Danish in April 2004, Danish

Danish In April 2004, Danish Prime Minister Anders Fogh Rasmussen accepted the Lyndon B. Johnson Moral Courage Award from the Holocaust Museum Houston honoring his country's World War II rescue of thousands of Jews from occupying Nazi forces.

The award was given to Denmark for "the miraculous action by people of all levels to save the Jewish population during the Holocaust." In Jerusalem, a boat-like monument signifies the 25th anniversary of the rescue of Danish Jewry, a school is named in Denmark's honor and many Israeli cities and towns have a street or square commemorating the heroism of the Danes. In addition, the Yad Vashem Holocaust Memorial in Jerusalem displays a small boat used to ferry Jews to safety in Sweden.

The boat is situated near the Righteous Alley that represents rescue, hope, life and trust in the human spirit. Denmark was the only occupied country that actively resisted the Nazi regime's attempts to deport its Jewish citizens. How this event came about is now well-known. However, still in question is why Denmark and not other countries took the risk of contradicting Germany. Although scholars hypothesize the reason, the ultimate one is still open to interpretation. The story of saving the Jews during the war has become a model of citizenry.

However, there are others who say that even more telling is what happened after the war. Although a few of the Jews' homes were occupied after they left, when most of the Danish Jews returned, they discovered that their homes, pets, gardens and personal belongings were cared for by their neighbors. This connection between the Jews and Danes was not recent. In most of European history, anti-Semitism was ingrained in many of the cultures.

Regardless of their legal status, Jews were considered outsiders as long as they remained truthful to their religion. In Denmark this situation was very different. Although not always a paradise for Jews, many forms of discrimination survived the arrival of the first Jewish citizenship in 1814 and the experience of the Danish Jewry in the nineteenth century normally stressed emancipation (Buckser 2). Jewish immigrants arrived in Danish territory as early as 1628, when King Christian IV tried to establish a new commercial center in Gluckstadt, Slesvig.

In order to attract capital, he offered the Jews religious privileges, and a number of them moved in from Hamburg and Altona. They left when the center never was established. Jews were once again invited to the country in 1560 when Denmark's war with Sweden left it financially destitute and needed new capital (Bludnikow & Jorgensen as noted in Buckser 21). Jews, as any other religions other than the Lutherans, were not forced to convert but not allowed to hold other religious observances. This changed in 1684 when Jewish services became legal.

Ten years later, they received permission to establish a cemetery outside a northern boundary of the city. During the period of absolute monarchy from 1660, the king permitted some non-Lutherans to enter the kingdom after the Roskilde peace agreement with Sweden. Most of these were soldiers the king hired for in continual thwarted attempts to overthrow the Swedish king. The royal military adventures had important consequences for Fredericia, built in 1650 as a fortress in Southern Jutland.

To motivate citizens to move there, the king decided in September 1674 to give "freedom of conscience for all Christians" who were willing to move and live within the ramparts of Fredericia. In 1682, this localized freedom of religion also included the Jews (Lodberg 139). The Copenhagen Jewish community dates back to the 1670s, when several Jewish storeowners began moving into the city from northern Germany.

As time went on, different Jewish factions developed -- Ashkenazic (eastern European), Sephardic (western European) and Hamburger, but none were considered Danish either by themselves or the county. They were considered a distinct culture, language and legal system; their interactions with the Christians primarily through business.

In fact there was a variety of special requirements: they were not allowed to employ Christian servants, because they may be seduced by their employer; Jewish men were imprisoned and banished if impregnating a Christian woman; Jews swearing an oath in court had to do so in a synagogue dressed in ceremonial robes where a rabbi was present (Kisch). Jewish persecution, although not to the extent in other countries, did exist.

Despite the fact that by 1780 1,600 Jews lived in Copenhagen, they still had to have special permission to settle in the country. To do so, they had to possess 1,000 rix-dollars, build a house, and open a business. In addition, they had to pay the police a special entry fee of 100 rix-dollars for the police to find, arrest, and expel Jews living their illegally. Though many were impoverished, some Jews did become very wealthy.

Jews were not forced to live in special ghettos and allowed to administer their own religious and social affairs (Bludnikow and Jorgensen in Kisch.). The monarchy, more or less forced into an alliance with Napoleon after Britain bombarded Copenhagen in 1807, knew the French emancipated the Jews and wanted to improve conditions for the Jewish community, likely because of the war with Norway ending in 1814 and the need for wealthy and loyal Jewish community members. With time, the Jews did assume more of the Danish culture.

