Slain Copenhagen Guard Recalled as ‘Always Ready To Do Part’
Mourners embrace at memorial service for Dan Uzan, the Jewish guard killed in Copenhagen terror attacks. Image by getty images
Dan Uzan, the Jewish volunteer guard killed in a shooting outside Copenhagen’s central synagogue, was remembered at his funeral as one “who was always ready to do his part.”
“Everybody in our community knew Dan,” said Dan Rosenberg, head of the Danish Jewish community, on Wednesday at the Mosaiske Vestre Jewish cemetery in Copenhagen. “He was always ready to do his part; he was a very fine example for the whole community.”
Danish Prime Minister Helle Thorning-Schmidt was among the hundreds of mourners who attended the funeral, which was held under tight security, the French news agency AFP reported.
“The Jewish world embraces you at this difficult time,” Natan Sharansky, the Jewish Agency’s chairman, told Uzan’s family at the funeral. Uzan, who had an Israeli father and a Danish mother, died early Sunday morning from injuries sustained in the attack on the Danish capital’s central synagogue in Krystalgade. He was 37.
Uzan was standing guard outside the synagogue at an event held at an adjacent building for approximately 80 people who had gathered for a bat mitzvah. The attack occurred hours after a fatal shooting Saturday afternoon at a free speech event at a cultural center featuring the Danish cartoonist Lars Vilks, who is under police protection because of his cartoons caricaturing the Prophet Muhammad.
Danish police in a shootout Sunday killed the suspected gunman in both attacks.
A message from our Publisher & CEO Rachel Fishman Feddersen
I hope you appreciated this article. Before you go, I’d like to ask you to please support the Forward’s award-winning, nonprofit journalism during this critical time.
We’ve set a goal to raise $260,000 by December 31. That’s an ambitious goal, but one that will give us the resources we need to invest in the high quality news, opinion, analysis and cultural coverage that isn’t available anywhere else.
If you feel inspired to make an impact, now is the time to give something back. Join us as a member at your most generous level.
— Rachel Fishman Feddersen, Publisher and CEO
