Saving the Danish Jews tour

August 16-27, 2003

Early Booking Price, before April 16, 2003: $2995

Regular Price, from April 16, 2003: $3295

Single Supplement $412, Deposit $600

Tour Director: Professor Peter Gravgaard

Dedicated to "the farmer", "the young man", "the Danes", "people I did not know", "a man named Hansen", "a friendly family", "a lady", "some coast guards", "the captain" (to understand what this means just read the INTRODUCTION which follows)

Introduction

This tour will deal with the escape of the Danish Jewish population from Denmark to Sweden in boats over the waters of the Kattegat or the Øresund in the beginning of October 1943. I will quote a long passage from the prominent Danish historian, Jørgen Haestrup from his "The Danish Jews and the German occupation":

The illegal (the underground way of doing things) solution was now the only one left. It too has been the subject of many books and cannot be detailed in a brief account. For an extensive treatment of the escape consult the work of Leni Yahil, the book October 43 by Aage Bertelsen and my own (Jørgen Haestrup's) book on the agricultural students, Passage to Palestine.

A basic precondition for the escape will be mentioned here. There was only one truly significant background factor that made mass escape possible within reasonable limits of risk: the German action itself! The escape, which was to have preceded a German action, actually had to await it. A paradox of those tragic days! However, a number of other preconditions had been set in motion during the days and weeks preceding the event itself. First, the mood of the country was already at a boiling point and had been ever since the violent strikes and turmoil in the summer of 1943. The resignation of the government bore evidence to the intensity of the national mood. The vast majority of the population felt provoked and frustrated to the point where its suppressed desire for retaliation was ready to be unleashed - if the opportunity arose. Other factors were at work as well. The resignation of the government had resulted in a decisive change in the security along the Danish coasts. On the morning of 29 August, Eivind Larsen (of the Danish Foreign Office) had conveyed to Paul Kanstein (chief of German Security) that the Danish coastal police from now on would turn a blind eye to the traffic across the Sound (the waterway separating Denmark in the west from Sweden in the east) the best of the coastal police reversed their objective - from apprehending refugees to spotting German patrols. And, finally, on 29 September, the last precondition was established. The Swedish ambassador, von Dardell, announced to Henriques (leader of the Jewish community) that Sweden would be open to all Jewish refugees, a message which also reached Jews and the population via other channels as well. The time was ripe for the Swedes to re-evaluate their political position.

The criminal (German) action against the Jews could not have been executed at a more opportune time. The rescue effort and mass exodus, though for this most part remarkably successful, could not have succeeded in 1942.

I shall only mention the rescue in terms of the statistics collected by Julius Margolinsky after the Jews reached Swedish soil. All told, approximately 7,900 people managed to escape, of whom 686 took flight because they were married to Jews. This rescue is viewed, for many reasons, as an extraordinary episode in Danish history. From a historian's point of view, the hastily improvised escape is remarkable in that not a trace of archival material was left behind in Denmark - no passenger lists, no reports, no letters, accounts, or diaries.

The hectic activity of those October weeks must be pieced together from testimony obtained from the rescued and the rescuers. However, such accounts are substantial, numbering some 150 of which 130 are by the rescued persons themselves. They paint a singular portrait of Denmark. It is easy to understand that Jewish families, firmly entrenched in Copenhagen, had an easier time making arrangements for their flight to Sweden than those living in the country, though nothing was really easy in those days. By far the greater number had to seek their escape opportunity through many contacts within the Danish society, often quite casual or accidental ones. Many Jews describe as many as ten to twenty contacts preparatory to the final steps on to the beach and ultimate safety. Though it is difficult to estimate, it is quite clear that tens of thousands were behind the rescue effort, often people who had not been involved previously in illegal activities. The last major rescue effort in Copenhagen, hastily improvised, was carried out by people who were in, or about to join, the underground movement, but thousands of others came unexpectedly face-to-face with illegal action and they passed the test with flying colours. What emerges is the distinct impression that it was the entire population that stood behind the rescue effort and behind the organizations that fuelled the efforts in Copenhagen and along the coastline, from Gilleleje to Stubbekøbing. One should not fail to mention the hospitals in Copenhagen which served as centers of organized rescue work.

It should be evident that to approximate the numbers of helpers in the rescue effort is impossible. From the many accounts of the agricultural students and the Alijah children - some 550 in all - it would seem that in their rescue alone thousands of Danes were involved in providing warnings, food and shelter, transportation, courier service, and money. The accounts of these young people make reference to those who helped as being men and women, rich and poor, old and young, urban and rural. Frequently, but not always, an organized resistance group was located in the harbor area or on the beaches. Most frequently, the helpers were described simply as "the farmer", "the young man", "the Danes", "people I did not know", "a man named Hansen", "a friendly family", "a lady", "some coast guards" - and the all-important person on the road to ultimate rescue, "the captain".

Countless, but nameless individuals from all corners of the islands and from all social strata turn up in the testimonial accounts. Most of the informants were able to sense, behind the apparent chaos, the organized resistance movement, which was in reality responsible, if not in the beginning, certainly by the end of the rescue effort.

Sadly, not everyone was to experience the lights of Sweden. There were Jews who did not receive the warning, who did not respond to it, or who were unable to respond quickly enough because of age or for other reasons. On the day of the action, the Germans managed to arrest 284 Jews and in the following weeks of the manhunt an additional 190 were arrested while trying to arrange an escape. The German patrols were not idle; they did not work in vain. Three transports took the prisoners to the Theresienstadt concentration camp in Czechoslovakia. A few died during the transport, and a small number were returned home upon the intervention by the Danish administration. The total number of deported Jews, thus, amounted to 464, of which 101 were refugees who did not hold Danish citizenship. Fifty-one of the deported persons died in the camp while the rest returned home in 1945.

(…)

The deported were not forgotten in Denmark. Immediately after the action took place, protests were issued by a large number of influential groups in Denmark. The department heads of the administration, in their protest, demanded a guarantee that no new roundup of half-Jews or others would take place. At the same time Dagmarhus (German headquarters) was pressed for permission to have Red Cross packages forwarded to the camp, which, despite German refusal, was arranged - first clothing, then later food. (…) Suffice it to say here that between October 1943 and April 1945 the Danish administration did not let a week pass by without pressure on the German authorities - in Copenhagen as well as Berlin - to obtain the release of all those deported, to secure the right to inspect the camp at Theresienstadt, and to rectify mistakes, but first and foremost, to secure the survival of the Jews in the German camp through a regular shipment of packages. The shipments had first been a function of a private charity organization, but it was rapidly taken over by the Danish Department of Social Welfare under its chief, H. H. Koch, and his aides, Mogens Kirstein and Finn Nielsen, with the support of numerous other people in various institutions, organizations and private companies.

How effective, this continuous pressure on the Germans was, is difficult to say, but at least they were never left in peace. They were constantly asked to account for the Jews deported and queried about their exact address, their fate, and welfare. Realistically, the Germans could, of course, do as they wished, but they could not do so without feeling monitored on a day-by-day basis. It is then a matter of judgement exactly how big a role Danish pressure played in shaping German conduct. There is good evidence to suggest this long distance monitoring was effective. For not one of the Jews deported from Denmark - not even the stateless refugees - was moved to the death camps, and all received packages. At no time did the administration in Copenhagen give up its hope of bringing those deported back. In fact, as early as the fall of 1943, a Danish rescue corps was established which had at its disposal transportation, drivers, physicians, nurses, food and medical aid. When (the Swedish count) Folke Bernadotte's humanitarian exchange mission (with the agreement of Himmler) got off the ground in the spring of 1945, he was able within days to draw on contacts, equipment and supplies, and personnel in Denmark - the country that assumed the fate of the Jews as a Danish responsibility. The "White Busses" (in which the 423 Danish Jews were transported from Theresienstadt to Sweden on April 15, 1945) came to symbolize the relief activity provided those in Theresienstadt, but the many wheels and helping hands were the result of the indefatigable preparation of the Danish administration.

Though the Danish government, in the end, was not able to protect the civil rights of the Jews, as long as the government was in place, it was as reliable as its word. Others have since taken over the reins of power, fully cognizant that the fate of the Danish Jews was and is a Danish responsibility.

