Bo Lidegaard - Countrymen: The Untold Story of How Denmarks Jews Escaped the Nazis

COUNTRYMEN

This edition published by arrangement with Alfred A.
Knopf, an imprint of The Knopf Doubleday Group, a
division of Random House, Inc.

First published in Great Britain in 2014 by Atlantic Books,
an imprint of Atlantic Books Ltd.

Copyright Bo Lidegaard, 2013

The moral right of Bo Lidegaard to be identified as the
author of this work has been asserted by him in accordance
with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act of 1988.

All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be
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British Library.

Hardback ISBN: 978-1-78239-144-9
E-book ISBN: 978-1-78239-146-3
Paperback ISBN: 978-1-78239-148-7

Printed in Great Britain.

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Friends, Romans, countrymen, lend me your ears;
I come to bury Caesar, not to praise him.
The evil that men do lives after them;
The good is oft interred with their bones.

WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE, Julius Caesar

CONTENTS

This cartoon in the Gteborg Trade and Maritime Journal gave birth to a widespread and long-lived myth that King Christian rode through the streets of Copenhagen wearing the yellow star in defiance of Nazi demands that the Jews do so.

The drawing shows the Danish prime minister, Thorvald Stauning, in an overcoat, in thoughtful conversation with King Christian, easily recognizable by his riding boots and uniform. In the caption Stauning asks: What shall we do, Your Majesty, if Scavenius says that our Jews also have to wear yellow stars? The king replies: Then well probably all wear yellow starsan almost literal transcription of an interview King Christian had had with Acting Prime Minister Vilhelm Buhl four months earlier. The fact that the tenacious myth is rooted in a real conversation has only been revealed recently, as the handwritten diary notes made by the king were made accessible to historians. Even if King Christian was prepared to do so, he did not ride through the streets of Copenhagen wearing the yellow star; in fact no one in Denmark was required to wear it.

Cartoon by Norwegian Ragnald Blix, January 10, 1942

AUTHORS NOTE

THE BIRTH OF A MYTH

Toward the end of the conversation the acting prime minister raised the question of the Jews. He had come to confer with the aging king Christian X on the state of affairs in occupied Denmark. It was early September 1941, and the German advance into the Soviet Union seemed successful and unstoppable, the news going from bad to worse. The European continent was under totalitarian control, and the United States remained firmly neutral. Denmark insisted on its neutrality, too, but the country had been under German occupation since April 1940, and even if the firm Danish rejection of any Nazi representation in government was still holding up, the Germans were becoming more and more arrogant in their demands. Now Finance Minister Vilhelm Buhl, acting as head of government, sounded out the king on the delicate issue of the Danish Jews. Later the same day the king wrote down the main lines of the conversation in his private diary. According to the king, the finance minister expressed deep concern: Considering the inhuman treatment of the Jews not only in Germany but also in other countries under German occupation, one could not help but worry that one day this request would also be presented to us. If so, we would have to reject it outright following their protection under the Constitution.

The king agreed that [he] would also reject such demands in regard to Danish citizens. If the request was made, the right attitude would be for all of us to wear the star of david. The Finance Minister interjected that that would indeed be a way out.

Buhl did not keep the kings suggestion to himself, and four months later the conversation appeared as the text of a cartoon in a newspaper in neighboring Sweden, also neutral but not occupied by the Germans. The cartoon gave birth to the compelling image of King Christian riding the streets of occupied Copenhagen wearing the yellow star. The myth has never died, and new generations have taken it as a token of hope amid the dismal history of the Holocaust.

The history from the Swedish cartoon traveled widely and it proved both compelling and useful. It served those in the United States and the United Kingdom who were working to improve the public image of an occupied Denmark criticized for its cowardly appeasement of Hitlers Germany. In the United States the myth was spread by Danish-American and Jewish organizations, in the United Kingdom by the Political Warfare Executive as part of a targeted effort to drive a wedge between Denmarks allegedly pro-German government and the resistance-willing people rallying behind their king.

The myth, of course, is false. But the history behind it is even more fascinating: Not only did the king not wear the yellow star, but no one in Denmark did. The very attitude of the king and his prime minister, as reflected in their brief conversationand indeed that of the entire peopleprevented any provision in regard to Jews being passed in Denmark. This is what makes Denmark a unique example, an exception to the general picture of the Holocaust. The exception was more fundamental than the myth reveals. It went beyond the rejection of measures directed against the Jews by denying the very existence of a Jewish question. It simply stated the obvious: That before being of Jewish descent, these individuals were Danish citizens or at least protected by Danish law, which did not distinguish between citizens of different creeds. There was simply no issueand thus there could be no measures to address it.

PROLOGUE

She went through the packing lists one more time. Somehow doing so comforted her. The childrens clothes, Gunnars, her own. They needed to be warm and practical and not take up too much space. Still, they also needed to look right. The whole thing seemed at once urgent and unreal. And she had no idea what to do. So she sat down to make packing lists. To establish a measure of normality in what suddenly seemed not to be normal at all. A few days later she noted: We were optimistic, and couldnt and wouldnt believe that as Danes we could come to experience the horrors that Jews in the other German-occupied countries had gone through. From the middle of September the rumors began to circulate that persecution of the Jews would come, and we were nervous when Jewish books and records were stolen from offices of the Jewish congregation where they were kept. We lulled ourselves into a certain kind of calm thinking that maybe they would limit themselves to new laws and the like. And even though we heard about many of our own race who didnt sleep at home for fear of being picked up by the Gestapo at night, we stayed at home until Sunday, September 26.