How the Danes saved their Jews
I’ve just returned from a four-day break in Copenhagen with my sister Silvia which involved some very different sights and experiences.
I’m very interested in the Second World War so I made a point of visiting the comprehensive Danish Resistance Museum. Also most of my closest friends are Jewish and I wanted to see the Danish Jewish Museum whose innovative designed came from the American architect Daniel Libeskind who has had his work selected for Ground Zero in New York.
Roger & Silvia at Danish Jewish Museum
A common piece of history commemorated by these two museums is the little-appreciated spiriting out of Denmark of 7,000 Jews when it became apparent that the Germans intended to imprison them in Theresienstadt in Czechoslovakia (which I have visited). All except 481 were sailed in small boats over to neutral Sweden where they survived the war.
Denmark was the only country in occupied Europe that saved its Jews and the story deserves to be much better known.
To put this act of humanity in the context of the untold tragedy that was the Holocaust, check out this book review.