This long report by the Danish historian, Jørgen Haestrup, tells so well the history of the Danish Jews from October 1943 to May 1945 that we have thought it justified to quote it in extenso; it will serve as background for the SAVING THE DANISH JEWS TOUR.

Itinerary

Day 1 (August 16, 2003)

You fly from the USA to Copenhagen, Denmark. Please ask your travel agent for a flight arriving at Kastrup (Copenhagen Airport) on Day 2 of the tour between 08:00 am and 12:00 noon.

Day 2 (August 17, 2003)

You arrive at Kastrup where the tour director,Professor Peter Gravgaard, will meet you and take you to our hotel in Copenhagen where you will spend four nights. The afternoon is at your disposal for taking in the atmosphere. In the evening WELCOME DINNER and a first introduction to the story of the Rescue of the Danish Jews.

Day 3 (August 18, 2003)

The German action against the Jews of Denmark took place on October 1, 1943, and was a failure. On this tour we will try to understand why the Germans failed. The best description of the German raid was written by Erling Foss in his Fra Passiv til Aktiv Modstand (From Passive to Active Resistance) which Leni Yahil quotes in her book, The Rescue of Danish Jewry (Philadelphia, 1969):

Erling Foss has given an unequalled description of the night of the raid:

On the night of October 1, at ten o'clock, all telephone connections were cut off - the action would no doubt begin shortly. Everywhere where there were doorplates with Jewish names, the German police troops appeared. In villa quarters they surrounded the houses. They did not take the sick and even released those who could prove they were half-Jews. And those who were married to non-Jews were released. The expression in the eyes of people brought aboard the two ships was heartrending, according to reports from town (…) It was the Jewish Holy Days, the New Year for Jews, which were chosen when the orthodox Jewish families gathered together (the New Year Festival actually took place on Thursday, September 30 and Friday, October 1, and was followed at sunset by the Sabbath). From the various assembly points police vans proceeded to take up their position at certain spots, from where the arresting columns were sent out. At the same time the telephone services were completely suspended, so completely that even the flight service and "Emergency" were not functioning. Ritzau's Bureau (the official Danish News Agency) was occupied to insure that the teleprinter was not used (…) The roundup was carried out in various ways - it is difficult to give a clear picture. Some patrols were content merely to ring and go away again if the door was not opened. Elsewhere, and this occurred often, they smashed in the door and woke up the whole house to cross-examine people in the other apartments as to the whereabouts of the Jews (…) Danish speaking people accompanied each patrol. The most frightful scenes were played out, with whole families being dragged away, and these produced anger among the population, deeper and more heartfelt than that aroused by the previous action. People as old as ninety-two and babies two months old were seized and put on board ship. Mrs Texiere, the 102-year-old mother of the actor Jakob Texiere was among those deported.

The old-age home next to the Synagogue in Krystalgade was surrounded by 150 men, and all the inmates, aged from sixty to ninety, were taken away. The Germans behaved here with incredible brutality. They burst into the room of an old lady who was paralyzed and had been bed-ridden for eleven years, and since she could not get up they bound her with leather straps and dragged her to the Synagogue, where all the old people were assembled. Here they were cross-examined as to their acquaintance with this or that saboteur and since it was only natural that they did not know any, they were beaten and kicked. From the Synagogue, as from all the rooms, the Germans stole any valuables they could lay their hands on, and the German police troops relieved themselves in the Synagogue. (Leni Yahil, The Rescue of Danish Jewry, pp. 183-185.)

The Germans had, no doubt, hoped to arrest all the Danish Jews, about seven thousand and nine hundred in all. They failed and only managed to send 464 Jews to Theresienstadt concentration camp.

Today we will visit the places where these events took place.

We will go for a walk though central Copenhagen. In Krystalgade you will see the Copenhagen Synagogue, a fine building, designed by the well-known architect. Gustav Friedrich Hetsch. Close by is Meyers Minde, the above mentioned old-age home. Nearby we will visit the Frue Kirke (Our Lady's Church, the Copenhagen Cathedral). Also the old main building of the Copenhagen University is worth a visit. From here to the Trinitatis Kirke (the Trinity Church with the Round Tower, originally built as an observatory for the great astronomer, Tycho Brahe. Next visit to the Slotsholmen where you will see the Christiansborg Slot which is now the residence for the Danish Parliament. Close by you will see the Royal Library which is now the most important library in Denmark. It is outstanding by its rich collections of Judaica and Hebraica. In the attractive garden a Danish Jewish Museum is being built. Nearby you will notice the Ministerial Buildinqs where in 1943 the Department Chiefs (i.e. the Civil Servants) ruled the country under the Germans after the legal government had demissioned in protest against the unacceptable demands made by the Germans, especially for capital punishment for sabotage against the Germans. Names to remember here are those of Nils Svenningsen, the Director-General of the Danish Foreign Ministry, and Department Chief Dige from the Ministry of Finance. (You will notice the latter when we get to the story by Lecturer Aage Bertelsen about how he found finance for his secret transports for the refugees to Sweden. From the Ministerial Buildings we are close to the Mosaisk Troessamfund (the Jewish Community Center) which we will visit before seeing the National Museum which contains such treasures as the Solvognen (the Sun Chariot: a circular golden disk, mounted on wheels so that it can be pulled across the fields, thus spreading fertility).

Other priceless treasures are (or rather were) the Golden Horns: two gold horns were found in Jutland, solid gold, of great value, and therefore stolen in the early nineteenth century: we possess the drawings, the horns were inscribed with the earliest Danish text in existence. So we are left with the intellectual heritage, the matter,the gold, has gone. Not to be missed either, is the Gundestrup Cauldron, which displays the most important Celtic reliefs in existence anywhere - The Danish National Museum is a treasure trove and has recently been sympathetically enlarged.

The last visit today is Amalienborg, the royal palace where presently, Queen Margrethe II is residing. In 1943 it was her grandfather, King Christian X, who resided here. You will see a statue of King Christian on horseback, commemorating his daily early morning ride through the streets of the city of Copenhagen, alone, without a bodyguard, in the middle of the war. There was a legend, among others, that the Germans had suggested that the King should be given a German escort. The King refused, saying that the escort would be in mortal danger - and continued his lonely rides. There was a poem at the time which I happen to remember:

Om Kongen af Danmark
Staar Hjerterne Vagt
(For the King of Denmark
The hearts stand guard)

Leni Yahil actually sees the King Christian X as a Symbol:

The Jews of Denmark had, it is true, no cloud or pillar of fire to guide them; but the spirit of the times found in the noble figure of the old Danish king, Christian X, the symbol of its awakening. This process commenced - long before the actual attempts at deportation or the rescue action - when the attitude of the Danish people deterred the Germans from implementing any of the restrictions or laws normally connected with their attacks on the Jews in other countries, preparatory to the deportation and extermination. This earlier period also gave birth to the legend that the yellow star could not be introduced into Denmark because the king had threatened to don the badge of shame together with his Jewish subjects. After the rescue operation this story became the common property of almost everyone who took an interest in the miraculous rescue of the Danish Jews. (Leni Yahil, ibid.,p.xiii).

Let us please stop here for a moment to establish that the king faces the Germans down by invoking all Danish citizens' right to equal treatment: if the Jews must wear the star of David, so must the king.

Parallel to this is the argument of the theologian Hal Koch (writing in Lederbladet, January 1942). Yahil explains: The article dealt with relations between the Danes and the Germans. Koch presumed that the Danish youth organization was attempting to bring about cooperation between Germany and Denmark, but said that this was possible only in the presence of certain other assumptions, the most important being the implementation of the promises given by Germany on April 9, 1940, without which the whole situation would disintegrate. If an active anti-Jewish policy were to be initiated in Denmark this would be evidence that these promises had been trampled on. Certainly (Hal Koch says) this is a question of right and justice for the Jews, but in addition - and this is something fundamental - justice and freedom in Danish life are at stake … we therefore have to know whether those who say that these promises may be ignored are right (the reference is to the Danish Nazi press, which demanded action against the Jews). If this is the case, then the way we have gone until now is no way. (That is to say, the policy of negotiation - between Danes and Germans - has to be seen as a mistake. Koch concludes his article:) We should not forget that our country's fate will be decided not by the war in the outside world but by the extent to which we are able to maintain truth, justice, and freedom by being ready to pay the price.

