Rescue of the Danish Jews

The Rescue of the Danish Jews was a collective effort on the part of many Danes to rescue the Jewish population in Denmark from deportation by German authorities in October 1943. About 7,200 - 7,500 Jews were transported to Sweden over the first two weeks of October, representing a large portion of the total population of about 8,000 Jews in Denmark at the time. It is considered to be one of the largest known action of collective altruism ever recorded, as ordinary Danish citizens hid and transported their Jewish friends and neighbours to safety when word of their coming arrest by the Nazi occupational forces was spread. As a result, the vast majority of Danish Jews eluded capture and persecution by the Nazis. Many of them were taken to Sweden by boat, while others, especially children, were given false names and hidden in schools, churches, and orphanages full of Danish children.

During the early years of the occupation of Denmark the German authorities had been afraid to deport the Jewish population or implement the full level of anti-Jewish laws seen elsewhere in Europe, because they feared angering the local population and upsetting the special relationship that existed between the government of Germany and Denmark. On several occasions, officials in Berlin asked the top Nazi officials in Denmark to begin rounding up or restricting Jews, but even ideologically committed Nazis such as Werner Best refused, citing the potential for disturbance in the country.

However, after August of 1943, with the dissolution of the Danish government, and the growth of the Danish resistance movement these fears ceased to be as relevant. German authorities began planning in late September 1943 for an evacuation of Danish Jews. On 28 September, Georg Duckwitz, a German diplomat, leaked the plans for an operation against the Jews to Hans Hedtoft, a member of the Danish Socialist Party in the Danish government who then warned the Jewish community. At the Rosh Hashanah service on 29 September, Danish Jews were advised to go into hiding.

The improvisational nature of the early phases of the rescue was particularly notable. When Danish bureaucrats at several levels in different ministries learnt of the German plan to round up all of the Jews they started, independently, to take various measures to find the Jews and hide them. Some simply phoned friends and asked them to go through phone books and call up everybody with a Jewish-sounding name to tell them to leave their homes in the night and hide.

The Jews were smuggled across the sea to Sweden in boats of local fishermen. Some fishermen had built hidden spaces in their boats to conceal people. Nazi soldiers began to suspect and catch the Jews, and also used police dogs trained to find hidden people. To counter this, chemists in Sweden concocted a mixture of dried rabbit's blood and cocaine, placing it on a handkerchief. These were distributed to the fishermen. When a dog detected the presence of the rabbit's blood, he would sniff the handkerchief. The cocaine would disable its sense of smell temporarily.

Most Jews hid for some days or weeks and were then smuggled to Sweden, which offered asylum to Danish Jews. Of the 450 or so Jews who were captured by the Nazis, most were sent to Theresienstadt in Czechoslovakia. 51 died by the end of the war.

Explanations

Different explanations have been advanced to explain the success of efforts to protect the Danish Jewish population in light of failures elsewhere in Europe.

• One explanation is purely logistical. Denmark had a relatively and absolutely small population of Jews and easy access to a friendly neutral country. Sweden was, a relatively short--although hazardous--boat ride away from Copenhagen, where most of the Jewish population was centred.

• Another explanation focuses on the particular traits of Danish nationalism. Since the mid-nineteenth century, a nationalism emphasizing the importance of "smallness", local communities, and traditions had evolved in Denmark, largely as a response to its failure to assert itself as a great power and the loss of the Second War of Schleswig. Some historians, such as Andrew Buckser, believe that this "Grundtvigian" nationalism helped the Danish population identify with the plight of the Jews, even if it did not completely trust them (anti-Semitism had been a problem in Denmark).

References

• Lampe, D. The Danish Resistance. Ballantine Books, New York, 1957.
• Buckser, Andrew. “Rescue and Cultural Context During the Holocaust: Grundtvigian Nationalism and the Rescue of the Danish Jews.” Shofar 19(2) 2001.
• Pundik, Herbert. In Denmark It Could Not Happen: The Flight of The Jews to Sweden in 1943. Hewlett, N.Y.: Gefen, 1998.
• Stræde, Therkel. H. Rovsing Olsen. October 1943 : the rescue of the Danish Jews from annihilation Copenhagen : Royal Danish Ministry of Foreign Affairs : Museum of Danish Resistance 1940-1945. 1993.
• Werner, Emmy E. Conspiracy of decency : the Rescue of the Danish Jews during World War II. Boulder, Colo. : Westview Press, 2002.
• Yahil, Leni. Translated from the Hebrew by Morris Gradel. Rescue of Danish Jewry; test of a democracy. Philadelphia, Jewish Publication Society of America, 1969.de:Rettung_der_dänischen_Juden

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