Saudi Press

Saudi Arabia and the world
Thursday, Oct 09, 2025

Danish queen opens new museum telling the story of refugees

Denmark’s Queen Margrethe opened a new museum Saturday that tells the story of the generations of refugees who have shaped Danish society, starting with Germans who fled the Soviet advance during World War II.
Flugt — Refugee Museum of Denmark was created on the site of a camp in Oksboel, a town in southwestern Denmark, that housed up to 100,000 refugees from Germany in the postwar years.

Flugt — which means escape in Danish — also tells the story of immigrants from Iran, Lebanon, Hungary, Vietnam and elsewhere who fled their homelands and found shelter in the Scandinavian country. They tell their stories in their own words on large video screens.

“Being a refugee is not something one decides. It is not one’s personal choice, it is something that happens,” Sawsan Gharib Dall, a stateless Palestinian who was born in a refugee camp in Lebanon and lived there until she fled and arrived in Denmark in 1985, says in one video.

Curator Claus Kjeld Jensen explained that the aim of the museum is “to turn numbers into people and convey the completely universal issues, emotions and many nuances associated with being a person on the run.”

The museum was designed by prominent Danish architect Bjarke Ingels and consists of a curved modern building of wood and glass that links two older brick annexes that were hospital buildings in the postwar years.

Ingels has said that the new museum has become more relevant as Denmark has recently accepted refugees fleeing Russia’s war in Ukraine.

Outside the museum, a path guides visitors past plaques describing the fates of the Germans who sought shelter in the camp, called Oksboellejren, between 1945 and 1949. Most of them eventually settled in West Germany but a cemetery on the site has become the final resting place for those who died there.

The museum, which opens to the public June 29, was financed by private donations and the German government, and German vice chancellor, Robert Habeck, represented his country at Saturday’s opening ceremony.

It is located 275 kilometers (170 miles) west of Copenhagen but just 95 kilometers (60 miles) from the border with Germany.

Denmark was a haven for refugees in the past. Of Denmark’s 5.8 million people, more than 650,000 are immigrants, while 208,000 are listed in the state statistics as descendants of immigrants.

However, the country in recent years, with large-scale migration a source of angst in the Western world, has sought to place limits on the number of newcomers that it accepts. It has at times attracted international criticism for the way it has tried to discourage them from trying to settle there.

Wedged between Germany and Sweden, Denmark only took in a small part of the more than 1 million people who arrived from Africa and the Middle East in the migration crisis year of 2015.

More than 11,500 people applied for asylum in Denmark, while 1.1 million did so in Germany and 163,000 in Sweden. Many saw Denmark only as a transit point because of the tough Danish stance.

In 2016, a law was passed allowing authorities to seize jewelry and other assets from refugees to help finance their housing and other services. In practice, it has been implemented only a handful of times.

Denmark also revoked the residency permits of some Syrian refugees by declaring parts of Syria “safe,” and toyed with the idea of opening camps for asylum-seekers in Rwanda.

Denmark still has no deal in place for sending asylum-seekers to Rwanda. However, Britain, which had similar plans, had to abort its first planned flight of asylum-seekers after the intervention of the European Court of Human Rights, which cited “a real risk of irreversible harm.”

According to official statistics, 2,717 people have sought asylum in Denmark this year.
Newsletter

