Thanks To Scandinavia on the 60th Anniversary of the Rescue of Danish Jews and the History We Celebrate
Sixty years ago this month, a miracle happened in Denmark.
Nearly every Jew in the country was saved from the Nazis in a matter of days thanks to the courage and compassion of friends and strangers. In one of the darkest periods in Jewish history, the men and women of Denmark refused to ignore what had been happening across Europe for years and was about to plague their own land.
On September 29, 1943, word leaked that after three years of occupation, the Germans would no longer tolerate the Jews of Denmark. The Gestapo planned to descend on Jewish homes as families gathered to celebrate Rosh Hashanah, the Jewish New Year, and to deport them to concentration camps. But it was not to be. In the following days, news spread from synagogue to home, from non-Jew to Jew, and the Danes scurried to help hide the hunted. The Jewish community found refuge in shacks, homes, hotels and hospitals as they awaited transport to Sweden under cover of night.
Under any circumstance, it was a remarkable feat. But looked at through the prism of World War II Europe, it was among the most extraordinary acts of the 20th Century. Even more amazing, to this day many Danish people refuse to accept praise for their actions. They say they did nothing out of the ordinary – they were simply doing what was right.
But as history has unfortunately shown time and again, their acts of kindness and courage were anything but ordinary. While millions of others turned their backs on the Jewish people, the Danish people risked their lives to keep more than 7,000 Jews fellow citizens and war refugees – from their deaths.
They were not alone in their humanity. Sweden , a neutral country that had previously closed its borders to Jews, opened its shores and allowed thousands to seek refuge. Finland , which sided with Germany during the war, refused to deliver its Jews to the Nazis. Bulgaria also saved tens of thousands of Jews from deportation. The list goes on; it will never be possible to thank each person who defied popular sentiment to do what was right.
These acts of heroism provide no hero no single leader who spurred people to action, no individual who orchestrated the rescue. What distinguished Danish behavior may never be revealed, but the lesson in the positive power of individuals is nonetheless invaluable in today’s world where one person’s decision to embrace terror can crush the hopes of entire nations.
Sixty years ago, the people of Denmark said no to the elimination of the Jewish people when most looked away. Individual decisions morphed into a national movement that changed the destiny of an entire community. It is a timeless example of how individuals can change the course of history.
This article has been written by the American Jewish Committee. Thanks To Scandinavia is an institute of the American Jewish Committee.
Thanks To Scandinavia Celebrates its 40th Anniversary with Public Programs and Publications
Sept 2003…Thanks To Scandinavia announces a series of programs and publications marking its 40th anniversary and the 60th anniversary of the rescue of Scandinavian Jews, which the organization commemorates.
Founded in 1963 by Danish entertainer Victor Borge and New York attorney Richard Netter, Thanks To Scandinavia has given over 3,000 scholarships to Scandinavian students and teachers for study in the United States and Israel. Its mission is to build on the friendship between Scandinavians and Jews worldwide, based on the unique history of Nordic countries (Denmark, Finland, Norway, and Sweden) in rescuing thousands of Jews in their countries during World War II.
Thanks To Scandinavia has played an historic role in publicizing the stories of courage and heroism in Scandinavia during the war. It has published the only existing books in English about rescue in Finland, Norway, and Sweden, and republished two important volumes on rescue in Denmark.
In 2001, Thanks To Scandinavia became an institute of the American Jewish Committee. In 2002, the organization created a Scholarship for Bulgaria to commemorate the rescue in that country.
In 2003, TTS founder and president, Richard Netter, an inspired philanthropist throughout his life, celebrates his 85th anniversary.
Event
12:00pm — Columbia University, International Affairs Building, 420 West 118th St., 12th Floor, Room 1219, New York.
Holocaust Studies Series
6:15 pm – Holocaust Studies Series, CUNY Graduate Center , Martin E. Segal Theatre, The Graduate Center, Fifth Avenue and 34th Street , New York. RSVP at (212) 817-8215.
