London’s Wellcome Collection returns remains of death camp victim to Denmark

The Wellcome Collection in London has returned an urn of human ashes for burial in Denmark, after research identified the remains of a young artist and member of the Danish resistance, who died in the Neuengamme concentration camp in northern Germany in 1944, aged just 26.

The research, due to be outlined in a statement on the museum’s website today, confirmed that the ashes in the urn were human, and allowed the descendants of Preben Holger Larsen to be traced. He had been listed on a Danish memorial as one of 151 freedom fighters whose remains were never found after the war. They have now been buried in a ceremony at the Ryvangen Memorial Park.

The urn had not been displayed and is not being illustrated, but two photographs have been released by the memorial park showing Larsen as a smiling young man, and hollow-eyed at the time of his arrest.

@UK_ICOM