Denmark's rescue operation of Jews during Holocaust
Photo: AFP
How the Danish resistance saved almost all its Jews
'All I remember is them loading us on fishing boats and pushing us into the water,' says one survivor, who was just a girl at the time
More than 26,000 individuals from Europe received recognition as Righteous Among The Nations
from Yad Vashem from after World War II. Only in one instance was the the honor granted to an entire organization and, in effect, an entire nation, rather than to a man, woman or family.
The Danish resistance movement, which joined in the fight against the Nazis, took upon itself the hazardous task of saving almost all of Denmark’s 6,500–8,000-strong Jewish community.
After one of the largest and most successful rescue operations of World War II, its orchestrators had only one request—to be granted the title of Righteous Among the Nations not as individuals, but as a collective group.
Silja Vainer tells the story of how she was rescued (צילום: אבי חי, כתב: אסף קמר, עריכה: אביתר כהן)
Silja Vainer, who was a young girl during the war, was one of those Jews saved by the Danish resistance movement. Despite being a neutral country, the Nazis invaded Denmark in 1940. However, breaking with its regular occupational practices against those who had already capitulated, the Germans permitted the Danes to maintain their governmental institutions, oppose racist legislation and protect their Jews.
Nevertheless, after three years of national opposition in Denmark, the Nazis dismantled the government in Copenhagen and set about solving “the Jewish question” and unleashing the Final Solution. In an act of solidarity with the country’s Jews, the King of Denmark wore the infamous yellow Star of David used to label Jews.
Denmark's rescue operation of Jews during Holocaust (Photo: AFP)
Yet it would prove an insufficient measure against a Nazis plan already laid out and scheduled to commence by October 1943: The country’s Jews were to be expelled to concentration camps
Mom said, “We must escape”
Fortunately for Vainer and thousands of other Jews in Denmark, news of the plan was leaked by a German diplomat to the leader of the Social Democratic Party of Denmark which was then passed onto the Danish resistance and to the head of the Jewish community. Planning the operation to evacuate Danish Jewry to neutral Sweden immediately got underway
“The first thing I remember was when I was in the playground. My mom came and called me to the house, and my parents told me that we had to leave the house,” Wiener told Ynet after more than 70 years. “I remember that my mother ran with us to her parents’ home to warn them and ask them to come with us to Sweden.”
Vainer’s grandfather however, like many other Jews in Denmark, refused leave for Sweden. “My grandfather was a religious man. He came from Russia having participated in the Russo-Japanese War of 1902.From there, he escaped and went all the way through Asia to Denmark. He said ‘I have fled enough in my life.’”
Hiding in a wooden hut
“This was and emotional and sad separation. I kissed my grandfather and grandmother and we went with my mother and father to hide in a wooden hut,” Vainer recalled. “A month later they learned that half an hour after my mother left, they came and knocked on the door and my whole family was taken and sent to Theresienstadt until 1945.”The Vainer family hid in a single hut until the beginning of the winter but eventually left due to the extreme temperatures and the danger that smoke from a wooden stove would reveal their location to the Gestapo. They decided to speed up the escape process to Sweden.
Right under the noses of the Nazi regime, the Danish resistance organized a daring rescue operation for their Jews, and within a number of days, thousands of their Jews were saved on fishing boats.
“Suddenly one night they woke us up and we received nice clean clothes and then, it's only glimpses that I remember,” Vainer emotionally recounts.
Danish Jews upon arrival to Sweden (Photo: AP)
“They separated us from our parents. Then I remember them lifting us up and putting us in the rowing boat and covering us with a fisherman’s net. Then they pushed the boat into the water.“
Upon arrival in Sweden the refugees could breath a sigh of relief: “When we arrived in Sweden, we met nice people who brought us to orphanages. It was a long time until we were reunited with our parents.”
The flight to Sweden facilitated the rescue of almost all of Denmark’s Jews (around 6,500 or 90 percent) while the 492 remaining Jews were promptly sent to concentration camps, where 150 were murdered. Vainer's grandparents survived the camps and the family was reunited after the war.
The organizers of the operation would have been honored with recognition as Righteous Among The Nations but for their special request. And so it was that the Danish resistance remains the sole collective organization to have ever been the recipients of Israel’s national gratitude for their efforts during the most devastating chapter in modern Jewish history.