[One might remember Karen Blixen's line: Do what you will, and pay the price.)

Yahil draws the parallel between the old king and the young theologian in this way:

The difference between the king's attitude in his letter to Rabbi Melchior and that of Hal Koch and others as regards the Jewish problem is one of form, of opportunity; but there is no essential difference between them. The king embodied and symbolized the national spirit. This became historical truth even though it found its expression in legends, and the frontiers between his real actions and those ascribed to him have been blurred beyond recognition. The profound admiration which all Jews, not only those in Denmark, had for the Danish king was quite exceptional, since the behaviour of the Danish people and their successful protection of the Jews among them were exceptional amid the general annihilation. This reveals a frightening aspect of the Holocaust, that behaviour which should be considered natural and self-evident for a civilized people was, it would seem, so exceptional in the eyes of contemporary Jews that they had to have recourse to legends in order to give expression to their excitement. (Yahil.pp.63-64.)

From Amalienborg we return to our hotel.

Day 4 (August 19, 2003)

Yesterday we should have seen the Copenhagen Synagogue, the Frue Kirke (the Copenhagen Cathedral), the University of Copenhagen, the Royal Library with its new Danish Jewish Museum, the Ministerial Buildings and the Børsen (Christian IV's Stock Exchange with its Dragon-Tails-Spire), the Christianborg Castle (the Danish Parliament), the National Museum, the Mosaisk Troessamfund in Ny Kongensgade (the Jewish Community Center with many cultural and social institutions).

Today we will see, as far as possible, the Niels Bohr Institute for Theoretical Physics in Blegdamsvej. To understand the importance of Niels Bohr and his institute I will quote a passage from Thomas Powers' Heisenberg's War,pp.24-25:

The men who made the new physics inhabited a unique world, spilling across national frontiers and enlivened by frequent conferences and endless talk and letter-writing, mostly in German and English. It was not a large community - a few score scientists at most, each surrounded by a circle of students, in the handful of universities with chairs in theoretical physics and related disciplines.

But if this small world had a capital, it was surely Bohr's Institute for Theoretical Physics in Copenhagen, where the inner life of the atom, and later the central mystery of quantum theory, were slowly puzzled out, much of it by Bohr himself ; in the decades before Hitler came to power, and the center of scientific gravity shifted to the United States, Bohr was the great bridge between the old physics and the new, a mythic hero who won fame young and remained the object of admiration ever after. It sometimes seems that no one ever met or spent an hour with Bohr without hurrying home to write it all down. The literary record of his life has grown huge; one can follow his progress, from early youth on, almost day by day.

He was born in Copenhagen in 1885, son of a well known physiologist and professor whose love of science was broad. His younger brother Harald blossomed early as a mathematician, but by twenty Niels had also won attention in physics, at the University of Copenhagen, for a study of surface tension in fluid jets. In 1911 he went to England to study with J.J.Thomson at Cambridge University's Cavendish Laboratory he soon moved to Manchester to work with the expatriate New Zealander, Ernest Rutherford, who told colleagues, "This young Dane is the most intelligent chap I've ever met."

Werner Heisenberg, who during the war years became the leader of the German research into the possibility of nuclear weapons, became a friend of Niels Bohr. In 1922 Bohr was invited to lecture at the University of Göttingen in Germany - this occasion became known in later years as the "Bohr Fest". - I am quoting from Thomas Powers' Heisenberg's War,pp.23-24:

Heisenberg had reviewed Kramers's paper in Sommerfeld's seminar in Munich and was intimate with its details, and in the discussion that followed Bohr's lecture he risked an objection. Bohr defended Kramers, but later invited Heisenberg to join him for a walk on the Hainberg, the wooded hill which overlooks Göttingen. The discussion with Bohr that afternoon was like none Heisenberg had ever encountered. Heisenberg was a gifted mathematician and brilliant student, a bit proud, a bit close with his inner life, already familiar with the world of German science in which godlike professors all but dictated their discoveries to Nature as they did to their seminars. Bohr had no taste for this elbowing to be the smartest man in the world; he wooed nature for its truth Heisenberg sensed that here was a man who wanted to understand things first; only then would the time come to tidy up answers with numbers and laws. From the beginning it was not what Bohr thought, but the way he thought, that inspired Heisenberg's respect. Bohr took to the young German as well, and invited him for a visit to Copenhagen, which Heisenberg made eighteen months later, in the spring of 1924.

When Bohr did take an interest in a young scientist, he could focus upon him an attention so intimate and so engaging that resistance was impossible. For the rest of his life Heisenberg remembered the sealinq of their friendship, which took place on a few days' walking tour in North Zealand, a sure sign of Bohr's favor. He showed Heisenberg Hamlet's castle and told him about the Icelandic sagas he loved. On the beach along the Kattegat Strait, which separates Denmark from Sweden, they threw stones at a floating log, and Bohr said that he and Kramers had once aimed their stones at a floating mine left over from the war - until they realized success might have killed them both.

(…)

Over the next three years, which were among the most scientifically creative of his life, Heisenberg spent much of his time with Bohr in Copenhagen, gradually developing a comprehensive theory of atomic structure.

Friendship developed between them, and Bohr praised him in a letter to Rutherford:

Heisenberg is a young German of gifts and achievement. In fact because of his last work prospects have at one stroke been realized which, although only vaguely grasped, have for a long time been the center of our wishes. We now see the possibility of developing a quantitative theory of atomic structure.

It is on this background that must be seen the importance of the conversation between Niels Bohr and Werner Heisenberg in September 1941. The British playwright Michael Frayn has speculated on its significance in his play Copenhagen which has been performed on Broadway, New York, and in the West End, London.

After our visit to the NIELS BOHR INSTITUT we will drive to the Freemasons Lodge, also on Blegdamsvej: during the occupation the Schalburg Korps, the notorious paramilitary unit of Danish traitors who collaborated with the Germans, especially by performing "Schalburgtage" as opposed to "Sabotage" which was counter-German and destroyed enterprises who worked for the Germans. A lot of popular Danish buildings were "schalburgtaged": Tivoli, Royal Copenhagen Porcelain,the Tuborg Brewery, Bang & Olufsen. In late summer 1944 a unit from Holger Danske (the resistance group) attacked the Schalburg Korps at the Freemasons Lodge - both the Flame and Citronen were involved, but, due to unclear coordination, the action failed; luckily, however, the Schalburg men called for reinforcement from the German police, and when these troups arrived they were mistaken for resistance-fighters, and the Schalburg men fought for hours against their allies, the German police, with heavy losses on both sides,due to "friendly" German fire.

Our next visit will go to the Institute of Biochemestry where Professor Richard Ege and his wife, Vibeke, took an active part in the transport of Danish Jews; their dining room was the assembly point for people waiting for transport. After the hectic days of Ocober 43 the Eges took a leading role in trying to send food, medication and clothes to the Jewish prisoners in the Theresienstadt concentration camp. It is worth noticing that when the Germans would not allow food or medication to be received by the camp inmates, Ege, who was a professor of nutrition at the Copenhagen University, contacted some Copenhagen pharmaceutical companies and persuaded them to produce special multivitamin pills which were sent to and accepted by the camp: the "pills were neither food nor medication" and were therefore acceptable. As a result of this and other initiatives - food parcels were finally allowed -the mortality rate fell to less than half.

Our next visits will go to the two major Copenhagen hospitals: the Copenhagen Kommune (municipality) Hospital and the Bispebjerg Hospital, where Doctors Steffen Lund and F.H.Køster organized the rescue work. Many refugees were received in the hospitals and hidden away under false identities until they could be transported away to the boats which would take them across the Øresund to Sweden. The leader of the Danish medical doctors, Professor Erik Husfeldt joined The Ring (the illegal organization which Frode Jakobsen had created). Also the clergymen and the teachers joined the Ring. It was not surprising that Professor Ege and Lecturer Aage Bertelsen both came to know each other and to collaborate with each other in the common pursuit of saving the Danish Jews.