In 1814 Danish Jews were granted civic equality and in 1849 received full citizenship rights. Judaism was now known as the "Mosaic Faith" (as it is still known), and the civil authorities took numerous measures to bring the religion in line administratively with the state church (Bludnikow and Jorgensen in Kisch). The Decree of 1814 symbolized a major change in the history of the Danish Jews. The Jewish people's isolated life came to an end, because of the degree of cultural integration that had been taking place over the past several generations.

Within a couple of decades, Jews could vote and be elected to the city council (Buckser 33). It is important to note here that economic difficulties that were occurring over the last year in Denmark led to increased anti-Semitism. Some made accusations that the Jews had sabotaged the nation, and when bankruptcy looked close, an outbreak of anti-Semitic violence started in German and traveled to Denmark. On September 4, a mop in Copenhagen began smashing the windows of Jewish shops and assaulting any Jews they could find (Bludnikow and Jorgensen in Buckser 34).

Some Jews went into hiding until the King called in the military. After that, the Jewish population grew continually until the middle of the nineteenth century when about 4,200 Jews lived in the country. The population later decreased to 3,500 in 1901 because of intermarriage and a low birth rate. After the Kishinev pogram in Russia in 1903, approximately 200 Eastern European refugees arrived to for permanent Danish settlement. In 1921 the total Jewish numbered 6,000 (Buckser 22).

The Zionist movement was introduced into Denmark in 1902 as the Dansk Zionistforening was established; then the World Zionist Congress then moved its headquarters to Copenhagen for the rest of World War I, because of the country's neutrality. By the beginning of the 1920s the last of the immigration ceased with the end of America's open door policy, and all went well for over a decade. In April of 1933 King Christian X was asked to visit the Copenhagen synagogue for a 100th anniversary celebration of the building's construction.

However, between the day the invitation went out and the day the king was supposed to visit, Hitler had come to power. The Jewish congregation thus suggested the king should put off his visit, but Christian X insisted on coming and became the first monarch in Scandinavia to visit a synagogue. This incident is symptomatic of the way the Jewish community reacted to the growing threat in Germany.

The attitude seems to have been that it was best not to call attention to the community's existence and thus avoid risking the growth of anti-Semitic attitudes in Denmark (Kisch). A policy of silence, appeasement, and even cooperation with German authorities was characteristic of the government and news media in the 1930s for a variety of reasons. Ever since Denmark lost the German speaking duchy of Schleswig-Holstein to Prussia and Austria in 1864, successive Danish governments feared and tried to avoid provoking Germany.

Furthermore, after World War I Denmark had been reunited with the northern, largely Danish speaking part of Schleswig, and the Danish government was anxious about German irredentism. Although anti-Semitic behavior was not widespread in the Danish population, there was a Nazi party with as many as 12,000 members and some conservative political groups emulated the dress and rhetoric of the Nazis. Denmark was surrounded on all sides during World War I, in an open and vulnerable geographic and economic position. It realized it had to stay neutral to remain solvent.

It suffered significantly due to major shipping losses, economic dislocations, inflation, and speculation. In 1916 the government decided to sell the Danish West Indies, the Virgin Islands, to the United States. In 1918 Iceland became independent but remained under the rule of the Danish king. At the end of the war a plebiscite showed a 75% pro-Danish majority and the North Slesvig was once again reunited with Denmark (Miller 224). As World War I was coming close and Denmark remained neutral Jews started moving to the country.

There are no exact statistics since many of these immigrants were wary of the authorities, but as many as twenty to thirty thousand Eastern European Jews may have entered Denmark during this period and approximately 3,000 stayed permanently, thus doubling the Jewish population (Hammerich in Kisch). More did not stay because the existing assimilated Jewish community wanted to pay their passage out; they believed their position in society was threatened and latent anti-Semitism would spread.

The Jewish congregation even actively cooperated with authorities such as the police to expel unemployed or unwanted individuals from the country. Some Danish Jews attacked the immigrants for being mere draft dodgers and undesirables (Hammerich in Kisch). The years right before the war showed great economic and political unrest. The Social Democrats and the Radicals united to form a coalition government headed by Social Democratic Thorvald Stauning, which lasted until 1940.

