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danish resistance during the holocaust

Not all made it. When Nazi Germany invaded Denmark on April 9, 1940, the Royal Danish Army put up scant resistance. The days that followed marked one of the most remarkable stories of resistance in World War Two. On the eve of Rosh Hashanah, Wednesday, September 29, 1943, Rabbi Marcus Melchior told his congregation that the Germans planned a mass roundup of Jews the next day, when the Nazis knew families would be gathered in their homes for the holiday. Jewish communal activities remained undisturbed despite the presence of German troops. endobj 1 0 obj b?�Dd~����g�Xҿ���=��C�}8?�N�Ok����������"��P6K����ͻ�H�P�|$��"?NE�E~�׾.�׬���]�_�z]o��~q�ze��֢��ݺYҫ��������>���h����g�g�����T��i��&���$���2��z�Wo�Z=�Y��ӿ����2��~��� }�ǔh�|p$�/�ę�69�mtD[��Y&�(�P/��l�S;��E�:q��x�I1����~.��Q�������Y�Sz�E����˼�i�{��EY=�V�����rK���������0����G���x�"28�J$��5����*�����rr���*فFW���(oV*��e�-�����|���< �W�u�4�EF~����Y�����W�y,w�d�����*�k#?�'�=�1�� �}R�~�W|K�&����xY����MC��T ��N����7{ Taxi drivers armed with phone books looked for addresses of Jewish-sounding surnames to drive entire families to safety. Danish Resistance during the Holocaust [Guest Publication] Hans Holmskov Schlüter -Copenhagen At the beginning of World War II, the Scandinavian countries of Denmark, Sweden and Norway declared their neutrality. .HstuG�ĺb͈�:�8��0:���i���n��u5����U���Y�չ'��..3�Ŋ`F2UJ�Gu���0���)���d�|1�BP�R�rN Every imaginable group protested German efforts to round up the Jews. Desperate, he traveled to neutral Sweden on September 22 and began the deal of his life. “The situation,” Rabbi Melchior said, “is very serious. How many others were even that?”, Source: Carrol Rittner, Stephen D. Smith & Irena Steinfeldt, The Holocaust and the Christian World, Yad Vashem 2000, pp. 3 0 obj Like Grundtvig before him, Koch found in the language of biblical morality the principles of civic virtue. Denmark was a country where the Holocaust failed. Best was also a member of the Schutzstaffel (SS) – the Nazi party’s paramilitary wing in charge of Germany’s racial policies. That country was Denmark. In the first years of German occupation no anti-Jewish legislation was enacted and the situation of the Danish Jews did not change much. He had even supported the “policy of negotiation,” but he was becoming more aware of the “high price” Denmark paid for its relative autonomy under German occupation: “we have said many a Yes and many a No which have not come from our hearts, and that our talk has taken on a fateful hypocrisy”. The Danes refused to treat their Jewish population differently. The attaché flew to Berlin but with predictable results failed to stop the planned deportations. On August 28, 1943, SS-Obergruppenfuhrer Dr. Werner Best, informed the Danish Government that it was declaring a “state of emergency.” Public gatherings of more than five persons were prohibited, as were strikes and financial support for strikers. What is the relationship between how we Danes act and our self-understanding as citizens? Between April 1940 and August 1943, Danish attitudes toward their German occupiers underwent significant transformation. In the beginning, whatever negative attitudes the Danes had about the Germans were expressed through passive resistance, or giving them the “cold shoulder,” rather than by open defiance, armed resistance, or sabotage. Through the Danish folk high schools, which he founded for young people, his ecumenical spirit caught on among “ordinary” people in Denmark. Still, democratic Denmark had been defeated and occupied by a foreign country. Hal Koch (1904-1963), a theologian and professor of church history at the University of Copenhagen, recognized that fascism and Nazism were dangers to democracy. The Danes helped for a variety of reasons - because they were paid to do a job; because they hated the Germans; because they wanted to outwit the Germans; because they were determined to prevent the Nazis’ genocidal policies from being implemented in Denmark. Due to Duckwitz, hardly any were in when the Gestapo went knocking. Many of the Danish resistance groups supported democratic parties. %PDF-1.5 Yad Vashem is closed on Saturdays and all Jewish Holidays. In 1864, after being defeated by the Prussians, Denmark was swept by a profound malaise. Duckwitz then warned the Danish resistance and high-ranking members of the Jewish community. Unlike so many in Nazi-occupied Europe, most Danes saw themselves as human beings linked to others through a shared humanity, not as individuals inhabiting a world divided into “us” and “them”. On September 11, 1943, Best asked Hitler for permission to begin rounding up Danish Jews. The king responded by resigning and declaring himself a POW in his own country. Whatever the reason, the civic and religious institutions played decisive roles in preparing the Danish population to respond. What is the connection between the actions of individuals and the common good? When Denmark abolished its absolute monarchy in 1849 and adopted its free Constitution, Jews received full political equality, with access to the university, to commercial opportunity, and to social status. We must take action immediately.”