After the hospitals I will take you to see the Grundtvigskirken (the memorial church for Nicolai Frederik Severin Grundtvig (1781-1872). The church has been built as a celebration of the life of Grundtvig, and it can be said that every visit here is a celebration of the life and thought of this remarkable man. The Romans gave the title of Pater Patriae as the highest honor to their great men: Father of the Father land: somebody influences the common fatherland so strongly that it is reborn, and he is its new father: I can think of no more fitting honor for N.F.S. Grundtvig.More than anybody else he laid the foundation for the Danish democracy; let Leni Yahil speak (The Rescue of Danish Jewry, passim):

Honor for this fact (that German and Nazi attempts to undermine Danish democracy failed) is due to the national spirit and love of freedom of the Danish people, without which the authorities could not have demanded the "preservation of law and order." This national discipline was achieved without any recourse to coercion. It is, however, doubtful whether the country's leaders, parties, and institutions could have united the people so completely, had there not existed independent forces which made it their aim to emphasize and consolidate the "bases of Danish freedom."

These forces were to be found inside and outside the parties, among adults and youths, workers and students, the organized and the un-organized. During 1940 and 1941 a large movement sprang up throughout the country, a movement of unity with the aim of preserving "the political, intellectual and personal freedom of the people and the special cultural character of Denmark." The movement spread from man to man, group to group, organization to organization, town to town, and party to party, and an umbrella organization, the Union of Danish Youth (Dansk Ungdomssamvirke) was set up. It rose from the grass roots, from the young people themselves, assisted by the Council of Elders, a group of older people who helped, both intellectually and materially. The movement generally assumed the form of cultural activity for its own sake and without undertones, and aimed to strengthen the national consciousness by the study of the country's nature, people and history. As time went by there was a natural transition to political topics, and the courses were also used as channels of communication for messages which the government was unable to bring to the notice of people by newspaper or radio under the conditions of occupation. The state broadcasting system nevertheless cooperated with the movement by arranging suitable cultural programs and one of its leading officials was a member of the Council of Elders.

The initiators and organizers of the Union of Danish Youth were true heirs of the celebrated Danish priest N.F.S.Grundtvig (1783-1872) and the Folk High School system which he bequeathed to the people. Even in his youth and certainly by the 1840s, this unusual man had come to the conclusion that the classical system of education then practised in Danish Schools did not fulfill the needs of the people, and he organized new programs and even experimented with the establishment of a new type of school for young people between eighteen and thirty from all sections of the population. During the grave crisis which swept over Denmark after its defeat in the 1864 War by Prussia and Austria, when the national consciousness was shaken to its very core, it was Grundtvig and his disciples who succeeded in giving the people a new cultural and national content. This inmost conclusion, drawn from disaster, and the inner mental and spiritual strength which these same schools gave to the people, without any motives of practical or material advancement, was what consolidated the Danish spirit of democracy and humanity. "Grundtvig had, after the misfortune of 1864, by his bluff Danish manner, strong biblical faith, and manly instinct for freedom, given Denmark a new aim in life, so vital that it influenced the whole of Nordic development. He has now (i.e. under the occupation) been as it were, re-discovered." These words by the then aide-de-camp to the king (Th.Thaulow, Konge og Folk gennem Braendingen) sum up a public phenomenon unparalleled as an example of the close connection between education and culture on the one hand and the national spirit of freedom and democracy on the other.

The movement enjoyed the active personal support of the coalition government's minister of education, Jørgen Jørgensen, who was also a member of the Council of Elders. In recognizing that the educational-cultural work in strengthening the "Danish mentality" had to be a "silent task from man to man", he returned to the "popular Christian sources which were the old foundations of the Folk High Schools." In one of the early meetings of a small group to discuss these problems, he explained that the ideas of these schools were the basis which now had to be built upon. Similar thoughts were voiced at the time by various groups and sections. Besides the clergy, teachers were prominent among those who played an active role in this cultural-political activity. The movement would, however, possibly never have achieved its wide scope and made such deep inroads among the population, had it not had as its leader a man who became within a very short time the symbol of the national conscience. This was the young theologian and professor of church history in the University of Copenhagen, Hal Koch. Like many others who then took a leading part in the "cells of unity" everywhere, Hal Koch was previously unknown to the public at large and was not connected with any party or organization. He had, however. spent some of his student years in both Italy and Germany and had come to the conclusion that fascism and national socialism were not products of any national culture but were an international conspiracy against democracy. Recognizing that the main danger to the Danish people lurked within and that the youth in that hour was in need of a guiding spirit, in the autumn of 1940 he held a series of lectures on Grundtvig as a young man. In an interview published in Berlingske Tidende (one of the two main papers in Copenhagen) before the lectures started, he said:

I have decided to give these lectures because I feel that we are at present in a state of terrible confusion - from all points of view: national, human and Christian …The task awaiting students on completion of their studies is not to get a job at a fairly good salary, but to live as Danes capable of building the life of the people. To this end they have to know the truth. Of course, the University should not be exploited for propaganda toward any particular form of life, but I think that it would be useful to present to the students the image of a man who more than others knew the meaning of living as a Dane.

The lectures were open to students of all faculties. At the very first lecture the large auditorium was packed, and long queues of students and visitors stood outside, so that the lecturer himself had the greatest difficulty in reaching the podium. In the course of time Koch was obliged to hold each lecture twice. In his many talks and lectures, held all over the country in the years that followed, Hal Koch warned young Danes not to listen to big talk or imagine that the time had come for vigorous action. He urged self-criticism and self-recognition and tried to arouse the young to an interest in politics, but not to that form which divided into parties and groups, for he was after all the leader of a movement of unity. He wished to convert this same unity of youth into an instrument aqainst Nazi and anti-democratic thought and attitudes. As he said:

The task of the Union of Danish Youth is to politicize youth, that is, to arouse interest and spread knowledge regarding the country and public life until a feelinq of responsibility has been created … Politicization and responsibility of this sort are the only bases on which rule of the people can safely rest… Until now there has been a tendency - in academic circles at least - to regard politics as an inferior occupation, and there has generally been little interest in public affairs. If this trend continues, we are destined to have a regime of gangs, be they democratic or dictatorial. The aim is therefore to arouse interest and responsibility as citizens among the best of our youth, those who will decide our future.

The moral education which Hal Koch was offering in his Grundtvig Lectures he continued in a booklet called The Day and the Way (1942). Yahil explains it this way:

He stressed the general principles of humanity on which Danish society was based and which formed the foundation of politics. In practical terms, he concluded that the policy of negotiation should be supported, for in it he saw a guarantee of the democratic unity of the people. (Disunity would be dangerous during the German occupation since it would allow the invader to ally himself with one part of the Danish people. PG)

Although he considered it an error that the Germans had not been actively resisted at the time of the invasion (April 9, 1940) he opposed underground operations and acts of terror. Since national unity had not been forged in battle against the Germans, he considered it necessary to strengthen it by politico-educational means. He was not unaware of the doubtful, even dangerous, elements inherent in the policy of negotiation. Denmark, he pointed out in his book, though privileged in comparison with other conquered countries, had nevertheless paid a high price - the people no longer controlled their own home. "This has meant that we have said many a Yea and many a No which have not come from our own hearts, and that our talk has taken on a fateful hypocrisy."

Yahil sees this hypocrisy, this policy of mendacity as characteristic of the politics of the modern period, and she chooses Dr Werner Best, the German minister and plenipotentiary, as her example:

Here was a man with two faces, all his actions replete with double meanings and contradictions. Prominent as these characteristics were in Best's behaviour toward Denmark and its affairs in general, they were nothing compared to his enigmatic manipulations round and about the fate of the Danish Jews. In the midst of the crisis, with the state of emergency in force, he suddenly proposed that the Jews be persecuted and driven from Denmark but at the same time, at enormous risk to himself, he supported a counteraction designed to prevent the persecutions and enable the Danes to save the lives and property of their Jewish fellow citizens. His whole behaviour, it would appear, is an inexplicable riddle.

Yahil's explanation of the Nazi use of mendacity should be read with Hal Koch's "fateful hypocrisy" in mind.