Related Articles

Saudi Press
0:00
0:00
Close
The Davos Set in Decline: Why the World Economic Forum’s Power Must Be Challenged
Wave of Complaints Against Apple Over iPhone 17 Pro’s Scratch Sensitivity
Syria Holds First Elections Since Fall of Assad
Altman Says GPT-5 Already Outpaces Him, Warns AI Could Automate 40% of Work
Trump Organization Teams with Saudi Developer on $1 Billion Trump Plaza in Jeddah
Electronic Arts to Be Taken Private in Historic $55 Billion Buyout
Colombian President Petro Vows to Mobilize Volunteers for Gaza and Joins List of Fighters
Nvidia and Abu Dhabi’s TII Launch First AI-&-Robotics Lab in the Middle East
UK, Canada, and Australia Officially Recognise Palestine in Historic Shift
New Eye Drops Show Promise in Replacing Reading Glasses for Presbyopia
Dubai Property Boom Shows Strain as Flippers Get Buyer’s Remorse
Top AI Researchers Are Heading Back to China as U.S. Struggles to Keep Pace
JWST Data Brings TRAPPIST-1e Closer to Earth-Like Habitability
UAE-US Stargate Project Poised to Make Abu Dhabi a Global AI Powerhouse
Trump and Starmer Clash Over UK Recognition of Palestinian State Amid State Visit
Saudi Arabia cracks down on music ‘lounges’ after conservative backlash
Saudi Arabia Signs ‘Strategic Mutual Defence’ Pact with Pakistan, Marking First Arab State to Gain Indirect Access to Nuclear Strike Capabilities in the Region
Sam Altman sells the 'Wedding Estate' in Hawaii for 49 million dollars
Turkish car manufacturer Togg Enters German Market with 5-Star Electric Sedan and SUV to Challenge European EV Brands
World’s Longest Direct Flight China Eastern to Launch 29-Hour Shanghai–Buenos Aires Direct Flight via Auckland in December
New OpenAI Study Finds Majority of ChatGPT Use Is Personal, Not Professional
Kuwait opens bidding for construction of three cities to ease housing crunch.
This Week in AI: Meta’s Superintelligence Push, xAI’s Ten Billion-Dollar Raise, Genesis AI’s Robotics Ambitions, Microsoft Restructuring, Amazon’s Million-Robot Milestone, and Google’s AlphaGenome Update
Indian Student Engineers Propose “Project REBIRTH” to Protect Aircraft from Crashes Using AI, Airbags and Smart Materials
Could AI Nursing Robots Help Healthcare Staffing Shortages?
Turkish authorities seize leading broadcaster amid fraud and tax investigation
Qatari prime minister says Netanyahu ‘killed any hope’ for Israeli hostages
Apple Introduces Ultra-Thin iPhone Air, Enhanced 17 Series and New Health-Focused Wearables
Big Oil Slashes Jobs and Investments Amid Prolonged Low Crude Prices
Social Media Access Curtailed in Turkey After CHP Calls for Rallies Following Police Blockade of Istanbul Headquarters
Did the Houthis disrupt the internet in the Middle East? Submarine cables cut in the Red Sea
Gold Could Reach Nearly $5,000 if Fed Independence Is Undermined, Goldman Sachs Warns
Uruguay, Colombia and Paraguay Secure Places at 2026 World Cup
Trump Administration Advances Plans to Rebrand Pentagon as Department of War Instead of the Fake Term Department of Defense
Tether Expands into Gold Sector with Profit-Driven Diversification
Trump’s New War – and the ‘Drug Tyrant’ Fearing Invasion: ‘1,200 Missiles Aimed at Us’
At the Parade in China: Laser Weapons, 'Eagle Strike,' and a Missile Capable of 'Striking Anywhere in the World'
Information Warfare in the Age of AI: How Language Models Become Targets and Tools
Israeli Airstrike in Yemen Kills Houthi Prime Minister
After the Shock of Defeat, Iranians Yearn for Change
YouTube Altered Content by Artificial Intelligence – Without Permission
Iran Faces Escalating Water Crisis as Protests Spread
More Than Half a Million Evacuated as Typhoon Kajiki Heads for Vietnam
HSBC Switzerland Ends Relationships with Over 1,000 Clients from Saudi Arabia, Lebanon, Qatar, and Egypt
Sharia Law Made Legally Binding in Austria Despite Warnings Over 'Incompatible' Values
Dogfights in the Skies: Airbus on Track to Overtake Boeing and Claim Aviation Supremacy
Tim Cook Promises an AI Revolution at Apple: "One of the Most Significant Technologies of Our Generation"
Are AI Data Centres the Infrastructure of the Future or the Next Crisis?
Miles Worth Billions: How Airlines Generate Huge Profits
Zelenskyy Returns to White House Flanked by European Allies as Trump Pressures Land-Swap Deal with Putin
×