Page 18 - TORCH Magazine #14 - July 2019

space of one night.”
The rescue network helped thousands of
Jews escape Danish cities to hiding places in the countryside by any means possible, even in mock funeral corteges and ambulances with the cooperation of hospital staff. They were then transported to the coast where they crossed the Øresund at night-time in small fishing boats to nearby Sweden.
In some places, the Swedish coast was only 3-6 miles away, but it was still dangerous especially with the threat of German planes and patrol boats.
Despite the personal risk to non-Jewish Danes, including that of the Danish police who refused comply with Gestapo orders, 7,906 Jews were rescued.
“We’re in Sweden”
Hanne Kaufmann, a Jewish survivor, said, “We hadn’t even noticed it, we weren’t even afraid, when suddenly the news went from one person to the next: ‘We’ve passed the three- mile boundary! We’re in Sweden! Free! Saved!’”
again, we didn’t utter a word. We were in safety now, and the feeling was so overwhelming that we simply couldn’t speak. I felt an irrepressible desire to cry”
Those who were either caught during the escape or couldn’t leave, such as those at an Jewish old people’s home, were around 500 and were deported to the Theresienstadt concentration camp. However, Danes were again involved in disrupting the deportation and later rescued many. Only 51 did not survive the Holocaust.
Nazi leadership in Copenhagen informed Hitler that the Final Solution had been carried out and Denmark was clear of all Jews – not revealing that they were actually in Sweden.
Back home many non-Jews protected their Jewish neighbours’ property and homes until their return from Sweden. Many would return to their historic homeland, Israel.
Historian Glickman Lauder, says, “Although the Danish story is small in regard to numbers – affecting a tiny fraction of those persecuted by the Nazis – it is huge in scope,” she says.
“It is a story that tells of a population who proved it possible to make a difference, and who refused to see a minority as ‘the other’.
This was true at every level of Danish society, from the fishermen who rowed Jews to safety in Sweden under cover of darkness, to King Christian X, who visited Copenhagen’s Krystalgade synagogue in an act of solidarity, and who refused to be complicit with Nazi persecution of the Jews.”
“Despite our exhaustion our hearts took to beating again furiously, this time from sheer emotion and joy. The
boat wasn’t very big
at all. The sixteen
stowaways, aside from
the infants, had all
managed to get up
to the deck. There, I
saw my mother, my
sister and my brother.
All looked pale and
miserable. I probably
looked the same way.
Seeing each other
We were in safety now,
"
and the feeling was so over whelming that we simply couldn’t speak. I felt an irrepressible desire to cry."