In the Holocaust in Denmark (fl. 1943) fewer than 1% of Jews died. In no other country under Nazi German rule did so few Jews die.
Compare: % of Jews who died in countries under Axis control:
- 90% Germany, Austria, Poland, Baltic countries
- 89% Bohemia, Moravia
- 83% Slovakia
- 77% Greece
- 75% Netherlands (Anne Frank)
- 70% Hungary
- 65% Belarus
- 60% Belgium, Yugoslavia
- 50% Romania
- 41% Norway
- 26% France
- 22% Bulgaria
- 20% Italy, Luxembourg
- 1% Denmark
Of Denmark’s 7,500 Jews, only 500 (7%) were rounded up. And of those, only 51 (10%) died. So overall, only 0.7% of Danish Jews died in the Holocaust.
Germany needed Denmark for its food but wanted to avoid a costly occupation. So it let Denmark keep its king and its government, choosing indirect rule.
Another country where they did that was Bulgaria. In both cases the king, having to walk a fine line between cooperation and collaboration, refused to give up his country’s Jews. (Bulgaria lost only 22% of its Jews.)
King Christian X of Denmark (pictured at top) told the Germans that if Danish Jews were made to wear a yellow star, he would wear a yellow star too. So, unlike many other countries, no Jew in Denmark was made to wear a yellow star.
When the government found out that Jews were going to be rounded up – the government resigned. Leaders from different parties came together and issued a joint statement:
“The Danish Jews are an integral part of the people, and therefore all the people are deeply affected by the measures taken, which are seen as a violation of the Danish sense of justice.”
When the Gestapo asked the police to help them kick down doors and round up Jews – the police refused.
When the Gestapo arrived in Gilleleje and shined a flashlight in the face of a villager and told him that it is written in the Bible that this shall be the fate of the Jews, the villager said:
“But it is not written that it has to happen in Gilleleje.”
An underground railroad sprang up to get Jews secretly to the coast where fishermen in places like Gilleleje took them across to Sweden, a neutral country.
When Adolf Eichmann himself arrived in Denmark to see what was going on, he found that nearly all of the country’s Jews were – gone. All that was left were some people who were part Jewish or married to Jews. Eichmann called off any further deportations.
The 500 Jews that were rounded up were sent to the Theresienstadt (Terezin) ghetto near Prague in Bohemia. But even then the Danish government did not give up on them. After protests, the deported Danish Jews were allowed to receive letters and even some care packages. In the end only 51 died.
Danes gave up their communists but not their Jews. Danes saw themselves as citizens of a democracy. That made communists, as anti-democrats, part of a “them”, but made Jews part of “us”. The first step in any genocide is to divide people into an “us” and a “them”. The Danes stood together, Jewish and Christian.
– Abagond, 2015.
Sources: Mainly Michael Ignatieff in the New Republic (2013).
See also:
- genocide
- Jews
- Hitler
- Harriet Tubman
- Larycia Hawkins – reminded me of King Christian X
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@ Abagond – Touche’.
@, Pumpkin – Really? The post is about doing what’s right in spite of one’s conditions/circumstanes and you’d leave? You admire a people but you wouldn’t emulate them?
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This is amazing!
But 7,500 Jews for the whole 1943’s Denmark. Is there a reason for such a low number of danish Jews.
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Abagond, this is one of your silliest posts.
“Danes gave up their communists but not their Jews. Danes saw themselves as citizens of a democracy. That made communists, as anti-democrats, part of a “them”, but made Jews part of “us”. ”
So, a king is a “democrat”? I thought they got their power by divine right? To be consistent with your democrat, anti-democrat divide, shouldn’t he and royalist parties have been given up? How do you account for the fact that the paper the Danish communists published was read by 120,000 Danes?
The problem with your democrat anti-democrat take on this issue is the over emphasis on the ‘race’ question as opposed to the ‘class’ one. The Nazis came to power to discipline the working class and launch Germany to the path of conquest in order to expand her market, not to exterminate the Jews. Mussolini didn’t have a systematic anti-Semitic policy and placed Jews at high levels of his administration, maybe you’ll find time to praise him as some kind of ‘democrat’ like the king of Denmark and his government who like Il Duce, ended up collaborating with the Nazis.
