Denmark's Jews & The Nazis

Now this looks an interesting read.
"Sir Anthony Eden once spoke the following words, in perfect French: "One who has not suffered the horrors of an occupying power has no right to judge a nation that has." He was referring to France under Nazi occupation.
Eden's sentiment was correct. And yet the question that has been nagging many people since the second world war is why the record of some nations appears to have been so much better than others. Why, for example, did more than 70% of Dutch Jews disappear into the death camps, while almost all the Jews in Denmark managed to get away safely?

The relative degree of antisemitism does not offer a conclusive answer. There was anti-Jewish prejudice in both countries, but not, as Isaiah Berlin once nicely put it, "more than necessary". There was no violence against Jews. A reasonably assimilated Jewish middle-class was well established in both nations. Impoverished Jews, many of them in Amsterdam, were less assimilated, but they were not threatened either, until the Germans came.

Were the Danes more courageous in opposing Nazi plans, or were they simply nicer people – like the Italians, who also managed to protect a large number of Jews from mass murder?

Ranking entire nations in terms of niceness is probably an idea to be resisted: societies are too diverse for that. But how do we explain the discrepancies, between Holland and Denmark, or Poland, where most Jews were murdered, and Bulgaria, where many survived?

Bo Lidegaard, in this magisterial study of wartime Denmark, claims that his country's admirable record owes much to the way Danish citizens saw themselves and their society. He writes: "The Danish exception shows that the mobilisation of civil society's humanism and protective engagement is not only a theoretical possibility: It can be done. We know because it happened." The harming of Denmark's Jews went against everything most Danes believed in, especially their concept of the rule of law. Even injustice, he writes, "needs a semblance of law. That is hard to find when the entire society denies the right of the stronger."

The story he tells of how Danes, from the top bureaucrats, Church leaders and police officials down to the humblest fishermen, helped the Jews escape when the Germans tried to deport them to concentration camps in October 1943, is indeed astonishing and heart-warming.

From the moment they knew it was coming, Danish government officials made it clear to their policemen that no help was to be given to the Germans. Doors were opened everywhere, often to complete strangers, for Jews to hide. Fishermen living along the rugged Danish coast loaded their cutters and schooners with thousands of refugees and ferried them across to Sweden. They were often generously paid for taking the risk. But penniless Jews, who had fled from eastern Europe or were members of the Danish working class, were never rejected.

And all this was openly supported by King Christian. He did not, contrary to popular myth, ride his horse through Copenhagen wearing the Star of David, but he did make it clear, as he wrote in his diary, that he considered "our own Jews to be Danish citizens, and the Germans could not touch them". The Dutch Queen Wilhelmina may have felt the same way about Jews in her country, but she never stated it as openly as her Danish colleague, even from her safe base in wartime London.

The humanism of the Danish rescuers, and their king, is not in doubt. Helping people in mortal danger was a matter of common decency, which was not always in such abundant supply in other parts of Europe. Again and again, Lidegaard turns to a political explanation: "Danish democracy mobilised itself to protect the values on which it was based.""
http://www.theguardian.com/books/2014/mar/13/countrymen-untold-story-denmark-jews-escaped-nazis-bo-lidegaard-review

 

When explaining to my children about the plight of the Jews during the war, I put a scenario before them. Their friends who lived next door, played with. went to school and clubs with, were ostracised by society. Then they were being deported. Anyone, and their families, protecting or hiding them would likely be shot, imprisoned or deported . I still cannot answer that one.

 

I think the answer may be as simple as Denmark bordering Sweden. The straits are only 3 miles across in some places. No other nation had such an opportunity.

I've read that the German army, navy and political government turned a blind eye to the exodus and while not openly defying Berlin or the local Gestapo, they dragged their feet and delayed any effective action.