Queen of Denmark unveiled statue of WWII Danish hero

The Queen of Denmark Margrethe II unveiled a three-meter tall bronze statue of the Danish WWII hero Bernhard Arp Sindberg in Aarhus on Saturday.

The Queen of Denmark Margrethe II unveiled a three-meter tall bronze statue of the Danish WWII hero Bernhard Arp Sindberg in Aarhus on Saturday. [Photo provided to China Plus by Danish Embassy in Beijing]

The Queen of Denmark Margrethe II unveiled a three-meter tall bronze statue of the Danish WWII hero Bernhard Arp Sindberg in Aarhus on Saturday. [Photo provided to China Plus by Danish Embassy in Beijing]

The statue is the result of a Chinese-Danish collaboration between three artists - Shang Rong, Fu Licheng and Lene Desmentik - and is a gift to Aarhus from the city of Nanjing.

The statue is the result of a Chinese-Danish collaboration between three artists - Shang Rong, Fu Licheng and Lene Desmentik. [Photo provided to China Plus by Danish Embassy in Beijing]

During the Nanjing Massacre, an estimated 300,000 Chinese were killed by occupying Japanese troops.

But the then 26-year-old Dane from Aarhus succeeded in saving at least 6,000 Chinese by protecting them in a Danish concrete factory in Nanjing, where he worked as a guard.

the Danish WWII hero Bernhard Arp Sindberg [Photo provided to China Plus by Danish Embassy in Beijing]

Together with Karl Günther, a German engineer who also worked at the factory, Sindberg opened the factory gates and offered shelter to thousands of civilians.

To ward off Japanese bombs, Sindberg even painted a gigantic Danish flag on the roof of the cement factory and hoisted both the Danish flag and two German swastika flags - two nations which the Japanese were not at war with.

Sindberg and Günther also set up a makeshift hospital, and repeatedly risked their own lives by driving out into the occupied city to collect food, medicine and supplies from the Red Cross.

Decades after his heroic effort, Sindberg is still revered in China.

The three-meter tall bronze statue of the Danish WWII hero Bernhard Arp Sindberg [Photo provided to China Plus by Danish Embassy in Beijing]

The Bernhard Sindberg memorial outside the Nanjing Memorial Hall honors the memory of Sindberg. A yellow rose - ‘Nanjing Forever - the Sindberg Rose’ - named after the Aarhus native also grows on the site.

Sindberg later emigrated to the United States and settled in California, where he lived until his death in 1983.