Although the Communist party and the Justice party were founded in 1919, politics continued to center on the competition of Social Democrats and Radicals against Liberals and Conservatives. When the world economic crisis arose in 1930, the krone was devalued, the government increasingly intervened in economic life and sought to stimulate domestic industry and employment (Miller 27). Anti-Semitism was beginning to climb throughout Europe. In 1939 the Danish Nazis received about 2% and had three parliamentary members.

The Danish government feared that helping German Jews would mean importing the "Jewish problem" to Denmark and feed anti-Semitic sentiments. While actively assisting Social-Democrats out of Germany, Jews were not considered political refugees and generally denied visas. Even close relations of Danish Jews could not enter and immigration officials returned any Jews they apprehended (Kisch). After Germany's defeat in World War I, it resumed political existence as a republic. However, in 1928 the Nazi Party secured 12 seats in the Reichstag and 2.6% of the vote.

After the Depression began, they increased their representation ninefold from 107 to 230 and became the strongest party. Hitler was named chancellor in 1933 and then president in 1934 (Fein 21). In 1938, the Nazi party instigated a pogrom and burned about 300 synagogues and interning 30,000 male Jews in concentration camps. In her book, Accounting for Genocide Fein questions when did the "Final Solution" begin? She says the answer depends on which phase of the transformation from conception to execution of the plan to annihilate the European Jews is focused on.

Of course, the day it crystallized in Hitler's mind cannot be proven. Scholars disagree whether this plan was latent from the beginning of his career or developed incrementally to respond to previous unsuccessful elimination plans. Regardless, the Final Solution did become a goal and would have continued into North and South America (Fein 26). Fein stresses that the Jews, Gypsies and Armenians were murdered in order to fulfill the state's design for a new order and made this state a criminal instrument and denied their past national failures.

Both Germany and the Ottoman Empire had suffered military defeats within the generation the new regime that authorized genocide came to power. The elite seeking to capture the state required a political formula as a justification of its rule that addressed the critical question of the nation's existence.

"The right of a master race, the unique destiny of a chosen people, was such a formula" (Fein 30) Fein summarizes the sequence of preconditions, intervening factors and causes that lead to genocide as follows: The victims have previously been defined outside the universe of obligation of the dominant group (This is a necessary but not sufficient condition for a third step.) The rank of the state has been reduced by defeat in war and/or internal strife.

(This is a predisposing condition toward a political or cultural crisis of national identity in which the third step becomes more likely to occur. The causes for such a decline are not predicted herein.) An elite that adapts a new political formula to justify the nation's domination and/or expansion, idealizing the singular rights of the dominant group, rises to power. The means by which this elite captures power -- a coup, democratic election, infiltration through parliamentary processes, or foreign intervention -- are also not predicted herein.

(Adoption of such a formula by a ruling elite is a necessary but not sufficient condition for premeditated genocide.) The calculus of costs of exterminating the victim -- a group excluded from the circle circumscribed by the political formula -- changes as the perpetrators instigate or join a (temporarily) successful coalition at war against antagonists who have earlier protested and/or might conceivably be expected to protest persecution of the victim.

This calculus changes for two reasons: the crime planned by the perpetrators becomes less visible and they no longer have to fear sanctions. The third and fourth conditions taken together constitute necessary and sufficient conditions or causes of premeditated genocide (Fein 9-10) Once it began to dawn upon the Jewish population of Europe that the Germans had decided to murder them, the reaction was to flee, hide, have armed resistance (only those with weapons), seek employment crucial to the Germans and acceptance of death.

"How did the Germans become a band of murderers," Bauer asks as well. Historians offer a range of responses. The functionalist school argues that the economic, political and social crises in Germany with the pre-existing social, especially bureaucratic traditions, pushed German society toward an authoritarian regime that was characterized by deep internal contradictions: a dictator who served as an arbiter of last resort between warring fiefdoms; a tendency toward uniformization and disorder of competing authorities and individuals seeking power. This led to impasses only resolvable by murder.

"Racism and anti-Semitism were in the background, but they by themselves would not have led to the so-called Final Solution..." (Bauer 29). The intentionalist school instead put the emphasis on the ideology-ridden dictatorship that expected a racist utopia and saw the Jews as a prime target for physical elimination. Bauer believes both of these approaches are "lacking in many respects..." (29). First, structures explain how not why something was done.

