A Hopeful Month
Danish Heroism
October 2001
1 | 2 | 3 | NEXT
The next October stamp skips ahead to the 20th century and to the Jews in another country. October 1993 marked the 60th anniversary of the rescue of almost all of the Danish Jews from the Nazis in October 1943. The anniversary of the rescue was commemorated by Israel with the issuance of a stamp (#529).
On September 11, 1943, the man in charge of the German occupation in Denmark told his head of shipping operations, Georg Ferdinand Duckwitz, of his plans to round up all of the approximately 8,000 Jews in Denmark and transport them to the Theresienstadt concentration camp. Duckwitz
immediately protested, telling him he would be ashamed to participate. A week later Duckwitz was given more details: Ships would arrive on September 29 and a coordinated lightening raid would occur on the night of October 1.
On September 25, Duckwitz flew to Sweden and met with the Swedish prime minister to ask him to help save Danish Jewry. The prime minister sent a telegram to Berlin offering to accept all of the Danish Jews if Germany would agree to let them go. Duckwitz returned to Denmark and waited for news. When none came, he assumed the Germans had ignored the Swedish request.
On September 28th he looked up his friend, Hans Hedtoft (who became Prime Minister after the war) and told him of the plan. Hedtoft and three of his friends set out to warn as many as possible. One of the first he spoke to was the head of the Jewish community in Copenhagen, who in disbelief first accused him of lying (German officials had convincingly denied earlier rumors of the raid).
When Copenhagen Jews came to prayers on Wednesday morning September 29, they were told there would be no services that morning nor on Rosh Hashana, which was to begin that evening. Instead they were to spread the word of the raid and go into hiding. When the Germans carried out their raids on the night of October 1, they found less than 300 of the 8,000 Jews. Eventually they rounded up only 475 Jews who were sent to Theresienstadt. The others had gone into hiding.
Within the month of October, fishermen had been recruited to transport them to Sweden (which had broadcast their willingness to provide them sanctuary after Niels Bohr had convinced them to act publicly); money had been raised to pay fishermen for the risks they took; Jews were moved from their hiding places to new hiding places near the ports and beaches used to transport them;
Danish police were recruited to keep others, including the Germans, away; and the Jews were ferried to Sweden.
One tally was that 5,919 Jews, 1,301 half-Jews, and 686 Christians married to Jews (a total of 7,906) were successfully transported to safety. A tally of Jewish Holocaust victims in Denmark said only 30 had died while en route to Sweden, another 30 committed suicide, and only 51 of the 475 sent to Theresienstadt did not survive. (The Danes maintained constant contact with German officials about the fate of the Jews shipped to Theresienstadt.) The toll among the Danish Jewish population was slightly more than 1 percent -- a remarkable record.
Virtually an entire nation had worked to save its Jewish citizens!
Hadassah Heroism
1 | 2 | 3 | NEXT
© 2001, J-Stamps/Murray Frost. All Rights Reserved.
froststamps@yahoo.com
