly topical to speak about refugees and exile," the 82-year-old monarch stated.
Opening to criticism
The museum opens at a time when Denmark is criticised by the EU for its powerful asylum and anti-migration insurance policies.
In recent times, governments of each the precise and the left have pursued one of many strictest migration insurance policies in Europe.
In 2019, the Danish prime minister declared that Denmark needed ‘zero asylum seekers’ and Denmark was the first nation within the EU to start revoking residency permits for Syrian refugees, after deeming that the state of affairs within the nation allowed them to return house.
Danish migration insurance policies "are very politically oriented and we hope, in fact, that there shall be a method to change that," stated UNHCR consultant Henrik Nordentoft.
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