Event
6:00 pm – The New School, Wolff Conference Room #229, 65 Fifth Avenue (between 13th and 14th Streets), New York.
“October” Exhibit Opening
6:30 pm – Scandinavia House, 58 Park Avenue (between 37th and 38th Streets), New York (to mark the opening of the exhibit “October”).
Why Denmark Stood Up for its Jews
TTS is bringing University of Southern Denmark Professor Therkel Straede to New York to lecture at two prestigious academic institutions on “World War II and the Danish Rescue: Why Denmark Stood Up for Its Jews.” The lectures are free and open to the public.
Thanks To Scandinavia board member William H. Donat, a Survivor of the Warsaw Ghetto, Writes About the Contrast in Experience
During the month of October we commemorate the sixtieth anniversary of a very special event in the annals of the Holocaust, the heroic rescue from deportation to the death camps of Europe of nearly the entire Jewish population of Denmark by their caring Christian neighbors.
By William H. Donat
I am a child survivor of the Warsaw Ghetto. I was smuggled out of the Ghetto in 1943 at the age of five. My parents had found a Christian couple willing to hide a Jewish child. I had already been in the Ghetto’s railhead, Umschlagplatz, but had been saved at the last moment from having to board a train bound for the death camp Treblinka.
I owe my life to some truly good Polish Christians; to the couple who had agreed to hide a Jewish child among the anti-Semitic population on the Aryan side of the Ghetto wall; to their Underground friends who hid me after I had been betrayed by one of our neighbors; and finally, to the nuns who ran the orphanage that took me in and cared of me till the end of the war. Yes, as individuals they reacted in a brave and moral way, and I shall forever remember their deeds of kindness. But unfortunately, they were the exception in wartime Poland. The vast majority of the Polish population, at best, turned away from the torment of their Jewish compatriots. For every child saved from the Ghetto, I calculate that 150,000 children were shipped off to Treblinka and the gas chambers. Fully half of the six million Jews murdered by the Nazis during the Holocaust came from Poland. It is from this perspective that I have always viewed the story of how the Danish people protected their Jewish countrymen, as being so remarkable.
Nazi Germany invaded Denmark on April 9, 1940 without so much as an official declaration of war. Despite German attempts to vilify the Jewish minority through their evil propaganda, a technique that had work well for the Nazis since the earl 1930’s, the Danes maintained that no “Jewish problem” existed in their country. By 1943 pressure was being applied to the Danish government by their German conquerors to pass anti-Jewish legislation, similar to that which had been initiated in all the other countries occupied by the Germans, despite the urgings of the German government’s own representative in Copenhagen , that the move was premature. He reported, “any anti-Jewish legislation copied on the German pattern would encounter the strongest opposition from the entire population, Parliament, the Government and the King.” He warned that the Danish prime minister had informed him that, “in the event such a move is made, he will resign, as will all members of the Cabinet.”
When pressured to proceed with anti-Jewish measures, such as the wearing of the “Jewish badge,” so frequently seen in other conquered parts of Europe, it is purported by some that King Christian X of Denmark said he would wear one too. Members of the Danish clergy protested the humiliating anti-Jewish repressions by issuing pastoral letters to their congregations. The Danish police, unlike their counterparts in other occupied countries in Europe, consistently refused to cooperate with the German authorities in the arrest of Danish Jews for deportation.
Finally, in the fall of 1943, the entire Danish government resigned over a demand by the Germans that some Danish Underground members be condemned to death. Now, with the Germans in full control without the Danish government to interpose itself on their behalf, the Jewish population suddenly became extremely vulnerable. The Germans began preparations to carry out Hitler’s wishes: the deportation of the entire Jewish population of Denmark to death camps.