Also, the intentionalists have a difficult time proving Hitler's intentions toward the Jews in the 1920s and 1930s, because he never committed to what he was going to do.

Bauer says "It may now be possible to provide an answer to a supplementary question: How did 'dehumanizing' the victim -- which actually meant that a "dehumanized" perpetrator -- void of any moral scruples -- tried to reduce the victim to his or her own level -- occur?" Or as Fein put it: "How was the victim removed from the 'universe of human obligation?" Some psychologists believe that it is a process of transference to a leader and who absolves others from moral responsibility by assuming the burden himself.

Added to this equation is that during World War I European society was extremely brutal and that there were those who rebelled against Nazi policies against the handicapped and Bavarians (36). Bauer concludes that it appears that the program went unopposed because anti-Jewish tendencies in the general population, ranging from mild discomfort about Jews to open but nonlethal anti-Semitism, prepared the way for extreme, murderous anti-Semitism and prevented effective resistance to the genocide by the Lumpenintellectuals.

That is, moderate social ostracism of a targeted group, provided the intelligentisia identifies with the political elite and its regime, even without being ideologically persuaded that murder is justified (37). How does this tie in with the Danish? On September 1, 1939, Germany attacked Poland and Denmark proclaimed its neutrality and took what steps it could to ensure its defenses. In 1940, German forces occupied Denmark. Neutrality appeared the only reasonable response to this threat. A Nazi movement among the German minority in South Jutland had become increasingly active.

These were not huge numbers, but its ties with the German Nazis, demands for incorporation of South Jutland into the Third Reich, the actions of its uniformed militants, and the dominant position it gradually received within the German population of the border areas made it a disconcerting element. The Danish government quickly concluded there was no option but to yield to a German ultimatum. Before Germany could take any action against Denmark's outlying territories, Henrik Kauffmann, the Danish ambassador in Washington, placed Greenland under U.S.

protection, and the British occupied the Faroe Islands and Iceland (Miller 28). Germany wanted Denmark to serve as a "model protectorate." The Danes could maintain their own civil government, constitution and administration with German control limited to foreign policy. The King's continued horseback rides through the city found support. At the same time, the government agreed with German orders, police helped root out resistance cells and the farmers provided crops for the German war machine (Buckser 45). However, the Danes refused, despite German pressure, to take measures against the Jews.

They insisted that the Danish Constitution protected religious minorities and any anti-Jewish actions would violate German promises to respect that document. As the Holocaust became worse and worse throughout Europe in 1942 and 1943, the occupation turned ever so more violent. The relations between the Danish and German protectorate collapsed. The government resigned, Denmark was put under martial law and was put under dictatorial control. Best, who was overseeing Denmark, started giving serious thought to a roundup of the Danish Jews.

With a list of addresses stolen from the Jewish Community offices, Gestapo officers began planning for the final event on the Jewish New Year (Buckser 47). Although a Danish government was in power, the permanent under-secretaries in the different ministries kept the country functioning. However, there was no reason left for the Germans not to arrest and deport the Danish Jews as they had done elsewhere in Europe.

Best sent a telegram to Berlin sketched out his plans for the arrest and deportation of the Jews and requested police reinforcements and a transport ship.

According to Kische, "Best was, however, really double-dealing: he knew that a solution of the 'Jewish problem' would make him popular in Berlin and hence give him greater power, but at the same time it was clear to him that any action against the Jews would endanger future cooperation with the Danes and the continued flow of Danish products -- his primary interest." As a solution, Best leaked the contents of the telegram to Georg Ferdinand Duckwitz of the German legation who had contacts with leading Social-Democrats.

SS and Gestapo police units were arriving, and on September 17th the offices of the Jewish congregation were raided by uniformed police units, possibly as a signal to the Danish Jews to disappear. On September 28th, orders were given that arrest of the Danish Jews would take place October 1st. Duckwitz informed his contacts about the Germans had planned. On September 29th Rabbi Marcus Melchior told everyone at the morning services what the Germans had planned and announced that holiday services would be canceled.

The Danish authorities seriously considered interning the Jews themselves in order to protect them from deportation. Simultaneously, Sweden offered the Danish Jews asylum and began handing out temporary Swedish passports, until this was discovered by Danish police in the department of immigration who informed the German authorities. On the Jewish New Year, Rosh Hashanah, the German action began. Most of the Jews.