How did most of the Jews of Denmark manage to escape the Holocaust?
In October 1943, Adolf Hitler ordered that all the Jews in Nazi-occupied Denmark be arrested and deported. Yet the Danes managed to evacuate 7,220 of the country’s 7,800 Jews plus 686 non-Jewish spouses, by sea to nearby neutral Sweden. How was this possible?
In the last couple of years, I’ve been trying to go to more theatre events in London and this intriguing question was at the heart of the play that I attended this weekend. The venue was the Park Theatre at Finsbury Park and the work was called “Rosenbaum’s Rescue”.
It is the first play written by Alexander Bodin Saphir whose mother is Danish and whose grandparents were involved in the rescue. In many ways, it is a minimalist production: only one set, all the action in the space of a few hours, and only four characters.
But the work raises some huge themes: what is the truth? how important is the truth? were the Danes that ‘good’? were the Germans that ‘evil’? how do we assess good and evil?
The play is both informative and challenging and even manages some wry humour.
You can read a little more about the play here and read a short interview with the writer here. Finally, you can learn more about this amazing historical event here.