Double-dealing was one of the ingredients of Nazi rule, engaged in everywhere as much by its leaders and operators as by its victims. It is characteristic of all dictatorships, but the Nazis nurtured it deliberately, seeing in it an extremely effective political weapon in political and social relationship. Deception was practiced toward the Jews to mislead them as to their fate, but this was only one of its many applications. Treaties were signed in order to facilitate a later assault on the enemy: promises, given in order to create a sense of false security, were broken, threats and false accusations, outbursts of frenzied rage and pseudo-moral sermonizing, approbation and castigation, lies of every size and variety - all these were daily fare. Everywhere this psychological warfare paved the way for conquest, servitude, and murder, and then served as their justification. The oppressed and the enslaved learned to fight with the same weapons. Prime ministers as well as concentration camp inmates used them, for in the struggle for survival the price of honesty was death. This atmosphere also dominated the internal relationships of the Nazis. Since it was forbidden to criticize a superior, adverse opinions were passed on in devious ways. The men at the top played off their subordinates against one another and divided up authority in order to insure for each of themselves as dominant a position as possible.

Events in Denmark will show us many of these tactics in action. The destruction of trust between man and man and between nation and nation and the sowing of seeds of constant suspicion were perhaps the Nazis' most terrible bequest to our world, outside the Communist realm which follows similar devices. The application and methods of double-dealing varied in keeping with circumstances and the character of people and nations, but the feature in itself was the same everywhere. It was so used in full measure both by the Danish collaborators and by the resistance movement. The pressures of the occupation also invested the Danish official policy of the period with a strong element of double-dealing, and the Danes were well aware of this.

This background of mendacity and double-dealing puts a high price on truth and honesty: the moral necessity of allowing the people to vote in a democratic way for the policy it wants its government to follow is obvious, but would not necessarily be permitted by the occupier. - I can think of no other example of free elections taking place in an occupied country in Europe, but in Denmark elections to the Rigsdag (the parliament) were held on March 23, 1943. The Germans, frankly, were tricked into allowing it to take place. Here is Yahil's explanation:

Typical of the behaviour of the Danes in their relations with the Germans was the way in which they raised the question - by the way and without explicitly asking their permission to hold the elections on the fixed date. In a party also attended by Best, Scavenius (the Danish prime minister) began to discuss the matter loudly with a number of ministers while Best stood nearby. As anticipated, Best joined the discussion - and in this way the question was "put before" the Germans. (Yahil,p.459).

And still according to Yahil (p.121):

In the election to the Rigsdag, held on March 23, 1943, the National Socialists suffered a decisive defeat, and the government won an overwhelming victory. The very fact that the elections took place and with German approval marked a political and moral triumph for the government of Scavenius, to whose credit, it is generally agreed, their success must be ascribed. These elections had one central aim: to unite the people around its government and to demonstrate its loyalty to the political system and, as a corollary, its opposition to the German occupier. The joint declaration of the five coalition parties, which called upon the people to express its opinion by participation in the elections, said, inter alia:

The election of March 23 is different from all other elections. It does not concern the usual party divergencies. It has a longer perspective. The election should confirm the will of the people to defend that freedom which is our thousand-year legacy, and that popular rule Danish men and women refuse to give up. In this way, the election will be a confirmation of faith in Denmark and its future.

This aim was fully achieved… The great unity of the people, as demonstrated by the elections, also underlined its unwavering determination to resist German political and ideological pressure. The elections gave the population a feeling of internal cohesion and made it conscious of the fact that it was by no means powerless toward the enemy in contrast to what it had apparently felt during the first years of the occupation. The elections were quiet and orderly, as is the case in Scandinavia, but they in fact served as the starting point for a growing resistance movement against the conqueror. Acts of sabotage increased from month to month all over the country and were followed by a wave of political strikes. Neither the Danish authorities nor Best anticipated results of this sort. The government, the Rigsdag, the king himself, and the trade unions all of whom attempted to halt this popular uprising - stood powerless before it. (Yahil, pp. 121-122).

This development led to the Popular Strike on June 27-29, 1943. Then to the German actions on August 29, 1943: internment of the Danish army, the taking of Danish hostages, the implication being that they could be liquidated later on, demands that the Danish government introduce capital punishment for anti-German sabotage (mostly of factories working for the Germans). Refusal, the Danish government dimissioned - the "department chiefs of the ministries" continued the administration' of the country. Next Best's telegram to Berlin that action should be taken against the Jews: then G.F.Duckwitz, who had been informed by Best, informed the Danish Social-Democratic leader, Hans Hedtoft, about the German plan. Hedtoft told the Jewish leaders, and the Jews started their flight to Sweden, and the Danish helpers stepped in to help them.

But going back to the elections and to the Danish political attitude which then expressed itself Yahil (pp.43 44) explains the fundamental difference between the Danes and the Germans:

Christmas Møller, leader of the Conservative party, was a member of the national government from July to October 1940, but was obliged to resign at the request of the Germans. He was one of the founders of the resistance movement. In a famous speech on October 16, 1941, to an assembly of young people at the Hellerup High School in Copenhagen, he delivered a strong attack against the Germans and maintained that they had not kept their promises of the 9th of April, 1940. He explained the essence of democracy as opposed to that of dictatorship, and stressed that the democratic system was the only one suitable for the national character of the Danish people, as could be understood from the fact that the "treatment of the Jews, as practiced in Germany, is completely unsuitable for the Danish character."

Yahil comments: what is significant here is that for the Danes national consciousness and democratic consciousness are one and the same. Only as a free citizen in a lawful and democratic state can the Dane behold his patriotism. This view is a principal part of Grundtvig's legacy. Equality, freedom, the rights assured to every Dane, and the duties incumbent upon him as laid down in the constitution are valid for the citizens without exception, and all citizens constitute a mutual guarantee to one another that these principles will be maintained. This national-humanistic Danish conception is radically opposed to the concept characteristic of German nationalism even long before Hitler, who only developed it to extreme conclusions. To the same degree as Danish nationalism finds expression in the people's democratic way of life, of which the equal rights of the Jews form an integral part, extreme German nationalism required the Jew as a counterweight and an enemy in order to arrive at national self-consciousness and realization. Hatred of the Jews was as integral a part of German nationalism as of Nazism. For reasons of nationhood and democratic principle, the underlying assumption of Danish life and thought led, under the occupation, to political identification with the Jews. The struggle of the Danish people for its national existence during the occupation therefore included a struggle for the equal rights of the Jews, just because it included a struggle for their political and social structure, their way of life.

I have added the preceding pages about the importance of N. F. S. Grundtvig for the Danish view of democracy - how to live as a Dane and for the Danish National Identity - what it is to be a Dane. The Grundtvigs Kirke was conceived by P.V.Jensen Klint in 1912, but was not built until 1921-1940.

After seeing the church we will drive to Mindelunden (the Memorial Grove) in Ryvangen: here are buried 106 members of the Resistance, freedom fighters - we will especially look out for the graves of Jørgen Haagen Schmidt, called "Citronen" (the Lemon), and Bent Faurschou-Hviid, called "Flammen" (the Flame). From Ryvangen we return to our hotel.

Day 5 (August 20, 2003)

Today is a free day for you to explore Copenhagen on your own before we continue our research into the Rescue of the Danish Jews. I will be happy to advise you on what to see and where to go. I will list a series of suggestions. This is what you might do and see:

Den Indre By (The Copenhagen Center)
Kompagnistraede and Strøget, the main promenade
Latinerkvarteret (the University area)
Rådhuspladsen (Cityhall and surroundings)
Kongens Nytorv (the King's new Square with the Royal Theater)
Charlottenborg, Hotel d'Angleterre, the French Embassy, Nyhavn)
Langelinie and Den Lille Havfrue (the harbor promenade with the Little Mermaid)
Danish Design:
Danish Design Centre
Kunstindustrimuseet
Royal Copenhagen Porcelain
Georg Jensen
Bang & Olufsen
Rudolf Rasmussen
Paustian Furniture House
The Royal Library
The Tivoli Garden
Statens Museum for Kunst (Denmark's National Gallery)
Frederiksberg Have med Frederiksberg Slot (the Frederiksberg Garden with the Frederiksberg Slot, now the School for the officers of the Danish Army)
Holte og Furesøen og Jaegerhuset (a lovely area north of Copenhagen: take an S-train to Holte and go for a walk in the forest with a splendid lunch in the Jaegerhuset restaurant)
Roskilde with the Viking Ship Museum and the Roskilde Cathedral with the tombs of the Danish kings: take a train to Roskilde and walk from the station to the museum and to the cathedral

If you would like to, we might go to Tivoli in the evening (not included in the tour price).