. �W���ںJ��'n�C_&�/O^��E�k��fm��İ�Pe{�)#�t ������(�)��L�����k��K��bv�Q����H�JK[8����Q��v�;[o�e}q�mFBe���f�aE������Tؐ`] � He secured a post with the foreign policy office, but as the regime’s brutality developed, Duckwitz’s became disillusioned. 2 0 obj 97-100. We are therefore redirecting you to what we hope will be a useful landing page. stream Then on April 9, 1940, Germany invaded Denmark. In September 1943, the Danes learned of Nazi plans to capture the country’s Jews and ship them to concentration camps. A few were caught by Nazi patrol boats and sent back to Denmark, while some fishermen paid a heavier price. In the Summer of 1943, sabotage activities, reprisals, strikes and street unrest across Denmark mounted to a high pitch. An 8:30 p.m. curfew was imposed. Entrance to the Holocaust History Museum is not permitted for children under the age of 10. The Danish Lutheran Church helped to rally the people and provided immeasurable amounts of assistance – from hiding people and Torah scrolls to gathering money, food, and other resources. ”People”, he said, “are bound to one another with ties more profound than any of the barriers of human history, including the history of religion, may have constructed”. On the night of October 6, 1943, for example, some 80 Jews hiding in the attic of the Gilleleje Church, located in a fishing village north of Copenhagen, were betrayed, arrested and deported. As word spread, non-Jewish Danes “spontaneously” began to do what they could to help. When they first arrived in 1622, Jews were allowed to live only in certain towns, but by 1814, they were granted full Danish citizenship. He helped people to find, embedded in their biblical roots, universally accepted ideas. He was also a co-founder of the Gestapo – the secret state police. Grundtvig was a man of deep biblical faith with a high level of tolerance and respect for other cultures and religious traditions of the world. Germany wanted to use Denmark as a “model protectorate” to show the world how wonderful it was to be under German rule. Of Denmark’s almost 8,000 Jews, some 7,200 made it to Sweden together with about 700 non-Jews who needed to flee. Why? By the end of the war, some 423 of them had survived, the rest succumbing to disease, old age, or suicide. Events changed on June 22, 1941, when Germany invaded the Soviet Union. Wherever the Nazis invaded, Jews and other minorities were exterminated, with one exception. Although the Danish population was allowed to continue as before, not all were happy. A/T 7*C���rI~ In all that he did and wrote, he emphasized the biblical doctrine of creation: “First a human being, then a Christian: this alone is life’s order. For any questions/clarifications/problems, please contact: webmaster@yadvashem.org.il, Such a Beautiful Sunny Day… Jews Seeking Refuge in the Polish Countryside, 1942-1945, Copyright © 2020 Yad Vashem. One European country worked as a whole to keep the Nazis from removing its Jewish people. They were like all the other citizens of Denmark and would be treated no differently. On Sunday, October 3rd, the protest was read aloud in Lutheran churches throughout Denmark. They were allowed to keep their government, retain control over their media, and their king (Christian X) was allowed to stay on as the titular head. From 1942 Duckwitz worked with Karl Rudolf Werner Best – the Nazi civilian administrator of France and Denmark. He was pleased as Germany had signed a Treaty of Non-Aggression with Denmark on May 31, 1939. While the tragedy at the Gilleleje Church was an exception to the “spontaneous” help given to the Jews by the Danes, it is instructive to remember that even in Denmark, where the Holocaust failed, some people forgot that Jews were within the “boundaries of obligation” we owe one another as fellow human beings. Their movement was not restricted, by day or night. �~"c�0Y_�&�!�(��YQX�[iz����EډO��ˁ�RV�9����X����l4T��a��`�^#Lk���H���]Cw*��t�R��Y, ��Y��dl_1�Qt����{�v_�B�/v�J���)<8�.�,@jsįI�+��J� ����V$;W����W�ۆnP�V�j��]G��n�j��$ ��,����f��'l�ҏñ���~r���V��wb~>������J��������2�� @�;g��Bb�� *�*&�5�����%)Ʉ#�N#f~���Z��E2V�㒬�TsS��6T

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