CONTENT WARNING: This post discusses wartime collaboration, betrayal of family members, and the resulting deaths in concentration camps. Purpose: historical education and remembrance.
Born on February 23, 1924, in Aarhus to a low-income family with communist affiliations, Grethe Bartram (née Jensen) experienced a challenging upbringing. At the time of Nazi Germany’s occupation of Denmark on April 9, 1940, she was 16 years old.
During the occupation, while many Danes engaged in passive or active resistance, Bartram opted to collaborate with the authorities. Starting at age 18 in 1942, she provided information first to the Danish police and later directly to the Gestapo. Over the following three years, she reported more than 53 individuals, including neighbors, friends, resistance participants, and members of her own family, such as her brother Niels Jensen and her fiancé/husband Frode Thomsen, as well as former associates from a communist youth organization.
These reports resulted in arrests, severe interrogations, and deportations to German concentration camps. At least eight of those reported did not survive, with many perishing in facilities like Neuengamme and Stutthof.
In 1944, the Danish resistance issued a death sentence against her in absentia and attempted an assassination, which injured her but did not halt her activities.
Following Denmark’s liberation in May 1945, Bartram was arrested. Her trial from 1946 to 1947 drew significant public attention in Danish history. Convicted of aiding the enemy and contributing to the deaths of Danish citizens, she initially received a death sentence—the second such penalty for a woman in modern Danish records. This was commuted to life imprisonment in 1948 and further reduced, leading to her release in 1956.
After her release, she was deported from Denmark and relocated to Sweden under a new name, where she lived in the Malmö region until her death on January 26, 2017, at age 92. She did not publicly express regret for her actions.
Bartram’s story serves as a poignant example in Danish history of how personal choices during occupation can lead to profound betrayals within families and communities, highlighting the enduring impact of moral decisions in times of crisis.
Sources:
- Danish National Archives – Records from the Grethe Bartram trial
- Henrik Skov Kristensen, Straffesagen mod Grethe Bartram (2007)
- Resistance Museum Denmark – Section on collaborators