Day 6 (August 21, 2003)

Today we will start our search for the escape routes which were used when the Danish Jews were transported from Denmark to Sweden. One cannot make a hard and fast distinction between the actions of saving people and resisting the Germans, as I have mentioned before: saving people was resisting the Germans.

Our first visit goes to Istedgade which at the time of these events in 1943 was very much a working-class street near the Main Railroad station in Copenhagen; here in Istedgade came into being one of the most famous Danish resistance groups: Holger Danske (the name of a mythical hero who will wake up when Denmark gets in danger. - You will se a statue of Holger Danske when we visit the casemates under Kronborg Slot (Kronborg Castle). So, in the spring of 1943 Jørgen Haagen Schmidt worked in a popular Copenhagen theater, Zigunerhallen (the gipsy hall) where he came to meet Børge Rosenbaum (known in the USA as Victor Borge). Jørgen Haagen Schmidt,Citronen, happened to walk into a radio shop called Stjerne (star) Radio, to buy a radio, presumably. Here, waiting, in the shop he heard from the back room a lively discussion of what should be done to fight against the Germans - a dangerous topic under the circumstances, but Jørgen joined the discussion and became a member of Holger Danske, perhaps a founding member, since I am not sure the organisation existed before his arrival. But - afterwards: Yes, most certainly! Jørgen also came to work in the Citroen Car Factory in Copenhagen, because of Citroen he became known as Citroen-Schmidt, ultimately: Citronen (the Lemon) - the fruit does not have any derogatory connotations in Danish). He became a famous saboteur and freedom- fighter and participated in some of the major sabotage actions against factories who worked for the Germans; as you know, he is buried in Mindeparken where you have seen his grave. You will come across him again later today since I will take you to the house where he was finally killed by the Germans.

Istedgade later in the war became the scene for the great demonstrations against the Germans when fires burned in a line in the middle of the streets from one end of Copenhagen to the other. Istedgade was at that time flying banners everywhere with the words: "Istedgade overgiver sig aldrig" (Istedgade will never surrender).

From Istedgade we will drive to Nyhavn; here,at Kvaesthusgade 5, there was in 1945 a factory, A/S Terma, which may have worked at producing electronic equipment. The director was Erik Bennike, civil engineer AND First Lieutenant in the Danish Army. (Anybody who has read the war memoirs of Aage Bertelsen, October 43, will remember the appearance of Erik Bennike as an "angel" for Bertelsen whom he helps with a transport of sixty-seven Jews which Bennike can get over to Sweden via Smidstrup in North Sjaelland:

Rarely has a human being impressed me as strongly as did Erik Bennike now with the power which his whole personality radiated… I (Bertelsen) have no doubt that when Erik Bennike fell under the bullets of the Gestapo in Nyhavn the 18th of April 1945, Denmark lost one of her most important young men" (October 43).

What happened exactly was that the Gestapo entered the building and held Bennike up. Two of his colleagues were working on weapons production in the backroom. (Actually they were producing submachineguns, handgrenades and flamethrowers.) When the Germans tried to arrest the two colleagues, a firefight resulted, during which Erik Bennike, unarmed, attacked his guards. It became a furious fight during which Erik Bennike was mortally wounded. His two colleagues managed to shoot their way out.

What kind of man Erik Bennike was, becomes clear when you find out that his father, Colonel Helge Bennike, commander of Fourth Regiment, Holbaek, and he, Erik, had taken the regiment to Sweden on April 9, 1940, hoping to fight the Germans during a possible war between Sweden and Germany. This did not happen, and they returned to Denmark. But, while waiting for action Erik Bennike organized three companies of his fellow graduates from the Polytechnical Highschool, that is, one (small) battalion of fighting men. He must have armed them from the depots of arms which his father, the colonel. had spirited away from his regiment to secret depots on Ryegaard Manor House,east of Holbaek.Considering that this was before the British and the Americans started parachuting weapon-containers into Denmark, Erik Bennike, personally, organized and armed one battalion for Denmark. Later the Danish refugees in Sweden were organised into THE DANISH BRIGADE with a force of six thousand men with the strong help of Sweden. So, Bennike may, all on his own, have conjured up a force of one tenth of what the kingdoms of Denmark and Sweden could manage to raise, together. - Aage Bertelsen was right: at Erik Bennike's death Denmark lost one of her most important young men. (After the war a book was published about him based on the testimonials of his friends and colleagues: C.G.Thorborg, Erik Bennike, Copenhagen, 1945.)

From Nyhavn we drive to Tuborg Havn which was the southern terminus of a route which went from Helsingør in the north to Tuborg Havn in the south. The director of the Wiibroe Brewery in Helsingør, Knud Parkov, organised a beer-route, transporting beer from Helsingør to Tuborg - it sounds like taking coal to Newcastle! - On the return the beer boat, now empty, would take refugees back north, but sail east of the Swedish island, Hveen, and drop the passengers there for Swedish boats to take them the last distance to Sweden.

Next stop is Lyngby where Aage Bertelsen was a lecturer at the Lyngby Statsskole (highschool). He is the author of October 43 which describes how he and his helpers rescued about 1000-1200 people in that month. Bertelsen's Lyngby Group would collect the Jewish refugees in Lyngby, at his home, Buddingevej 33A, north of Copenhagen, then take them to Nivå on the Øresund coast and hide them in the Nivå Tileworks: here Bjarne Sigtryggsson, the young son of Bertelsen's headmaster at Lyngby Stataskole, would be in charge as "beachmaster" and take the refugees to the boat which would sail them to Sweden. When Nivå became unsafe, the passengers were taken to Smidstrup on the north coast of Sjaelland. - the first time by Erik Bennike whom you now know about.

I will take you to Buddingevej 33A where Lecturer Aage Bertelsen lived with his wife, Gerda, who ran the "travel agency" and arranged the transport from the room where the passenger had been hidden to the beach or port where the boat was waiting. Her task was important and difficult, because she could never write down anything, and if she needed notes, they had to be camouflaged in the books in the library. The risk that the German police might turn up and unravel the operation must have been terrifying. The Gestapo did find out about Aage Bertelsen and hunted him eagerly, but without success. They did arrest Gerda Bertelsen as a hostage to put pressure on her husband, and one must stress that his friends and colleagues in this work fought valiantly to dissuade him from handing himself over to the Germans and persuaded him to disappear to Sweden. Now the Germans considered that it was futile to keep Gerda in jail and let her go. Since her role in holding the administrative fort at Buddingevej 33A had been so vital, they were ridiculously wrong, because of their gender prejudices, in letting her go, but this is hardly the place to complain about their male limitations, when the consequences of their prejudices were so fortunate.

We should stop at the Lyngby Police Station where Police Lieutenant Mouridsen helped Bertelsen all the way. (Erling Kiaer in Helsingør also used the Danish police as helpers against the Gestapo and the omnipresent stikkere (informers)). One can almost say that it was with the Danish police as it was with the Danish women: the Germans underestimated them always. The German police believed in professional loyalty between Danish and German police men, in a comparable way to their belief that Danish women, especially of the middle classes, could not be dangerous. Gerda Bertelsen's description of her stay in Vestre Prison in Copenhagen presents her German interrogators, convincingly,as not dangerous, but incapable of understanding her, caught as they were in their own un-educated, naive, sentimental, lower-class, teutonic master-race simplicity - in good English: they were always being had.

Next stop will be Strandvejen 184, a house on the coast road where another freedom-fighter was killed, this was Bent Faurschou-Hviid (1921-44), because of his red hair known as "Flammen", The Flame. He was active as a saboteur and especially as a liquidator of stikkere. He died when the Germans by chance raided the house where he was staying; as he was unarmed, and escape was impossible and capture disastrous, he committed suicide by taking his poison pill.