The Jewish New Year fell on October 1st in 1943. The Germans typically chose this day to start their campaign of arrests and deportation. Their traps were prepared with characteristic efficiency. Fortunately, Count von Moltke, a German member of the anti-Nazi opposition who was privy to such information, alerted the Danes to the shocking news. The news was confirmed by a German shipping expert, Captain von Duckwitz, who had been ordered to prepare four cargo ships to transport all the Danish Jews in one mass deportation to the camps in Poland and Germany.
Copenhagen, the Chief Rabbi of Denmark, Dr. Marcus Melchior met with members of his congregation the night before the New Year and cancelled the next day’s ceremonies. He warned them to be ready to leave the city at a moment’s notice. Members of the Danish Underground mobilized to alert the Jews of Copenhagen and other communities of the impending danger. People throughout Denmark were stopped in the street and asked if they had Jewish friends, or if they themselves were Jewish, in order to prepare them to go into hiding. Danish families offered temporary shelter to their Jewish countrymen until a rescue effort could be organized.
With Denmark ’s major ports full of German soldiers and Gestapo agents, and the seas blocked by German warships, a new strategy was devised: the Jews would be transported to Sweden , which had agreed to receive the entire population, from small fishing ports along the coast. Ironically, the entire Jewish population of Denmark was to be saved by sea, the very same way the Germans had planned to transport them to their death. The arduous rescue operation was begun, and immediately the unassuming Danes commenced their effort to save lives. The rescuers included policemen, fishermen, storekeepers and farmers, church and social organizations; people from all walks of life steadfastly participated. Pastor Gildeby from the Jutland region of Denmark , who had never even seen a Jew before in his life, offered Chief Rabbi Melchior the safety of his home until he and his family could be transported to Sweden by fishing boat. The rabbi gratefully accepted, and a guard was formed by the townspeople to protect their special visitors.
Boats of all shapes and sizes delivered 7200 Danish Jews and some 700 of their non-Jewish relatives to Sweden . Rescue groups from all over Denmark escorted the Jewish Danes to small fishing villages or other points of departure by the sea, where they were hidden until they could be smuggled across to Sweden. Within three weeks, almost all the Jews of Denmark had been ferried to Sweden. Unfortunately, the Germans had managed to round up some 500 Jews, but because of the strong outcry of the Danish people, they were sent to Theresienstadt in Czechoslovakia , and never transported to the death camp Auschwitz-Birkenau . These 500 Danes were sent food packages and had their health and well-being constantly monitored by the Danish government. The vast majority survived the war.
While the rescue of the Jewish people was being conducted, the higher Protestant clergy of Copenhagen arranged to save their religious heritage, as well. The Underground was authorized to break into the Great Synagogue and to remove the Torahs, prayer books and other devotional objects and safely hide them until the end of the war. The cooperation of Danish banks went far in subsidizing the rescue efforts. Whenever funds were needed to implement a portion of the rescue for fuel or for food, anonymous donors made funds available and members of the Underground could easily withdraw the funds from any Danish bank, no questions asked.
But one of the most striking aspects of the Danish experience came to light only after the war, when the Jewish refugees returned home from Sweden and Theresienstadt. They found that their neighbors had kept up their homes, and in some cases had even continued to pay the rent, so that their homes would be ready for them to restart their lives.
Whether it was motivated by their strong, individualistic Nordic character; or the truly Christian, ecumenical convictions of the Danish clergy; or the fundamental grass-roots democratic tradition of the people that had extended full citizenship to Jews as early 1814, the result was that the Danes proved themselves true to all that was deemed generous and brave in our culture. The overwhelming response of the entire Danish population to save its Jewish minority from the Nazi terror, must be recognized and lauded for all time.
Feature
RSVP NOW! TTS Dinner Benefit on Feb 28
Thanks To Scandinavia is very excited to announce that on Tuesday, February 28th we will be hosting our very first dinner benefit at Swedish star chef Marcus Samuelsson’s hot new restaurant, Red Rooster. Rather than waiting for months to get a seat at this sold out restaurant, why not join us for an evening of [...]
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