There has been a substantial scholarly debate over the (long-term) attitudinal effects of exposure to outgroups on the attitudes towards these outgroups, including outgroups which are vulnerable and/or are suffering. Some argue that cognitive dissonance will lead people experiencing outgroup suffering to have a more negative view of outgroup members (Homola et al. 2020), while others will argue that exposure to outgroup suffering will increase empathy and decrease hostility towards outgroup members. In order to advance this debate, I analyze the mainly forgotten case of German refugees in Denmark after World War II (and after the German occupation of Denmark), where Denmark was home for several years to around 200,000 German refugees (mainly women and children) which were eventually repatriated. Using geo-coded data on the distribution of refugees and major refugee camps in the 1940s as well as a 1971 survey containing information about attitudes to Germans, I show that respondents living in areas with a previously higher concentration of German refugees in the 1940s held more negative attitudes towards Germans in 1971. This effect of local German refugee exposure on attitudes towards Germans is only negative for older Danes which would have been more likely to personally being exposed to the German refugees and having experienced the German occupation of Denmark.