Countrymen
Page 7
On September 20 Hanneken got wind of Hitler’s order, prompting an immediate protest to Berlin that if the Wehrmacht were to be involved, it would harm its prestige and burden the young recruits. Therefore the action should be postponed until martial law was lifted. According to the general, a deportation of the Danish Jews would also ruin the relationship with the Danish authorities, including the police, and slow deliveries from Denmark—precisely the arguments that had caused the entire Nazi apparatus to hesitate. The general was hammered into place by his superiors, but it was without any desire or willingness that he called his soldiers to action.
The next day in Copenhagen, Duckwitz discussed with the Swedish minister, Gustav Dardel, the possibility of legal emigration of Danish Jews to Sweden. Dardel, according to Duckwitz, “made every effort. He already regards Denmark as a German province.” The following day the minister reported to Stockholm that the Germans were preparing—probably moderate—laws against the Jews in Denmark.31
On September 23 Foreign Minister Ribbentrop personally took up the matter with Hitler. But this further attempt to postpone was to little avail. The ball was rolling, and Hitler’s order could not be countered. And yet the Führer conceded that the operation had to be carried out while martial law pertained and not, as Hanneken preferred, afterward. Even more important, Ribbentrop also made the specific proviso “that every effort should be made to prevent unnecessary incitement of the Danish population.”32
The duality that characterized Best and Duckwitz—and other prominent representatives of the occupying power in relation to the action against the Jews in Denmark—thus was present all the way up to the pinnacle of the Nazi power apparatus. This is critical to any understanding of the fate of the Danish Jews: Even Hitler’s most trusted men, who were deeply engaged in the final solution’s murderous logic, were challenged by the occupied country’s clear rejection of this very logic. The circle around Hitler had realized that they could impose the operation on Denmark, but not force the Danes to make it their own. Thus, the execution of the final solution in occupied Denmark came at a real cost to the Third Reich. This price was not high enough for Hitler to call off the operation—but high enough to soften the blow.
Denmark’s Jews
The Jewish population in Denmark was complex. Three major groups stood out. There were old Jewish families who had come to the country as early as the seventeenth century. They were deeply integrated, and many of them occupied prominent positions in society’s upper echelons from business, research, and medicine to politics, the press, and the civil service. Most were not religious. The Meyer, Hannover, and Marcus families belonged to this group, as did the chairman of the Jewish community, Supreme Court attorney C. B. Henriques. According to Henriques, the men served as representatives to the community board “because they were Jews, not because they had any particular interest in Judaism, the Jewish religion, culture or history.” The board was, in other words, anything but a religious assembly.
Shortly after his arrival in Sweden, Poul Hannover described his own relationship to his Jewish origins: “I am a Jew—brought up in a rather secular home, where religion was seldom spoken of. I remember that the first time I was to go with my father to church, I asked him which church we were going to. I didn’t take religion classes at school or confirmation instruction in 1911–12. My father told me that his father, who was as secular as my father and I were, went to the synagogue each year on the eve of Yom Kippur, not because he understood what he was hearing, but rather to show that he was listening to it. I’m quite sure that Father, who had learned a little Hebrew, did the same for the same reasons. I can easily say that I went once a year as well for quite the same reasons, without much enthusiasm, because I’m not much part of it, I didn’t understand it, and took no great satisfaction from it.”33
As an adult his son, Allan Hannover, reflected the same basic vision:
Both of my parents were Jewish. My grandparents and all of my ancestors were Jews, however they weren’t Orthodox. We didn’t follow any strict Jewish rules, either about the food we ate or about celebrating the Sabbath and Jewish holidays. My father only participated in the High Holidays at the synagogue in Copenhagen. We celebrated Christmas at home with the Danish traditions of a tree and presents.
I think it’s accurate to say that we felt more Danish than Jewish, and speaking for myself, I can say that as a boy I never had the feeling that I was different or treated otherwise than my friends and classmates. My impression is—and it may be naïveté—that my classmates never gave my Jewish background a second thought. I learned later that they were amazed when they heard I’d suddenly left for Sweden and understood the reason for my disappearance.34
Around the turn of the twentieth century new groups came from Eastern Europe, fleeing poverty, pogroms, and war. About three thousand took up residence in the country, where they were known as “Russian Jews.” Many of them had a more traditional relationship to Jewish traditions and rituals, and most spoke Yiddish at home. They had originally settled in Copenhagen’s poorest neighborhoods, but by 1940 many had gained a better social foothold, and quite a number had become prosperous and well integrated. Their relationship to the old Jewish families in Denmark was not harmonious, however, and it was only in 1937 that the “Russian Jews” succeeded in getting a member elected to the board of the Jewish community.
