page no. 18
Rescue of the Danish Jews
In April 1933, Christian X was scheduled to appear at the central synagogue in Copenhagen to celebrate its centennial anniversary. When Adolf Hitler came to power in Germany in January 1933, the community leaders suggested that the king postpone his visit. The king insisted, however, and became the first Nordic monarch to visit a synagogue. He did, however, later on finance the transport of Danish Jews to unoccupied Sweden, where they would be safe from Nazi persecution. After Denmark was occupied by Germany following Operation Weserübung on April 9, 1940, the situation became increasingly precarious.
In 1943, the situation came to a head when the German plenipotentiary in Denmark, ordered the arrest and deportation of all Danish Jews, scheduled to commence on October 1, which coincided with Rosh Hashanah. The Jewish Danes were warned and only 202 were arrested initially. 7,550 fled to Sweden, ferried across the Øresund strait; 500 Jews were deported to the Theresienstadt concentration camp. Danish authorities often interceded on their behalf , sending food. Of the 500 Jews who were captured, approximately 50 died during deportation. Danes rescued the rest and they returned to Denmark in what was regarded as a patriotic duty against the Nazi occupation. Many non-Jewish Danes protected their Jewish neighbours' property and homes while they were gone.After the war, many Danish Jews migrated to Sweden, Israel, the United Kingdom and the United States
Two letters sent from Denmark to Yugoslavia to Herrn Ljudevit Gabor November 1941. Passed through Nazi censorship. Dania Square in Beit HaKerem in Jerusalem is named after the rescue operation, and there is a memorial in the shape of a boat
Only some 580 Danish Jews failed to escape to Sweden. Some of these remained hidden in Denmark to the end of the war, a few died of accidents or committed suicide, and a handful had special permission to stay. The vast majority, 464 of the 580, were captured and sent to the Theresienstadt concentration camp in German-occupied Czechoslovakia. After these Jews' deportation, leading Danish civil servants persuaded the Germans to accept packages of food and medicine for the prisoners; furthermore, Denmark persuaded the Germans not to deport the Danish Jews to extermination camps. This was achieved by Danish political pressure, using the Danish Red Cross to frequently monitor the condition of the Danish Jews at Theresienstadt. A total of 51 Danish Jews—mostly elderly—died of disease at Theresienstadt, but in April 1945, as the war drew to a close, 425 surviving Danish Jews (a few having been born in the camp) were among the several thousand Jews rescued by an operation led by Folke Bernadotte of the Swedish Red Cross who organized the transporting of interned Norwegians, Danes and western European inmates from German concentration camps to hospitals in Sweden. Around 15,000 people were taken to safety in the White Buses of the Bernadotte expedition.[18] The casualties among Danish Jews during the Holocaust were among the lowest of the occupied countries of Europe. Yad Vashem records only 102 Jews from Denmark who were murdered in the Shoah.