Horserød camp
| Location | Horserød, Helsingør |
|---|---|
| Coordinates | 56°02′44″N 12°29′40″E / 56.045494°N 12.49449°E |
| Status | Operational |
| Security class | Open state prison |
| Capacity | 251 |
| Opened | 1917 (Prison camp) 1946 (State prison) |
| Managed by | Correctional Service of Denmark |
| Street address | Esrumvej 367, 3000 Helsingør |
| Country | Denmark |
| Website | horseroed |
Horserød Camp (also Horserød State Prison, Danish: Horserødlejren or Horserød Statsfængsel) is an open state prison at Horserød, Denmark located in North Zealand, approximately seven kilometers from Helsingør. Built in 1917, Horserød was originally a prison camp, and in local parlance the site is still referred to as Horserødlejren (The Horserød Camp).
The camp originally consisted of approximately 75 wooden barracks and was built in 1917 to confine Russian prisoners of war who were transferred from Germany and the Eastern front during the First World War. After the war the camp then housed various kinds of refugees, and at one point was converted to a summer camp for school children from the slums of Copenhagen.
Between 19 April 1940 and 2 August 1941, 80 German immigrants were detained in groups in Horserød camp before being sent back to Germany. A court in Hamburg later sentenced 14 of them to capital punishment, while the rest were interned in Nazi concentration camps.
In Denmark, communists had long been surveilled and perceived as a threat to national security by the political establishment and on 22 June 1941, around 300 Danish members of the Communist Party of Denmark (DKP) were arrested by the Danish police. In Copenhagen they were detained at Vestre Prison without charge and on the 20 August, 107 of the arrested men were deported from Vestre Prison to the Horserød camp, among them member of parliament Martin Nielsen. On 22 August 1941, the Danish parliament adopted the Anti-Communist Act with retroactive effect. On 29 August 1943, during Operation Safari, the Germans captured the camp and in the event, 95 prisoners managed to escape, while the remaining 150 communists were subsequently deported to the German Stutthof concentration camp. From around September that year, the German Gestapo began using Horserød to detain various Danish resistance members and Jews. Although Horserød camp was not officially described as a concentration camp, it had the same functions, but unlike the German concentration camps, it was not administered by the SS.
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