My family and I have found an old silver case with my grandfathers initials on the outside and a date and the words "Til minde om højtidsdagen" (In memory of the feast) on the inside. The date is October the 23. 1943. I know my grandfather was part of a resistance movement under the 2. ww in Denmark and I know that he helped danish Jews migrating to Sweden from Holbæk. He also stole some train wagons from the Germans, and more.
When I Google the date I find a website which states that there were a lawsuit in DK on that date where a lot of members of a resistance was found not guilty, but later some of the members was sentenced to 3 months jail. I want to know if my grandfather was one of those men who was in that trial. Can anybody guide me to find some old documents about this? Thanks
One of the various archives in Denmark is most likely holding those papers. The challenge would be figuring out which one, how to get at them, and whether they might be sealed.
If you're in or near a major town or city, there's probably a municipal or regional archives close at hand. They may not have the documents you're looking for in their collection, but archivists are used to these kinds of questions and would be able to tell you which institution you want to get in touch with. If you're lucky, they might have digitized the papers so they can be viewed online, but since most major archives have enormous amounts of documents they probably haven't.
Once you've found them, there are different ways you could have access to them. Some archives might send you reproductions of the documents, while others might require you to visit in person to look at them. There may or may not be fees involved to have documents copied, or for the time the archivists spend retrieving the records. It would depend on the institution, and usually isn't terribly expensive unless you're after a huge file.
There's a chance that the documents might still be sealed. Some files at some archives are restricted for a lengthy period, usually decades, for legal reasons, for privacy protection, at a donor's request, and so on. Since the documents you're after are court records and those are usually public, this probably won't be the case. If it is, you may still have options due to the family connection. That sort of situation is another thing the archivists would be able to help with.
One final possible issue: you're looking for documents from the occupation era involving the resistance movement, which means it's possible that the papers you're after ended up in German archives, depending on the composition of the court and whether they bothered to move the records. If that's the case it doesn't actually change any of my advice, but it would change where you'd end up looking.
Good luck!