Rescue of the Danish Jews

The aktion against the Jews living in Denmark was slated to begin on October 1, 1943 - the Jewish New Year. When the Germans began to arrest Jews in Denmark, to their surprise, few could be found. Although the Nazis attempted to implement the Final Solution, the resistance by a majority of government officials and Danish citizens, including Danish police who refused to participate in the arrests and deportations, resulted in the saving of approximately 98 percent of the nearly 8,000 Jews living in Denmark.

The Germans invaded Denmark on April 9, 1940 and occupied the country until 1945. The Danes did not resist the German invasion, and Denmark became an important food producer for the Reich. The severity of German occupation in a country was closely related to how the county’s population was viewed with respect to where they stood on the Nazi’s racial hierarchy. The Danes were viewed as almost pure "Aryan" and were granted a level of autonomy that did not exist in other countries under German occupation. As a result, the Danish military and government, except for the foreign affairs office, stayed under Danish control until 1943.

Unlike other occupied countries, Jews were not forced to relocate to ghettos or to wear a yellow star. Although the story of King Christian X wearing a yellow star is a myth, he did support the Jewish community. In contrast to the majority of other monarchs on the European continent, he did not flee to England. Instead, he stayed in the country to rally his people and would often be seen riding through the streets of Copenhagen on horseback. As the Danish Underground grew and increased its sabotage efforts, the Germans retaliated with stricter measures against the Danes, such as a ban against strikes and public protests, a curfew, and censorship of the press. On August 28, 1943, German officials declared martial law, prompting the Danish government to resign in protest.

The Germans declared a state of emergency while disarming the Danish military and taking prominent Danish intellectuals, government officials, and Jewish community leaders hostage. On September 28, 1943, Georg Ferdinand Duckwitz, a German diplomat who would later be honored as a Righteous Among the Nations, alerted Danish government leaders of German plans to begin the deportation of Jews. Danish leaders informed leaders of the Jewish community. The acting chief rabbi of Denmark, Rabbi Marcus Melchior, entered the Great Synagogue in Copenhagen on September 29, announced that a German aktion was pending and ordered everyone present to leave, go into hiding, and warn others. Jews began to leave Copenhagen, where the majority lived, to hide in homes, churches, hospitals, and forests before eventually gathering along the coast where they would wait for a boat to take them across the Oresund, the body of water between Denmark and Sweden.

Of the nearly 8,000 Jews in Denmark, only some 500, most of whom resided in convalescent homes or were found in hiding, were sent to the Theresienstadt ghetto and concentration camp in Czechoslovakia. All but approximately 60 of the some 500 Danish Jews in Theresienstadt survived the Holocaust, largely due to pressure from the Danish Red Cross who met with German officials. Those officials permitted the Danish Red Cross to send care packages to Danish Jews in Theresienstadt and gave assurances that Danish Jews in Theresienstadt would not be deported to camps in the East. In spring 1945, the Danish Red Cross arranged for the Swedish Red Cross to send buses to take Danish Jews held in Theresienstadt to Sweden. These buses were known as "the white buses." After the war, Jews who returned to Denmark found that their property had been maintained by their Danish neighbors.