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@gro jo
So you’re saying that persecuting Jews was never a part of Nazism’s original goals? Clearly it was, because many of the speeches Hitler made prior to become the Fuhrer revolved around “Jewry”. If all Hitler cared about was disciplining the working class and launching Germany on a path to conquest, why the hell did he bother condemning the Jews so often, whether in public or private? There were plenty of patriotic, nationalistic Jews, who would’ve supported Nazism if it hadn’t been infused with a “racial element”.
And Hitler’s Nazism and Mussolini’s Fascism were completely different. Fascism , with a capital F, does not discriminate based on race.
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The goals of the Nazis and Fascists were to discipline the working class and lead it to wars of conquests. How they went about it differed. If you read Mein Kampf, you’d be aware of the fact that the “communist menace” was closely associated in his mind with the Jews. Prior to encountering Eastern European Jews, with their long beards, and strange clothes, Hitler was a common variety anti-Semite who was quite happy persuing his ambitions. It wasn’t until after WW1, fought for the same reason as WW2, that he became a tool of the militarists, then leader of the right. His transformation took place in the fight to maintain the rule of the bourgeoisie, nationalist Jews be damned. You confuse goal and means. slavery of Africans wasn’t due to racism, but racism justified slavery. “Race über alles” types tend to forget such facts.
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Another good post Abagond. Didn’t know about this.
I was studying some mathematics yesterday and came across this passage:
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@Pumpkin
I think that if an outside group were to come in, as you suggested, all of the U.S. would be united against the invaders in a far more significant way than Denmark was. I firmly believe that there’s no outside group that could set foot on our soil and start telling us what to do.
However, I think that’s probably true of an inside group. Even though we ARE seeing some pushback and media attention right now around the ideas of mass incarceration and the killing of unarmed (and even armed) Black people by our police. It hasn’t changed anything. Despite the fact that the general public (and the media) is slightly less apathetic, I think, if there were a significant internal movement to sway sentiment against Black people instead of Mexicans and Muslims (and yes, I realize 1 is a country and 1 is a religion, I’m using the terminology of the Trump-like nationalists and Islamaphobes)… anyway, if Black people were made the target again, then White people would not stand in the way of, and would support police efforts to continue rounding up and incarcerating Black people and/or shooting them for any infraction that’s “close enough to be plausible”. I say that because we’ve been there, repeatedly, and I don’t really see any fundamental difference in humanity’s need to categorize and hate.
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The survival of the Danish Jews relies on several aspects.
The most important one is the location: the Jews could easily get away to Sweden. Just like the Bulgarian Jews could to Turkey.
The second one is the timing. Anti-Jewish measures did not start in Denmark until the autumn of 1943. By that time, it already was clear that the rest of the West-European Jews, who were transported to Poland, were never heard of again. That triggered the Danish Jews to take action, and the Swedes to be more welcoming.
Third, the small amount of Jews being in Denmark made transportation to Sweden easier.
I am not denying that the authorities played a role as well. However, their influence was only limited when compared with the other aspects.
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[…] Sourced through Scoop.it from: abagond.wordpress.com […]
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it looks like it’s about 4 miles from denmark to sweden at the closest point, over very cold water of course
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@ Pumpkin
I agree. You saw Katrina.
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@ gro jo
Constitutional monarchy is a pretty common form of democracy.
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” on Tue 22 Dec 2015 at 10:32:19
abagond
@ gro jo
Constitutional monarchy is a pretty common form of democracy.”
You deduce from that fact that their kings and royalists are democrats?
If you are right, that would make the former king of Spain, who was groomed by Franco, the dictator of Spain, a democrat. Kings aren’t democrats. Is it an accident that they are associated with the military even in constitutional democracies? I don’t think so.
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Good post. An integral part of history I wasn’t aware of.
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