Not far from here, at Jaegersborq Alle 184 - strange coincidence - was killed in a rather more dramatic way, our hero, Jørgen Haagen Schmidt, Citronen . We have first to know Citronen's modus operandi - his friend, Dr Jørgen Gersfelt tells us:

Citronen was always heavily armed, and when he bent over, it could happen that his revolvers came tumbling out of his pockets. The he would excuse himself with a smile and say "That is how it is when one has entered the state of Red Alert."

The leader of the Holger Danske group, Sergent Bertelsen from the Danish Criminal Police tells how Citronen got arrested:

On September 19, 1944, Citronen arrived in a car to Nørrevold in Central Copenhagen dressed in a police uniform, and was arrested by a Schalburg patrol who had been sent out to help the Germans in their raid on the Danish police (just like the Raid on the Danish Jews on October 1-2, 1943, PG).

The patrol took the pistols from his shoulder holster and outside coat pocket and put him in a yard where one single man was told to guard him. Citronen tried to run away, but the guard shot him in the back, and the bullet went through one lung. An ambulance was called to take the wounded man to the German Field Hospital, and one of the Schalburg men accompanied him as a guard. Citronen was seriously wounded, but had enough strength to play a little comedy: he pretended to be close to death and got the car to stop and sent the two ambulance men into a drugstore to get some water.

This occasion Citronen used to escape, having first taken care of the guard by shooting him with a little reserve pistol which he had in his back pocket. It had not been found during the search, and the Schalburg men had, of course, not imagined that he could carry three guns. They could not know, that Citronen, as he said it himself "had entered the state of Red Alert." (Jørgen Gersfelt, Saadan narrede vi Gestapo - That is how we cheated Gestapo.)

The ambulance now took him to a Danish hospital from where he was sent to a safe house at Jaegersborg Alle 184 with a Senior Nurse to look after him. But on October 14 arrived the German police looking for the owner of the house: they found Citronen, who, wounded and weak, took up the fight. However, he was armed to the teeth, because by chance he was guarding a suitcase for his friend, Flammen, with a content which now came in useful: two submachineguns, one German Parabellum pistol, some handgrenades, one 6.35mm pistol and some ammunition, so he was able to defend himself. A long fight followed between Jørgen and the German soldiers who called in re-inforcements. The nurse managed to get away safe; the fight went on for hours. Jørgen killed five men and wounded twenty. For readers of the Icelandic Sagas (especially Nial's Saga), like Niels Bohr or the writer of these lines, this is comparable to the death of Gunnar of Hlidarendi. Finally, Jørgen was forced out of the burning house by the flames and was shot in front of the house. There is a memorial for him outside the house, and a book was published about him: Bent Demer, Bogen on Jørgen (no English translation.)

When we come back to the Strandvej (Strand Way) we will visit the Bellevue Bade Hotel (Bath Hotel) where our heroes from these transports : Aage Bertelsen, Dr Gersfelt, Erling Kiaer, so often would disappear from the murderous routines in the dangerous days in the late autumn of 1943. The three gentlemen here mentioned were all active in saving people, Jews, Danish officers, saboteurs and other resistance fighters who felt the earth burning under them and had to get away: they have all left a book about their experiences: I recommend Aage Bertelsen, October 1943 which exists in an English translation.

Driving north we will pass Rungstedlund where Karen Blixen lived - do you remember her Out of Africa? Or Seven Gothic Tales? North of here we come to Nivågård and closeby the Nivå Tileworks where Aage Bertelsen found good hiding places for the Jewish refugees who were here waiting for ship. This is where young Bjarne Sigtryggson helped him as his representative. When we drive from here to Humlebaek we begin to move from Aage Bertelsen's domain to that of Jørgen Gersfelt and Erling Kiaer. They would to a large extent take people over to Sweden from the harbors of Humlebaek, Espergaerde and Snekkersten. Humlebaek was particularly well suited for these dangerous assemblies where insecure and nervous people on the run were waiting for the opportunity to get on board the boat - more often than the ship - to get away from the dreaded German military police or the Gestapo, well-suited, because here you have a small harbor with an approach road from an old coast road which had become redundant when a new and larger coast road was constructed. Nearby is Krogerup Folkehøjskole which in those years played an important role in the cultural-moral battle for the soul of the Danish people. Here is one of those many folk-high schools where the thought of N. F. S. Grundtvig was taught to the Danes. (Grundtvig's Folkehøjskole is the one educational initiative from Denmark which has been noticed by the modern world: in this respect both French and American educationalists, who you would not expect to agree on much, have been interested in Grundtvig in recent years.

Driving north we get to Tibberup where Falck's Villa was a land mark for Erling Kiaer during his endless navigations and not with out respectable results either - Erling Kiaer, a master bookbinder and lieutenant of the reserve - managed to save around 14OO people from the jaws of the Gestapo during the war: the figure is his own and may not be strictly precise - he was more interested in action than in administration. As matter of fact it seems that he started taking people to Sweden the day after the Germans occupied the country.

From Tibberup we drive north to Esperqaerde which is mentioned again and again in the histories of Erling Kiaer and Jørgen Gersfelt because of Dr Halldor Finsen who bandaged people's wounds and pacified people's babies with injections, when the child had to cross the Øresund, and everybody's survival depended on the child keeping stumm.

From Espergaerde to Snekkersten where, in 1943, Dr Gersfelt, a newly established medical doctor. stepped in to help the Jews and others. His house was 500 m north of Snekkersten, and pacifying babies also became his introduction to illegal work. Like Lecturer Bertelsen in Lyngby Dr Gersfelt's little house in Snekkersten soon filled up with fleeing people, and the saying must have spread in Copenhagen that "the doctor in Snekkersten can help us", actually Gersfelt's List seems to have reached the number of eleven hundred people who via his surgery reached the Swedish coast.

We will make a stop at the former Snekkersten Kro (Inn), now Kystens Perle (Pearl of the Coast). In 1943 the innkeeper was H.C.Thomsen, who was a reliable support for anybody helping the fugitives and fighting the Gestapo; Thomsen's opponent was Gestapo-Juhl, a Danish speaking German from Flensborg, just south of the Danish German border. (One would expect German nationalists from this area to go out of their way to support "das grosse Vaterland", and Germans from the former duchy of Slesvig were bad news during the occupation years). Juhl finally had Thomsen arrested; he died in a concentration camp in Germany. There is a little memorial plaque here in memory of him: "H.C.Thomsen, the courageous helper of the Fugitives" - I remember reading it as a boy, not understanding what they were talking about.

From Snekkersten we drive to our hotel in Helsingør.

Day 7 (August 22, 2003)

Today we will explore Helsingør (Elsinore). This morning we will go for a walk through the town which, because of its central position, was vital for the rescue operation of the Danish Jews. We pass by the Helsingør Roklub (rowing club) which has a little tunnel leading from the boathouse under the main road to the water of the Øresund. This was an ideal (though obvious for those in the know) hiding-place for people walting for a motorboat. Closeby is Wisborg which at some time was a private villa, before it became a "vandrehjem" (a cheap hotel for young hikers). The Gestapo confiscated and used it as their headquarters, both Erling Kiaer and H. C. Thomsen were prisoners here. Kiaer tells how he was beaten with rubber truncheons here: Sunday, Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday, Friday:

Then they started with the truncheons. It hurt insanely: it was almost unbearable. But since it did not lead to any result for the Germans, they stopped after some time. I allowed myself to comment that this was a nice way to treat a Danish Officer (he is a Lieutenant), they became somewhat worried, they looked a little at each other, then they sent me back to the basement. They said, that now I could rest to next day, now I knew what I could expect…

The second and the third day were the worst, but when the they had passed, I did not feel anything any more."

(Erling Kiaer, Med Gestapo i Kølvandet,p.77, (With the Gestapo in pursuit, not translated to English.)

