3/5/2026
8000 Danish Jews were saved, thus 95% of Denmark's Jewry. Written by the author of Three Ordinary Girls about teenagers who became spies , assassins and saboteurs against the Nazi's in Denmark.
1940 April 9th Germany invaded Denmark helped by German speaking Danish citizens, some wore Nazi armbands and guided the Germans on roads. No defense plans had been made as it was considered that this would be provocative to the Germans. From Jutland, Fyn island and Zealand and then on ships to Langelinie Pier, Copenhagen. The same day Norway was invaded.
Immediately, mainly students started resistance groups and started passing on intelligence to the Allies in London and were in contact with the SOE Special Operations Executive. The navy also started sending information of the German positions.
King of Denmark, King Christian X and his ministers are at Amalienborg Castle. The Christianborg Palace held both the Danish Parliament and kings residences. Rosemborg Castle was another royal home.
1833 the Jewish community build the Great Synagogue of Copenhagen to accommodate 1000 people. In 1940 there were just under 8000 in the community. Unlike other European countries there had never been a histories of ghettoes or pogrom's. Sephardic Jews had been invited by Christian IV in the 17C and in 1814 they had been given Danish citizenship. In the early 20C Jewish men escaping Tsarists conscription in Russia had come, others had arrived as political refugees from Germany in 1933 and after Kristallnacht in 1938. In the early 1930 groups making up 1500 had come from various European countries to learn agriculture. To take that knowledge to Palestine.
There were rumours that Jews were ordered to wear yellow stars but the king had interceded and said he would wear one and so they yellow star was never demanded. Denmark had not had a war since mid 1800s and had not been in WW1. Denmark was in a depression and jobs were offered in Germany.
Denmark was cut off from the US but the Danish ambassador Henrik Kauffmann in Washington on his own volition had signed over to the American the right to establish military bases in Greenland to defend that Danish territory. In London expatriate Danes formed the Danish Council to show solidarity with the UK.
Germany started to squeeze Denmark to supply more agricultural and industrial goods, and German speaking Danes especially in Jutland could be conscripted into the German army. The body of water between Norway and Denmark and around the Jutland Peninsula is call the Kattegat. The Germans needed Denmark as they needed Norwegian Iron ore. The narrowest point between Denmark and Sweden is at Helsinger. This is Elsinore in the Hamlet of Shakespeare. In the Napoleonic wars Denmark was tied to France and Horacio Nelson destroyed the Danish fleet boxed into the Copenhagen harbour. 1801 Battle of Copenhagen.
1942 Sept on the occasion of the kings birthday Hitler sent him a letter of congratulations. The King simply replied "My Best Thanks, Christian Rex." To Hitler this sounded like a brush off.
1942 November of 1,700 Norwegian Jews about 530 were rounded up and sent via Denmark to Auschwitz.
1941 In Denmark the Communist Party was banned and forced to go underground, in summer of 1942 there first act of sabotage occurred. Many of these early members had fought in the International Brigade in Spain, where they had had some training. The Special Operations Executive or SOE was set up in all German occupied countries and was able to send weapons and agents to help.
Niels Bohr works for the Institute of Physics in Copenhagen and won the Nobel prise in 1922 his mother was Jewish .Professor James Chadwick of Livepool University was his closest colleague. They wanted to bring him to the UK.
By summer of 1943 the tide was turning and so the resistance became more bold. The started attacking companies that did trade with the Germans mostly in Jutland as well as sabotaging the railways. In Odense they bombed a German minesweeper.
Holger Daneke was a big resistance organization named after a Danish legendary hero.
1943 August The Danish government officially stopped cooperating with Nazi Germany and resigned. They rejected German ultimatums and had no alternative.
1643 the navy scuttled 32 ships 4 escaped to Sweden 2 to Greenland the only 6 wound up in German hands.
There was a break in to the synagogue and the files and addresses of Jewish members was stolen. There were a group of Jewish agricultural tranees pilfered a fishing boat and got to Sweden on it proving the feesabilty. A German diplomat and shipping operator was aghast when he heard that Germany was going to round up the Jews and knew this would enflame the Danish public. He approached the Swedish PM to open Swedish ports to Jewish refugees. The roundup was going to be on the 1st day of Rosh Hashana. The day before when people came to the synagogue the were told to hide and Jewish kids at school were told to go home and hide. " German transport ships were on their way to Langelinie pier in Copenhagen.
Niels Bohr was in Sweden and knowing the plight of Danish Jewry approached the Swedish king Gustav whose sister was married to the Danish King. Bohr was flown to Scotland in a British mosquito bomber. The Swedish government gave leave of their coast guard to rescue the refugees.
Jews took shelter in hospitals where they were registered under Danish names and given imaginary diagnoses. People in the underground with wounds were also given different diagnoses. Others with friend and headed to coastal villages to try get to Sweden. Children who would make a noise were sedated. With the help of the underground it became an organized escape. By October 1943 almost the entire Jewish community were in Sweden. Those Danish Jews caught were sent to Theresstadt.
The Danish resistance had matured from the project of getting the Jews to Sweden. Sabateurs were considered private criminals by the Danish police and not members of a hostile armed force like with the Germans and let most of them slip away. The resistance destroyed Varde steelworks in Jutland which took 6 months to get going again.
In Sweden the number of refugees began to swell and resistance figures also fled there. Danish Nazis who had lost their livelyhood as well as Danish women ostrasised as they had German military boyfriends also fled there. There were cases of Jewish families arriving having left their children behind hidden in Denmark. Many schools in Sweden opened their doors to refugees. A steady stream of downed Allied pilots took shelter in Sweden. A total of 9,000 refugees came and some were given physical work like roadbuilding, logging and clearing land for agriculture.
1944 Sept. The Germans decided that the Danish Police were not cooperating with them and blew the air raid sirens. The police gathered to do their air raid duties to be met by the Gestapo who arrested the officers and began shipping them off to camps in Germany. Of 10,000 police 2,000 were deported including many coast guard officers. The disbanding of the police resulted in lawlessness and the black market brazenly set up shop. Police officers who escaped this joined the underground. Danish saboteurs were able to receive increased ammunition's and the sabotage of trains going through Jutland increased so that trains to Norway began bypassing Northern Jutland.
1944 Oct. The British had planes available and started bombing German bases on instructions from the resistance.
Swedish diplomat Count Folke Bernadotter became involved and broadened the issue of releasing Scandinavian prisoners being held in German camps. Himmler agreed to move them to a camp chosen to hold Scandinavians under the control of the Swedish Red Cross. First they discussed the deterioration relation between the Danes and Germany and Himmler asked that the Danes stop the sabotage against Germany. However the war was coming to an end and Himmler wanted to be able to negotiate a separate peace with the West and to escape prosecution. This resulted in the White Busses that were sent to take people from the different camps starting in February 1945. In total 21,000 people of taken home. 1,615 of them were Jews. They drove through bombed out Potsdam and decimated Dresden. While others were taken home Jews were taken to Sweden till the end of the war on May 5th 1945 VE day. Denmark was now free. Germany here capitulated to the British General Montgomery.
German soldiers now had to make their own way home on their own 2 feet. While others especially in Copenhagen were processed by the British army and were conscripted into mine clearing and were repatriated in orderly transport in August 1945.
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