By Steve Kramer
ALFE MENASHE, Israel –What’s significant about October, 1943? During that month the Danes carried out an unprecedented rescue of Jews from deportation to Nazi concentration camps. Werner Bachmann recently told a rapt audience at a recent Forgotten People Fund luncheon in Netanya, “I was meant to be one of those murdered by the Nazis and commemorated at Yad Vashem. My life was saved by a miracle.”
Werner was born in Copenhagen to parents who already had fled from Germany in 1933. Since making aliyah in 1989, he has had a very active life: Founding Member of the Board of Danes in Israel; a volunteer to numerous committees at the Raanana’s Beit Issie Shapiro (leading innovator of disability therapies); and former Chairman of English Speaking Friends of the Tel Aviv University. Werner currently lives in Herzliya Pituach.
There was little question of Danes resisting the Nazi takeover of Denmark in April 1940, Werner told us. The government cooperated with the occupiers and was able to retain some powers, including diplomatic relations. The Germans were careful to keep Denmark “quiet,” because the goal of the occupation was the urgently needed agricultural exports to Germany.
Werner was just seven years old in 1940; he remembers that King Christian X rode his horse daily through Copenhagen, displaying his obvious disfavor of the German takeover. However, the king never had a yellow star sewn onto his lapel, as legend has it. In fact, the Danish Jews were never required to wear that odious symbol.
Life remained somewhat normal in Denmark for about two and a half years after the invasion. Towards the end of 1941, there was an ineffectual attack on Copenhagen’s main synagogue by Danish Nazi sympathizers. The king responded publicly to the incident, perhaps because he had attended the celebration of the hundredth anniversary of the main synagogue in 1933. As the war continued, sabotage and strikes began and the occupation became more onerous. The government resigned in August 1943 and many prominent figures were arrested, including Jewish notables.
Reacting like most European Jews did when faced with wholesale Nazi genocide, Danish Jews at first didn’t believe it would happen to them. But when the truth became unavoidable, plans were developed, resulting in nearly all Danish Jews being saved. Werner and his two brothers were taken by their parents to Gentile friends, who hid them until their escape was possible.
Rumors were rampant about the Jewish situation. “On September 28, 1943, Georg Ferdinand Duckwitz, a German diplomat, secretly informed the Danish resistance that the Nazis were planning to deport the Danish Jews. The Danes responded quickly, organizing a nationwide effort to smuggle the Jews by sea to neutral Sweden. Warned of the German plans, Jews began to leave Copenhagen, where most of the almost 8,000 Jews in Denmark lived, and other cities, by train, car, and on foot. With the help of the Danish people, they found hiding places in homes, hospitals, and churches. Within a two-week period fishermen helped ferry some 7,200 Danish Jews and 680 non-Jewish family members to safety across the narrow body of water (the Oresund) separating Denmark from Sweden.”
Werner told us that, in general, Danes tried to help the Jews in the few days before Rosh Hashana, the date the Germans planned their deportation to the camps. There was outrage on the street, and the churches promulgated a letter strongly objecting to the German policy. Jews were in hiding, in hospitals and elsewhere. Danes joined the already existing Underground and planned the Jews’ escape by small boats. Gentile relatives and others arranged taxis to fishing villages where the Jews were able to embark for the short journey halfway across the sound, where Swedish boats ferried them to Malmo – today a stronghold of Muslim immigrants.
Not every Jew was saved. Some drowned, while some disappeared. Jews in old age homes had to be left behind. Others who didn’t get the chance to escape were arrested and sent to Theresienstadt. However, more than 7,000 were saved during a two-week period (the large majority within the first week), leaving Denmark Judenrein.
Werner explained that Adolph Eichmann let some care packages be sent to Theresienstadt and that the Red Cross, accompanied by a Danish delegation, was allowed to inspect the “model” concentration camp, albeit only once. Unfortunately, Eichmann’s concessions were unprecedented and not repeated. Werner emphasized that no Danish Jews were sent to Auschwitz, a record unmatched by any other country in Europe.
Contents of Denmark’s large synagogue ark were emptied by municipal workers for safekeeping in a church basement, while one worried but brave Danish Jew remained and became a major player in the rescue of the Torah scrolls and other Jewish artifacts.
According to Werner, there was no religious discrimination by Danes towards the Jews. In fact, Danish friendships saved the Jews living there. Those children left behind in the homes of gentiles were all saved. Even the valuables left behind were safe and Jewish property was preserved. However, Werner said, the situation now is dramatically different. Arabs in Scandinavia are the biggest propagators of hatred, the situation of Jewish residents is precarious, the government makes laws restricting kashrut and circumcision, and there is no future for the Jews there.
Werner’s personal story was fascinating and much appreciated by the audience. To learn more about the Forgotten People Fund, whose purpose is to aid the Ethiopian population of Netanya, go to www.fpf.org.il. You can assist FPF in its current scholarship drive by donating directly to the site.
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Steven Kramer is a freelance writer based in Alfe Menashe, Israel. His works may also be read on the website, www.encounteringisrael.com This article was previously published by the Jewish Times of South Jersey.
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