Kiaer's journey through German prisons took him via the Horserød Camp in Denmark, Western Prison in Copenhagen, the Frøslev Camp in Denmark, the Padborg Camp in Denmark, the Neuengamme Concentration Camp in Germany and, finally and worst, the Porta Concentration Camp in Westfalia, Germany, where "justice" was kept by German murderers, sexual deviants, thieves and swindlers. According to Kiaer they were the scum of all the German prisons. But here was a man who wanted to survive, and he, finally, came back to Denmark with the Swedish Red Cross.

From Wisborg we will walk to the State Harbor where Kiaer at some time used the Eastern Pier as departure point for his Swedish tours following the tactical principle that the most insolent is the least likely and therefore the safest. Not far away was the Wiibroe Brewery.

We will see the Police Station where Kiaer and Gersfelt found constant support from Police lieutenant Sandholt and PC Thormod Laraen: the latter was very dangerously wounded at Julebaek Beach by the Germans and was saved by the Copenhagen hospitals and sent to Sweden on recreation. Closeby is Helsingør Rådhus (cityhall) on Stengade (main street). Here are the offices of the paper, Frederiksborg Amts Tidende the editor of which was Kiaer's assistant. Børge Rønne. We will walk up Stengade and Kongevejen to Helsingør Gymnasium (Helsingør Grammar School) where many of the teachers were active in the fight against the Germans. I can prove nothing, I am afraid, for after the War Danish Archives were sealed for eighty years! We will have to remain ignorant until 2025 and may not know the answers to these questions in this life! Next I will take you for a drive around the city: many of the places I want to show you are not within walking distance.

In the afternoon we will visit Kronborg Slot, sometimes erroneously, known as Hamlet's Castle. Hamlet, however, was an Iron age character, legendary rather than historical. Shakespeare had read about him in Belleforest who had the story from Saxo Grammaticus (c. 1285) - the assumption in tourist agency circles seems to be that Shakespeare took a trip to Kronborg and then returned to write up this delightful story of revenge and killings. It is wildly unlikely that Shakespeare should have visited Elsinore: he, certainly, did not need to do so to write Hamlet. In the nineteen thirties, forties and fifties Hamlet was performed on a stage in the castle courtyard where I remember seeing Lawrence Olivier and Vivien Leigh as Hamlet and Ophelia: it was good, but cold in the Danish summer night.

Day 8 (August 23, 2003)

Today we drive from Helsingør to Julebaek to see the place where Thormod Larsen was gunned down. From there to Hellebaek, Alsgarde and Hornbaek. We will stop in Munkerup and Gilleleje where the Gestapo at some time were able to catch forty Danish Jews in the church loft. After this disaster the transports were moved to Munkerup and Smidstrup Strand. Niels Bohr owned a summer house in Tisvilde, and we will stay one night in that little town. We will drive there via Smidstrup Strand so you can see why this was such a brilliant place to hide the refugees while they were waiting for their boat.

Day 9 (August 24, 2003)

From Tisvilde we drive to Hillerød to see the splendid Frederiksborg Slot (castle) with its National Museum/Picture Gallery. From here we return to Helsingør where we will take the ferryboat over to Helsingborg in Sweden - so much easier now than for those poor people in 1943! We will stay the night in the Grand Hotel in honor of Erting Kiaer who had his war headquarters right here. The rest of the day is yours to explore Helsingborg.

Day 10 (August 25, 2003)

We will begin with a walk in Helsingborg. We will visit the Helsingborg City Hall with it many memorials giving thanks to the Swedes for the hospitality shown to the many Danish and Norwegian refugees who came here either from occupied Denmark, or even worse, returned from the concentration camps of Germany in spring 1945.

From Helsingborg we will drive to Gammal Viken (Old Viken) to see a lovely idyllic village, then to the Fortress of Viken itself to see the fortifications from the Second World War which contributed to keeping Sweden out of the war by making sure that the cost for Germany in conquering Sweden would be too heavy to be worth the effort. This is a very important consideration, for if Sweden had not remained free and unoccupied, no rescue of Danes to Sweden would have been possible. The old Roman adage is still valid: If you want peace, prepare for war. The Swedes were armed to the teeth, the Germans left them alone. Denmark was neutral, pacifist and unarmed, the Germans and the English were racing each other to get to Denmark and Norway first: the English landed forces in Narvik (Norway) before the Germans did, and Churchill planned, but had to cancel, the Catherine Plan which aimed at sailing a British navy through the Great Belt in Denmark (after the example of Admiral Nelson in 1801), from the Great Belt the British navy should continue to an anchorage outside Gavle in Sweden to hinder the Germans from fetching iron ore in Sweden.

The outcome of the Catherine Plan would almost certainly have been a violation of the neutrality of Denmark and Sweden and brought the violence of war to two peaceful and friendly nations. That the absence of DEFENSIVE fortifications was decisive for Churchill's plan is evident from his memorandum to Sir Dudley Pound. First Sea Lord and Chief of Naval staff:

DNC (Director of Naval Construction) thinks it would be possible to hoist an "R" (a battleship of the Royal Sovereign Class) by 9 ft, thus enabling a certain channel to be passed. There are no guns commanding this channel and the states on either side (Sweden, Denmark) are neutral. Therefore there would be no harm hoisting the armour-belt temporarily up to the water level."

The channel between Sweden and Denmark can only be the Øresund, but the "certain channel" can only be the "Vengeance Grund" where already one of Nelson's ships was grounded in 1801, so that the channel must now be the Great Belt between the Danish islands of Fyn and Sjaelland. Since it is necessary to hoist up the English battleships it is evident that Churchill is aiming for the Danish Great Belt, attractive because not able to defend itself: "there are no guns". Of, course, Churchill and the English might have been ignorant of the Viken Fortress - it was probably built very recently?

Still, there is no "certain channel" in the Øresund.

The conclusion of my consideration of Churchill's thinking here is that the only way for Denmark to have had her neutrality respected would have been to have fortified the shores of the Great Belt. Contrary to Churchill's statement there are both Danish guns (in the Middlegrundsfort) in the Øresund and Swedish guns (in Viken Fortress), so he can only have considered the Great Belt, which means that it was Denmark's neutrality he was contemplating to violate (like Nelson in 1801 - another attack without a declaration of war!)

From a Scandinavian point of view these considerations lead to a sad conclusion: Scandinavia in January 1940 was the one decent place in Europe, and the great powers could not wait attacking it: Russia attacked Finland on November 30, 1939; the English and the French landed troups in Narvik, Norway; Churchill planned aggressive action against Denmark and Sweden; and finally in 1940, April 9, Germany attacked and occupied Denmark and Norway.

Let the following passage from a Danish defence lawyer, pleading in a German Court Martial for a young resistance fighter, state the Danish standpoint: (the Freedom fighter was accused of actions against the German Army he was found guilty and executed), let this passage sum up the Danish attitude to all aggressors:

His actions were caused only by his indignation over the (German) occupation. It has found expression, a fact which the Germans consider not only imprudent, but highly objectionable, but which the Danes observe with the greatest sympathy, BECAUSE NOBODY HAS INVITED YOU GENTLEMEN, AND BECAUSE ALL RIGHT THINKING PEOPLE IN DENMARK WISH TO GET YOU OUT OF THE COUNTRY AS FAST AS POSSIBLE.

From Viken we will drive to Höganäs where so many Jewish refugees landed: this then was where they could again feel safe after the terror of being on the run from the Gestapo. We will today drive from there to Malmö where we will spend the last two nights.

Day 11 (August 26, 2003)

Today we will explore Malmö, the third largest city in Sweden; we will also, in the afternoon, make an excursion to Lund, the nearby university town with a fine medieval cathedral, needless to say going back to Skåne's Danish past. In the evening we will have our FAREWELL DINNER.

Day 12 (August 27, 2003)

We have reached the last day of the Saving the Danish Jews tour. We will drive you from Malmö to Kastrup (Copenhagen Airport) via the new giant bridge to take your flight back to the USA. Please ask your travel agent for a flight departing Kastrup no earlier than 12.00 hours, noon.

BON VOYAGE, GOD REJSE

Bibliography

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Niels Bohr, Denmark' s Culture in the Year 1940
Same, The Philosophical Writings of Niels Bohr
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French & Kennedy, (eds.) Niels Bohr, A Centenary Volume, Harvard, 1985
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