At the same time a new wave of Jewish refugees reached Denmark. Despite the fact that Denmark followed an increasingly restrictive refugee policy, about fifteen hundred German, Austrian, and Czech Jews fleeing Nazi persecution managed to obtain residence permits in Denmark, though they were not recognized as political refugees. Most were socially disadvantaged, they had little or no funds, and their status was uncertain. The group also included the already mentioned Jewish agricultural trainees with Zionist goals and refugee children who had arrived in the country at the behest of Danish volunteer organizations; taken together these added up to almost 650 young people.35
This diverse group totaling more than seven to eight thousand people—the Germans’ lists calculated the figure at around six thousand—was then subdivided. Some were married to non-Jews, others were children of interfaith marriages of one degree or another, and it remains impossible to identify the various groups as Danish authorities made a point of not asking citizens to declare their faith—let alone keeping registries based on descent or religious beliefs. Some had retained to a greater or lesser extent part of their Jewish faith and heritage, while others carried their Jewish origin only half-consciously. Some—particularly men—were easy to identify as Jewish because of their family names. Others, especially women whose non-Jewish Danish married surnames, appeared less Jewish to the surrounding community.
No precise definitions existed—or were called for. But who could tell how the Germans would decide who should be deported and who should not? Far more than the approximately seven to eight thousand who were directly subject to the operation were uncertain and felt threatened by what lay ahead.36
The underground press was naturally aware that the question of the Jews would come to a head now that “the state of emergency is the most normal thing in our country,” as one illegal paper put it. On September 23 Free Danes reported an episode that reflects both the resistance movement’s strongly critical attitude toward Danish police cooperation with the occupying power and especially the vulnerability of the Jews who had come to Denmark as refugees from Nazi persecution: “Two officers from the coastal police, No. 3208 Larsen and No. 230 Sergeant Nielsen, are to blame that two Jewish families with their children—a total of 11 people—who have lived in this country for years, but who had emigrated here because of the Nazi seizure of power in 1933, will be deported to Poland, where children and adults alike are sure to meet a horrible death after great suffering.
“We wonder if the screams of these people will reach the ‘Danes’ No. 3208 Larsen and No. 230 Nielsen from Poland and haunt them for the rest of their li
ves? We believe it—and how these un-Danish coastal cops deserve it! We loathe the idea of even calling these two guys countrymen.”37
The first part of this article is true. According to a laconic police report, Danish police on September 21 requested the coastal police to investigate the harbor of the small fishing village of Sundby. Here, officers with drawn guns had arrested a group of Jews in full traveling gear in the cabin of the motor vessel K575 Lis, moored at the northern pier. Two fishermen were also arrested, under suspicion of having assisted with the planned escape. Fortunately, however, it is not accurate that those arrested were deported to Poland. They were presented at Police Headquarters in Copenhagen before the state attorney for special afffairs. This implied Danish jurisdiction, and according to standard procedures in such cases the suspects were released pending later trial for attempted illegal immigration. Most likely the defendants disappeared before they could be taken to court.38
At the editorial offices of Politiken, one of the leading newspapers, Vilhelm Bergstrøm, the hard-bitten crime reporter, followed the growing panic with ironic distance. The offices of the paper overlooked Town Hall Square, and thus also faced Dagmarhus, the German headquarters. Bergstrøm knew his way around occupied Copenhagen and was a well-informed observer. From his lookout post on the square he saw and heard much that was complemented by his work as editor of The Crime Squad Magazine. What’s more, he wrote it all down in a detailed diary, which has been preserved as the unique testimony of a sharp and sarcastic observer who experienced day-to-day events during the occupation without the layers of rationalization that invariably characterize later memoirs. Bergstrøm had no special connection to the Jewish minority, but he took the temperature of Copenhageners’ experiences and conveyed the power of rumors and reports, which were part of daily life. Nobody knew anything, but everybody had heard a lot. What should one think? On what basis should one make decisions that could prove disastrous for the entire family? Bergstrøm couldn’t use the hindsight of posterity to sort through everything that proved extraneous or of no value. He wasn’t a witness to truth, but a true witness to what was thought and said, person to person, in occupied Copenhagen. Bergstrøm was an utterly unheroic patriot who despised everything the occupation forces stood for, but who preferred to express his views only in the diary that he kept assiduously, which together with his clippings from the underground press and much more fills no fewer than 207 binders.39
Bergstrøm shared many of his contemporaries’ prejudices about Jews and was, as will be seen, not a great fan of what he called “Jewish lineage.” Initially he found it hard to take the toss seriously. But he recorded in his diary that others did, as demonstrated in an excerpt from September 24: “Næsh [a colleague] mentioned that 8–14 days ago the Germans had seized the addresses book of Jewish émigrés up at Chief Rabbi Friediger’s, while he was on vacation. Now the entire city’s Jewish stock shook over what would happen. Miss Ventegodt came rushing. She was very excited, cheeks aflame, then she was off, an errand, she would not say what it was about. Later it came out. She is of Jewish genealogy on her mother’s side. She had been out to say good-bye. These Jews were dead sure that they would be picked up in the night and must therefore say good-bye. The protectorate would come upon us, and we would get laws against the Jews.”40
Dr. Meyer and the Uncomfortable Rumors
