The Danish Resistance

Danish-Jewish children was taken in a children's home in Sweden after their escape from Denmark (http://isurvived.org/Pictures_iSurvived-2/DanishJewish-children.GIF)

The people in Denmark were good to the Jews and acted bravely in a time of darkness. They searched for any Jew they could find and accepted them into their homes for safety. A common citizen could see the people going around and asking everyone if they were in one of the groups, especially Jews that were being discriminated by the Nazis.

All of the Danes loved their king and he had a large influence on them. He was King Christian IV. Legend is that he rode through town each day “without” a bodyguard wearing a yellow star for all to see. His bodyguards were all the citizens of Denmark. There were only Danes, not Danes, Jews, Communists, Gypsies, and so on. The people stood together and they could not be fully overthrown because of Anti-Semitism laws.

(http://www.jewishvirtuallibrary.org/jsource/Holocaust/denmark.html)

The Germans were angry when the Danish government would not allow Jews to wear the yellow Star of David. The Germans devised a secret plan to deport all the Jews to concentration and death camps. Not all Germans were bad. For example, Georg Ferdinand Duckwitz a German officer told the Danish government about the secret plan to deport the Jews. Then in all of the Synagogues the news was given to go into hiding. Therefore the evil plan did not work and only about 500 out of the 7,500 Jews were discovered and sent away. Not all 500 died, though. Only about 80 lives were lost. Denmark had the lowest Jewish death rate of any country.

Denmark succeeded in its plan only because the people stuck together. If they hadn’t, it would have collapsed under Nazi control. It is like a herd of wildebeests when a predator (the Nazis) comes in. The wildebeests form a circle protecting their young (the Jews) in the center. If there was a gap in the elder wildebeests (the “perfect” Aryans) the predator could come in and attack easily. The wildebeests stuck together only in Denmark, and the predator only got to the unprotected or not well protected ones (the 100 that were captured). Some fishermen even managed to take almost 7,000 of them away.