Page 17 - TORCH Magazine #14 - July 2019

Flowers outside the Great Synagogue
Attempt to annihilate the Jews of Denmark
The German army invaded Denmark in April 1940 with very little resistance. Despite an initial negotiation with the Nazis to maintain neutrality and preserve the county’s sovereign rule, by 1943 tensions had intensified.
Danes began to sabotage the war effort and the resistance movement increased its effort to fight back. As a result, the Nazis ordered the Danish government to introduce a curfew, ban public assembling and punish saboteurs with death. The Danish government refused, which led to the Nazis dissolving the government and establishing martial law.
This was a turning point for Jews in Denmark, who had received the protection of the Danish government up to this point. For example, it is understood that King Christian X had threatened to wear a Star of David if it was forced upon Danish Jews. The government had also refused to implement the discriminatory policies being rolled out in other occupied countries.
Three million Jews had already been murdered by this point across occupied Europe, but in September 1943, Hitler gave orders from Berlin to rid Denmark of all its Jews.
The Nazis chose Rosh Hashanah, the Jewish New Year holiday, to undertake their wicked plan of rounding up Jews for deportation, having gained the names and addresses of every Jew in Denmark.
However, a man named Georg Ferdinand Duckwitz was at the time a member of German intelligence at the embassy in Copenhagen. Crucially Duckwitz deliberately leaked
the important information to the Jewish community and the resistance movement.
It was at the Great Synagogue in Copenhagen, on 29 September 1943, that Rabbi Marcus Melchior interrupted the Shabbat meeting urging those present to hide or flee having received word of the plot intended for 1 and 2 October.
“We have no time now to continue prayers,” he said, “We have news that this coming Friday night, the night between the first and second of October, the Gestapo will come and arrest all Danish Jews.”
“They have a list of addresses and they will come to the home of every Jew and take us all to two big ships waiting in Copenhagen harbour, and on to camps on the continent.”
Daring mission to save Denmark’s Jews
What happened next is one of the most remarkable stories of resistance in World War Two.
As word spread, Danes from all walks of life took action believing the targeting of Jews, whom many saw as part of Danish life itself, to be morally wrong and against Danish Christian values.
Danish government records state that 30-40,000 non-Jewish Danes spontaneously moved into action by passing on warnings, organising hiding places, food and transportation to the coast.
King Christian X expressed his firm objection to the German plans; heads of the Danish churches published strong protest and used their pulpits to urge the Danish people
to help the Jews; and universities closed down for a week, with students lending a hand in the rescue operation.
The German authorities had never expected such a massive reaction .
Historian Leni Yahil wrote, “Here was something Eichmann and his men weren’t accustomed to: the Jews had slipped from their very grasp and disappeared, so to speak, behind a living wall raised by the Danish people in the
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