Why a secret Danish boat lift 80 years ago still matters today
Danish Jews being transported by boat to Sweden to escape Nazi deportation, October 1943. Courtesy of Nationalmuseet – National Museum of Denmark
The people of occupied Denmark successfully resisted Nazi plans to deport Jewish Danes to concentration camps 80 years ago this October.
This extraordinary event brought together Danes of all backgrounds to resist German terror. Those who worry about today’s corrosive politics can look to these events to find encouragement that citizens and leaders in a democracy can act on principle and with selfless courage.
Escape
The Nazis scheduled the deportation of Danish Jews for the two days of Rosh Hashanah on Oct. 1 and 2, 1943. These dates were chosen because virtually all Jews were expected to be home in the evenings and could be easily arrested.
Two days before the planned arrests, Georg Duckwitz, the German maritime attaché to Denmark and a member of the Nazi party, took the extraordinary step of privately warning Hans Hedtoft, a Danish political party leader, and Vilhelm Buhl, the recently retired Danish Prime Minister, that a round-up of the Jewish population was scheduled to begin imminently.
In turn, these top Danish politicians immediately warned the Chief Rabbi of Denmark, Marcus Melchior, and a prominent Jewish community leader, C.B. Henriques, that all Jewish Danes needed to leave their homes with haste and go into hiding to avoid apprehension. Joining this effort, the ambassador from neighboring neutral Sweden advised Henriques that “Sweden is open” to Jews fleeing Denmark.
A remarkably broad and effective word-of-mouth effort to disseminate this information throughout Denmark followed. Virtually the entire Jewish community, concentrated in Copenhagen, received warnings within a day.
Danish Jews left their homes to find shelter in the residences of non-Jewish friends, and in hotels, churches, hospitals and universities. Danish politicians, physicians, students, police, farmers, civil servants, military personnel and others acted to hide and otherwise assist Jewish citizens.
The Danes’ collective action went beyond the provision of immediate refuge, and included arranging for Jews to reach Denmark’s east coast and cross the narrow Oresund Strait to Sweden. Jorgen Kieler, a prominent member of the Danish resistance, left his medical school classes in Copenhagen to, among other things, assist the movement of the Jewish population to coastal locations and to Sweden.
Danish fishermen and others surreptitiously used small boats to cross the water to Sweden, departing from remote areas of the craggy Danish coast. The fishermen did charge fees, but no one was refused passage. Five to seven hundred crossings were likely required to facilitate this process. The Swedes created a number of coastal welcoming centers to provide immediate assistance to the newly arrived immigrants.
Resistance
In addition to secretly helping their Jewish neighbors, some Danes had the courage to speak out. The bishop of the diocese of Copenhagen, H. Fuglsang-Damgaard, the senior bishop in the state-supported Evangelical-Lutheran Church of Denmark, wrote to Nazi authorities that the church would fight to assist the Jewish population and “preserve the same freedom which we ourselves evaluate more highly than life itself.” This pastoral letter was read in other Danish Lutheran churches.
The faculty and students of the University of Copenhagen also suspended classes for a week in protest of the Nazi plan to deport Danish Jews. Additionally, King Christian X of Denmark expressed approval of and support for the rescue effort.
Between Oct. 1 and Oct. 16, 1943, the Danes managed to spirit virtually the entire Jewish population to the west coast of Sweden in small vessels. At the end of this period, the Swedish navy and police estimated that about 7,000 Danish Jews and relatives had been safely transferred. Additional people were likely rescued after mid-October.
The Danes’ good works did not end with the rescue of most of the Jewish population in 1943. About 500 mostly elderly Jewish Danes had not been able to flee with the others. They were apprehended by a Gestapo force led by Adolf Eichmann during the October 1943 round-up and deported to Theresienstadt concentration camp in then-Czechoslovakia. Danish leaders, incredibly, were able to negotiate freedom for these Jews in 1945, before the end of the war.
In the end, the Danes succeeded in saving 98 to 99% of the Jewish population.
Danish motivations
It is impossible to know how many Danes participated in the rescue effort, but a significant percentage of Denmark’s small population of 4 million people was required to obtain this result. Strangers helped strangers.
How were the Danes prepared to take the risk of acting to challenge German control and possible terror? There were a few immediate factors at work. By 1943, it was clear that the Germans were losing the war. The Danish resistance was also gaining greater control in occupied Denmark, and the Germans had been uncharacteristically flexible in occupying Denmark. The Danes were likely emboldened by all of these historical factors.
Given the severity of possible German reaction to Danish defiance, however, we must also look to Danish culture to understand the Danish actions fully. The Danes have long had a strong concern for the welfare of fellow citizens, Jewish or otherwise. Former prime minister Thorvald Stauning coined the term “samfundssind,” (“community-mindedness”) in the 1930s to describe the extreme unity and social cohesion required to confront the rising German threat.
The Danes’ commitment to samfundssind is today reflected in Denmark’s relatively flat income distribution and cradle-to-grave social welfare programs. During the recent COVID-19 pandemic, Danish Prime Minister Mette Frederiksen frequently made reference to the need for Danish samfundssind. An article in the Journal of Cytokine Growth Factor Review indicated that Denmark was significantly more effective than comparably sized countries like Switzerland in controlling COVID-19 because of “trust” in the community and a “high level of confidence in government.”
Historical efforts to protect and save the Jewish population were consistent with the Danes’ long-standing heightened sense of community responsibility.
An imperfect legacy
Some aspects of this moment in history are also unsettling for Danes. A small number of Danes actually collaborated with the Germans on the deportation effort. The Danes are also not proud that fees, sometimes significant, were levied for transporting Jews across the Oresund Strait.
But there is no doubt that in the face of adversity the spontaneous actions of a great many Danes saved close to 8,000 lives. Moreover, the Danes separately obtained the release of close to 500 of their Jewish citizens from German captivity. These events were virtually unprecedented in the history of the “final solution.”
There are important lessons Americans can take from the Danish rescue effort of 1943. Many of our leaders fear to speak out or act as their consciences dictate on political and legal issues for fear of losing their political power. In contrast, to assist their fellow citizens, the Danish leaders of 1943 ignored possible retribution from an occupying government known to rely on terror. Danish leadership openly expressed views that contradicted Nazi dogma.
In the United States, we see a society that has become so polarized that mutual understanding seems all but impossible. The Danes came together in common purpose under the most difficult circumstances to save the lives of fellow Jewish citizens and defend constitutional principle.
We would do well in America to emulate the Danish people’s sense of responsibility for the community and democratic institutions. We must insist on political leadership that is concerned about the health of our civic life. We must listen to our fellow citizens and find common purpose. We would do well to develop a sense of samfundssind in the United States.
To contact the author, email [email protected].
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