Jørgen Kieler

Who is Jørgen Kieler?

Jørgen Kieler, a Danish physician, is remembered primarily for his participation in resistance activities under the German occupation of Denmark in the early 1940s. Together with his sister, Elsebet, he published Frit Denmark or Free Denmark, an illegal newspaper. As a member of the Holger Danske resistance group, he helped hundreds of Danish Jews to escape to Sweden and avoid extermination.

Despite capture by the Germans and time in a concentration camp, he returned to Denmark after the war and then completed his studies in the United States. In 1980, he became director of research at Kræftens Bekæmpelse.

Kieler has written a number of books about the German occupation and about concentration camp syndrome.