1994-01-28-Danish rescuers |
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By
Donald H. Harrison A few weeks before that announcement, the Germans had dissolved
the Danish government. Next, they planned to round up Jews as they had in other
countries, the senior Rabbi Melchior told the congregants. Melchior said his father concluded "that the real proof came in the happy summer of 1945 when we returned home and were received by the royal house, by the government authorities and by neighbors and by competitors, and by people who had taken over our flats and positions, and who all said, 'Wonderful, please, come in to us.' I think my father was right. That was the real proof." But why should Danes feel that way about Jews, when Germans who lived in the immediately neighboring country to the south accepted the virulently anti-Semitic doctrines of the Nazis. "Danes are relatively tolerant, but they also have their
folk character," Melchior said. The Danish folk character was only one element in the dramatic events of October, 1943, when Danish citizens rose en masse to hide Jews throughout the country until they could be smuggled in fishing boats to neighboring Sweden, a neutral country. One could ask whether the Jews of Denmark somehow were different from the Jews of other countries in the manner in which they related to their non-Jewish neighbors. On that question, as with most questions relating to the Holocaust, there are different points of view. Otto Hertz, who was in his late twenties when the rescue occurred, thinks that perhaps Danes were less jealous of Jewish accomplishments than were the nationals in other countries." "We are more or less on the same level here," he told Heritage. "We are all much the same. When people talk about a rich man here, they do not talk about a Jew. They talk about the big ship owners." Esben Kjeldbaeck, a Christian who serves as director of the Danish Resistance Museum, said that, during World War II, the Jews were not seen by other Danes as "a very separate community—except of course those who had come very recently to Denmark. "The bulk of the Jews had been living in Denmark for generations, and many of them were not Jewish in the sense of practicing their religion and so on." Those who had come recently either had fled the Nazis of Germany during the 1930s or had fled the pogroms of Russia earlier in the century. Both groups generally were more religiously observant than the Danish Jews whose families had been in Denmark for several hundred years and who, by and large, traced their roots tothe 15th Century expulsion of Jews from Spain and Portugal. In point of fact, Melchior said, the concern shown by Danish
Christians for the welfare of the newly arrived Jewish immigrants confirms the
thesis that "while there were some anti-Semites in Denmark, there was no
anti-Semitism." This contrast with the experience in Bulgaria, another country which also gets some credit for saving Jews, Melchior said. "The difference between them and us was that they safeguarded only the Jews who were holders of Bulgarian passports—Bulgarian citizens—and delivered the others to the Nazis." "We helped the refugees, who were here. Nobody asked, 'Are you Danish or not?' This is important to know," Melchior said. A similar distinction was drawn by Ebba Lund, the Danish rescuer of between 500 and 800 Jews, who gained celebrity as "the girl in the red cap" for her bravery during the rescue 50 years ago. She said she was horrified to learn many years later that Bulgaria had differentiated between Jews who were citizens and Jews who were not. Notwithstanding that flash of Danish national pride, Ms. Lund told Heritage she does not regard the Danes as special, and thinks that circumstance, more than national character, contributed to the popular action to prevent the Nazis from capturing approximately 8,000 Jews who lived in Denmark during the Nazi occupation. "We had the seacoast with something like 200 harbors," she said. "We had Sweden nearby." In a separate interview, Melchior expressed similar thoughts
about Denmark's unique geography and topography. "Then you needed some Germans, outstanding Germans, who helped us in this situation. If you should mention one name, it was Mr. (Georg F.) Duckwitz (a naval attache in the German embassy in Denmark). "He gave the message. Without his action, all these rescue operations could never have taken place. Melchior said taht Duckwitz learned in the first half of September that the roundup of the Jews was planned for Rosh Hashanah, which was to fall on Oct. 1 of that year. "He went to Berlin in order to persuade them to stop it, but they had no interest in seeing this man," Melchior said. "He went to Sweden, talked to the Swedish prime
minister...told him the plan.. and planted the idea in the Swedish government
that they should invite through a diplomatic note to Berlin all the Danish Jews
to come to settle down as invited guests of Sweden, (an idea) which the Swedish
government adopted and sent such a note to Berlin," Melchior said.
"But there or four days later, there was no answer; there never came an
answer. "So without him and some other good Germans—the righteous
people among the nations—and without Sweden, and Sweden's status as a neutral
and geographically close country, this could not have been done," Melchior
said. "The persecutions (of the Jews in Denmark) did not begin in 1940 or 1941, but in late 1943, at a time when there was the worst feeling, a great animosity, on the part of the Danish people toward the Germans," he said. "There also was the feeling that the Germans would not win the war," the director said, pointing out that the attempted roundup came after the tide of the war had been turned by the Russian victory over the Germans in the Battle of Stalingrad. Stalingrad not only stiffened the resolve of the Danes; it also emboldened the hearts of neutral Sweden to risk offending the Germans, Ebba Lund, the heroine of the Resistance, told Heritage. Through most of the war, the Germans exercised benign control over the Danes, whom they considered "fellow Aryans." They were so tolerant of the Danes that they even permitted them to exercise self-government, a policy that enabled Denmark to resist German suggestions that the "Jewish problem" be solved. The prime minister of Denmark, Erik Savenius, at one point told the Nazis: "There is no Jewish problem in Denmark." The real proble for Danes was the Germans, and the population was divided on how to solve it. The government counseled legalistic cooperation. The Resistance movement called for sabotage. Over time, and especially after the Battle of Stalingrad in February of 1942, the Resistance movement gained more advocates and committed more sabotage. The Germans began to pressure the Danish government to take action against the Resistance. It wanted Denmark to institute capital punishment, which the government refused to do. When the Germans dissolved the Danish government in 1943, Danish citizens were outraged. When word about the planned action against the Jews leaked out, the government and the Resistance spontaneously made common cause. In trying to answer the question, "Why the Danes?" spontaneous anger against the Germans also has to be considered," Ms. Lund told Heritage. There were other factors, none necessarily more important than
the other: 1) timing, 2) geography, 3) opportunity, 4) presence of "good
Germans," and 5) the Danish folk character. |