How Denmark Saved 98% of Its Jews: The Yellow Star of the Danish King

2024 Author: Richard Flannagan | [email protected]. Last modified: 2023-12-15 23:55

Sometimes beautiful legends hide amazing stories. Many people know the legend of the Nazis, the king of Denmark and the six-pointed yellow star. Not everyone knows that, firstly, it is no more than a legend - and secondly, in a short form it sets out the real events of the kingdom during the Second World War.

A fairy tale is a lie …

As you know, Hitler proclaimed the Nordic brotherhood and assured that he was going to build a happy life for all "Aryan" peoples, to which he ranked, first of all, the Germans and Scandinavians. Denmark, which actually did not have a combat-ready army, during the war could only hope that Germany would really not capture its "Aryan brothers". But Germany, of course, did. If the saying “don't trust Hitler” doesn’t exist, it’s worth coming up with.

According to legend, after the occupation of Denmark, the Germans issued a decree according to which all Jews in Denmark had to wear a yellow star on their clothes, as in all other occupied countries. Learning about this decree, the elderly King Christian … went for a walk around the capital. Riding like fabulous kings. At the sight of him, the Danes froze, and then bowed.

The next day it was the Germans' turn to freeze. Going out into the streets, they saw that all residents of the capital are now wearing yellow stars. The fact is that the day before, the king traveled around the whole city with a yellow star on his uniform. The Danes understood him correctly and also sewed the stars. The Nazis had a real hysteria. After a few days, they made sure that the Danes no longer wear stars. But … the stars disappeared from the streets completely. Within three days, all Jews in Denmark were transported to neutral Sweden. The Nazis only had to rage.

… yes there is a hint in it

What really happened? The Germans really tried to push through a number of laws typical of the Third Reich in Denmark. Since they played in the Nordic brotherhood, they did it stubbornly, with pressure, but without shooting. And they did not succeed. The Danes refused to accept the proposed laws, including those on stars for Jews (7,800 lived in Denmark, of which 1,700 were refugees from Germany). The king declared that if his subjects were obliged to wear these stars, he and his wife would be the first to sew them on their clothes. In addition, while the Gestapo was catching all sorts of people disliked by the Nazis - communists, anarchists, open anti-fascists, gays and so on, the Danes launched an underground work to take the persecuted out of the country.

One of the members of the underground was the famous Arctic explorer Peter Freichen. He developed an interesting habit: if he heard somewhere rantings about the need for a final solution to the Jewish question, he hung over the chatterbox with all his considerable growth (and amount of muscles) and said: "Well, I'm a Jew, then what?" All the talkative tongues instantly fell silent. By the way, Freychen really was not exactly a Jew, but a half-Jew on his father's side. In the end, he was arrested and sentenced to death for his participation in the underground, but other members of the underground organized his escape to Sweden.

In 1943, the Nazis began to finally resolve the Jewish question in the countries under their control, regardless of the opinion of local governments. German employees in Denmark were ordered to prepare an urgent capture and transport of Jews to the Terezin concentration camp. One of the diplomatic staff, Defense Attaché Dukwitz, was a staunch National Socialist for many years. But he lost confidence in the ideas of National Socialism due to the massacres. He violated the secrecy and alerted the Danish Prime Minister and the Social Democrats at random. With the latter, he guessed right: it was they who had access to the underground.

For three days after that, the members of the underground hid the Jews inside Denmark and organized their departure to Sweden. The catch was that the underground did not have their own boats or ships, and the fishermen they turned to demanded money - from two to one hundred average monthly salaries for Jews. A high price was charged for the manufacturers. The argument was simple: mission deadly. Boats with refugees could be sunk on purpose, they could sink in bad weather, or later the fishermen could be shot.

Part of the money was immediately collected by the underground in their circle and from friends, but there was not enough for everyone. Then the fishermen … just took the receipts from the passengers. Later, the rescued Jews paid for the passenger seats they bought at random for several years. Due to lack of money, no one was left on the shore.

Some of the boats capsized due to bad weather and a large number of passengers. The boat owners did not survive either. Nevertheless, several thousand Danish Jews landed alive on the Swedish coast overnight. Several hundred more were hiding in the country itself and several hundred were captured by the Gestapo. As a result, less than half a thousand Jews left for a concentration camp, one hundred and twenty people survived there. Of the eighty captured, one Danish pastor hid in his church, but he was betrayed by a young neighbor who dreamed of marrying a German soldier she knew.

Of course, the quiet Danish resistance is not nearly as inspiring as the selfless Norwegian: National character of Norway.