Danish Jews celebrate 400 years of existence: A story of tolerance and antisemitism

The Jewish community in Denmark is celebrating 400 years since the king at the time invited the first Jews to live in the country. 

The Danish embassy in Israel brought together Holocaust survivors, historians, students and the First Lady of Israel for a special event in Tel Aviv/Yafo, to celebrate and commemorate the history of the community.

The story of Denmark and its Jewish community is one of incredible tolerance but also antisemitism, explained historian and director of Denmark’s Jewish Museum in Copenhagen, Janus Møller Jensen.

“Generally, the Danish authorities have taken good care of it’s Jewish minority,” Jensen said.

Toward the end of the 17th century, the chief of Danish Police in Copenhagen suggested that the Jews who had begun to settle in the capital should be gathered in a ghetto. “But the Danish authorities said ‘no, this is not going to happen,'” Jensen said.

In the middle of the 18th century there was a suggestion that Jews should be singled out by wearing armbands, while another proposal sought to send Jews to Greenland and confiscate their belongings.

“Again, the authorities said no,” Jensen said. Authorities also reacted strongly to a fierce public debate about Jewish emancipation in the early 1800’s, which had blatant antisemitic voices, by granting Jews civic rights.

Simultaneously, Norway, which had been united in a Twin Kingdom with Denmark a few years earlier, enacted a new law which said Jews were not allowed to live in the country.

The great rescue 

The turning point in the history of Danish Jews came in October 1943, when the Nazi occupation of Denmark became intolerable and dangerous for the Jewish community.

On 29 August 1943, the pre-existing status quo agreement between the Danish government and Nazi Germany broke down, leading Hitler to order the deportation of Danish Jews, who had been protected up until then. The order was leaked to Danish politicians who managed to warn the Jewish community in time.

In what would become one of the most well known rescue stories of the Holocaust, some 7,000 Danish Jews began fleeing Denmark to Sweden on boats in the middle of the night throughout October.

Policemen, priests, fishermen, intellectuals, doctors and civilians in general contributed to the efforts to rescue Jews from the Nazis in October of 1943.

481 Jews didn’t make it in time and were captured by Nazi soldiers and deported to Theresienstadt concentration camp in Czechoslovakia of whom 52 died.

Holocaust survivor Manfred Hildesheim recalled how they were told in the Synagogue not to be home on 1 October when the Nazis would come looking for Jews.

“I remember we listened to Swedish radio where the prime minister was inviting Danish Jews to come to Sweden,” Hildesheim said.

“In the end, there was one guy who was ready to take us from the port of Copenhagen to Sweden. But it was forbidden for us to take any luggage because it would arouse suspicion if the Nazi soldiers saw us. We were like sardines in the boat,” he said.

Bo Lidegaard, Danish historian and author of “Countrymen: The untold Story of How Denmark´s Jews Escaped the Nazis,” said the rescue mission was not “a miracle but an act of citizens in a society who profoundly understood what was really at stake and spontaneously acted in a situation where they had no government or no free press to direct them.”

Lidegaard described the rescue mission to Sweden as “unique” in the Holocaust, “because in general, this wasn’t the pattern we saw in other (Nazi) occupied territories.”

The background for this unique act, Lidegaard said, was a Danish society that had understood what a small country like Denmark could do against the threats of fascism and Nazism in the years leading up to the war.

“The Danes turned inwards and built a society that became as resilient, united and inclusive as possible around the core values of democracy and respect for the individual. This meant that when the occupation came, we didn’t put up a credible defence and caved in to what was left of democracy. But we did draw some red lines. One of them was not to distinguish between different types of citizens, ” he added.

The First Lady of Israel, Michal Herzog, applauded the Danish rescue mission in 1943, saying “It has been said that ethics is obedience to that which cannot be enforced. The story of the rescue of Danish Jewry illustrates this very well. It highlights a simple but profound truth: that when we are left to reckon with what really matters, it is only the call of our own heart that stands between us and complicity with evil.”

“In Denmark in 1943, in the most extreme circumstances imaginable, ordinary human beings—bishops and priests, fishermen and farmers—chose to hear their heart’s calling above the fearful cry of survival. They refused to accept that they were powerless and refused to believe that they had no choice. They knew that there is always a choice. And they made the choice, as people, to save people. It is a moral inheritance that we have received from them. And it is one that it is our duty to pass on,” Herzog added.

Several Danes, whose acts of rescue were exceptional, were later awarded the title of Righteous Among the Nations title. A plague dedicated to the Danish Underground is placed today at Yad Vashem Holocaust Memorial.