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Book Review: How Denmark's Jews Escaped the Nazis

(Telegraph-UK) Richard Overy - Denmark's Jews were almost all saved from the Holocaust when they fled to Sweden in 1943. In Countrymen: The Untold Story of How Denmark's Jews Escaped the Nazis, a careful study of the fate of two families at the moment of exodus, Bo Lidegaard, editor of one of Denmark's leading newspapers, presents the fine detail of just how Danish Jews managed to escape the grim fate that awaited them from their German occupiers. The Danish experience was different from other occupied areas, chiefly because Denmark's place in the German "New Order" was also unique since it was reckoned part of the "Aryan" region of Europe. Technically a neutral, though occupied state, Denmark had been allowed to keep its own administration and was not obliged to introduce legislation to penalize Jews. No Danish Jew was forced to wear the yellow Star of David. The Danish population was solidly anti-German, but for the most part aware that active resistance might provoke a more menacing occupation regime. All this changed when a wave of strikes and sabotage broke out in the summer of 1943 and the Danish government was replaced by a German administration, which prepared for a round-up of the country's 7-8,000 Jews. At the last moment a German official, Georg Duckwitz, warned the Danes of the impending action. By the middle of October, 7,742 had arrived at Swedish ports; the round-up secured only 202 for deportation, and a further 190 were caught trying to hide. The meat of Lidegaard's story, based on contemporary diaries written by a number of Danish Jews, describes exactly how the escape of two families was planned and carried out, hour by tense hour. It is as exciting as any spy thriller. Not all Danes were angels, though a high proportion had enough decency to offer what aid they could to frustrate German ambitions.
2014-03-14 00:00:00
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