The well-known pediatrician Adolph Meyer sat on the Jewish community’s advisory board and was a prominent member of Copenhagen’s cosmopolitan and liberal bourgeoisie. He had five adult children, including thirty-four-year-old twin daughters, Kis and Inger, who were happily married: Kis’s husband was a five-years-older merchant, Gunnar Marcus, who ran an agency in textiles and knitted fabrics, and with whom she had a daughter, Dorte, nine, and a son, Palle, six. The family lived in Charlottenlund, a well-to-do suburb north of Copenhagen not far from Lyngbyvej and Søholm Park, where Inger lived with Poul Hannover, twelve years her senior and the managing director of the machine factory Titan. They also had two children, son Allan, who had just turned thirteen, and daughter Mette, who was four years younger. The two families were close and confidential with each other. The Hannovers were better off than the Marcuses, who were comfortable without being wealthy.41
On September 26 Dr. Meyer detailed in his diary the developments he was made aware of that day, which he immediately realized would have a dramatic effect on the Jewish community. Since he was a member of the board, it weighed on his mind to explain and justify for himself and history the basis on which he and his colleagues had consistently sought to calm the unease among fellow Jews: “After April 9, 1940, when Denmark was occupied, there were often fears among the Jewish Danes that the Jewish laws of Germany would be imposed. But time and again assurances were given that the ‘Jewish issue in Denmark’ had been shelved by the Germans until after the war, which they naturally expected to win. Therefore the Jewish representatives also adopted a resolution that it was up to the Danish government to undertake what it felt was in keeping with Danish well-being and dignity. When, on August 29, 1943, the state of emergency was introduced, and several hundred prominent citizens were interned—among others Chief Rabbi Friediger, the superintendent of the synagogue Axel Margolinsky, the president of the Jewish community C. B. Henriques, … and several others (in total, I believe, only 10–12 Jewish Danes), anxiety increased among the Jews.”42
The Israeli historian Leni Yahil also describes the Jewish community’s grasping for normalcy as the only way out: “The members of the executive committee felt in the spring of 1943 that the foundations of the law were about to crumble beneath the feet of all Danes, and they were in the dark as to the people’s attitude toward them in the absence of a stable rule of law. They knew no other way than to continue to cling with all their might to that same law and to place their trust in the ‘preservation of law and order.’ ”43
One of the common arguments against early escape was the danger that it could provoke retaliation against those who remained in the country, which was also pointed out by Nils Svenningsen to the Jewish representatives. In a sense this made all the Jews hostages to one another, and the threat that the escape of one might lead to the deportation of another paralyzed the entire community.
In his contemporaneous report Dr. Meyer explains further how the German theft of address lists from the offices of the Jewish community gave notice of what was coming: “In September, the representatives held many meetings in the president’s office. On August 31, I think, the Germans arrived at the secretariat, and having clipped the phone wires, forced the two women present, under threat of a gun, to hand over the ministerial ledgers and some other records [that contained lists of members, among other things]. A notification to this effect was sent to the criminal police and to the foreign ministry.”
This holdup at the community’s secretariat was conducted under the direction of a Danish anti-Semite, Paul Hennig, who worked for the Gestapo at Dagmarhus in a small unit responsible for collecting and processing information on the Danish Jews.
Dr. Meyer continues:
Later in September, on the seventeenth, a Friday morning, the Gestapo came to Ny Kongensgade 6 [the address of the Jewish community offices, where the community’s archive was also located], sought out the librarian, Fischer, under threat of a gun against the porter, Petersen, who led the way to his apartment. Mrs. Fischer opened up, and the apartment was searched. When Mrs. Fischer said that Mr. Fischer was in the synagogue, the Germans drove there with the porter, went into the synagogue, and took away Fischer, who was about to pack his things.… They drove back to Ny Kongensgade and searched the house with Fischer and the porter, asked to see the library, which they ransacked, and took a number of books, among other things, everything of biographical interest and genealogical lists, as well as an earlier genealogical table, also an earlier lodge minutes, a vocational guidance book, and a recently begun manuscript of the lodge’s history. Then they went to the community’s office, where they t
ook an old marriage register and inquired about the society’s wealth, which of course is in deficit. Axel Hertz, the treasurer, asked one of them in German: “By what right do you come here?” He answered: “By the right of the stronger,” to which Alex replied, still in German, “That is no good right.” They were polite, but surrounded by armed soldiers.
This brief exchange of words in the Jewish community’s office stands as a concentrated expression of the countless communications in which Jews met injustice. The treasurer’s question was in all simplicity what a law-abiding citizen had to ask when he, without resistance, chose to give in to thugs and disclose documents that were entrusted to him: “By what right do you come here?” In Axel Hertz’s world the question was vital, neither humble nor polemic. It was the issue of the rule of law, on which democracy is founded, and it remains fundamental and urgent for one who has to yield to what he perceives as injustice. The Nazi’s answer was full and honest. They came by the right they believed in, which formed the basis of their ideology: the right of the stronger. Not as a slogan but as a genuine expression of the idea that a society dominated by the stronger, cleaner, and more insightful would be a better and more powerful one. There were necessary costs, in the Nazi worldview, associated with the establishment of this new order. The eradication, or at least expulsion and elimination from society, of the inferior races, along with weak and deviant individuals, was one such cost. But this was justified in a world where the ideal was the right of the stronger.