Personal Stories
We are happy to feature personal stories on our website around the history of the rescue of Jews in World War II in Bulgaria, Denmark, Finland, Norway, and Sweden, and would welcome submissions. Please inquire at the following address: Contact us
Denmark
Once Upon a Time: The Legend
Fictionalized telling of the Danish Rescue, told by Victor Borge.
Annette Atsmon on How We Escaped Hitler:
The story of how we escaped Hitler, of the unique attitude of the Danish people, how my father and mother helped each other, and how for us everything turned out for the better.
Marion Novack on Searching for My Past
My parents, Hans and Hildegard Wallach were German citizens who fled Berlin in 1938. They went to Denmark as agricultural trainees to learn farming so they would acquire the necessary skills to emigrate to Palestine. They, and others of their Hechaluz group, were taken by the Nazis from the farms in Assens in the early morning raid of October 2, 1943. My mother described their capture in a letter she wrote to me in 1978: “We were picked up at 5 o’clock in the morning in big buses. We had been warned the night before by the Hechaluz that there was a possibility that the Nazis would find us out in the country where all of our group were working for those lovely farmers. I was seven months pregnant. . . .
Anne Sheppes and Escape as told to the late William Donat
The Jews of Copenhagen were warned by the Chief Rabbi of Copenhagen. The next day was the first day of Rosh Hashanah, but Rabbi Melchior told them and that there would be no services and that they must go into hiding immediately. “But we did not live in Copenhagen then, we lived in the country, about 50 miles away.”
“My father’s close friend, the Consulate General from Chile, came to warn us,” she told me. The Consul came back after Rosh Hashanah and when he found us still there, he became very upset. “You must leave,” he insisted, “there are no more Jews in Denmark, they have all either gone under ground, or have already left for Sweden.”
Esther Winkler on Fond Memories of a Nightmare.
I lived in occupied Europe during the Holocaust. However, my story is not about human depravity at its best. I was among the fortunate ones rescued by faring fellow countrymen who did not allow religious differences to stand in the way of humanitarianism; who did not allow a heavily armed war machine to intimidate them into standing idly by while the lives of other humans hung in the balance. Such isolated instances of noble heroism took place throughout Europe, even in Germany itself. These courageous people deserve as important a place in Holocaust remembrance as the unspeakable barbarism they dared to defy at the risk of their own lives.
The escape to Sweden – From my Grandmothers memoirs.
Excerpts from the history of Ruth Naomi Vivian Marling Margolis Balle Hansen
My Grandmother – her long name was actually Ruth Naomi Vivian Marling Margolis Balle Hansen – managed to write her memoirs in her early 80ties just before she passed away in 2002, being 83 years old. I have tried to translate the short segment where she describes her escape to Sweden in October 1943. She came from a Jewish family in Copenhagen, but lived away from her parents in the town of Aalborg in northern Jutland, Denmark. There she raised her 2 children, my mother Vivian and my uncle Tommy.
Finland
Ambassador Jakobson at the Embassy of Finland
Speech by Ambassador Jakobson at the Embassy of Finland 4/8/02, in an event co-sponsored with Thanks To Scandinavia
“I have been asked at least one hundred times about the situation of the Jews in Finland during World War II. I have been asked by what means were the Jews of Finland saved, who saved them, how was it possible that I as a Jew fought with the Germans. To answer these kinds of questions, we must examine the situation of Finland before, during and after World War II and it is only in that context that we can understand what happened or what did not happen.”
Norway
Holocaust in Telemark — the Controversial Story of One Family
Written by Trym Staal Eggen
This story, written by Trym Staal Eggen, tells the story of his father’s heroic efforts to rescue Jews during the Holocaust. Trym’s story is based on his father’s manuscript, which he found in 2007, almost ten years after his father’s death. The manuscript was published as a book in Norway in 2008, and recently, Israel’s Holocaust center Yad Vashem has decided to publish the book.
Hiding from the Germans
Sigurd Becker’s story
TTS is grateful for Sigurd Becker’s willingness to share his remarkable story below.
It was an overwhelming reunion with the past. Sigurd Becker, age 87, returned nearly 70 years later to the attic of a house in downtown Skien where he had hid from the Germans for several weeks during WWII. Sigurd was clearly moved when, for the first time since the War, he was able to once again see the attic where he had hid from the Germans. He was accompanied by Trym Staal Eggen, one of the sons of resistance fighter Kjell Staal Eggen who had rescued his family.
Walking the borderline in time and place
The story of a Norwegian Jewish survivor
The border clearing in the forest that runs between Norway and Sweden is wide and open. The land border pillar number 35 is painted yellow. Two small flags, the Norwegian and the Swedish, are sway ever so slightly in the autumn air. Seated all around are people dressed in hiking gear with their lunch packs and thermoses. Blueberries cover the ground in the surrounding forest. The blue colour remains visible on the mouths of the children and many adults.
Feature
A Melancholy Beauty: Interview with Founders Kalin and Sharon Tchonev
Liv Grimsby, Thanks To Scandinavia A Melancholy Beauty, a Songs of Life Production, had its World Premiere tour last year with performances in Washington DC, Boston and New York City. A Melancholy Beauty is a commissioned oratorio which depicts the rescue of 49,000 Bulgarian Jews from Hitler’s death camps, in 1943. It was founded by [...]
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