by Bo Lidegaard
In this perspective Axel Hertz’s brief rejoinder is all the more significant. It is not the crime committed against him and his colleagues he objects to, let alone opposes. It is the very idea behind it that he rejects. Axel Hertz in his own way was a courageous man. He did not speak up only for himself and other members of his community. He expressed a simple fact within his world: The right of the stronger was no right at all. Elsewhere in Europe an Axel Hertz would barely have survived the visit and most likely not such an exchange. The fact that it took place and was told and retold within the community’s leadership testifies to the Danish Jews’ insistence that the rule of law was their best defense. This may seem a dangerous illusion, even a self-deception, given what ensued. But it is not that simple. It was a strategy that helped solidify the view of Danish society, as a whole, facing a threat that went much further than those first in line, the Jews. What was at stake was the very foundation of the rule of law, and therefore of everything Danes had fought for and built over decades. Thus, if society gave way to the idea of the right of the stronger, the entire nation was threatened.
In this situation Axel Hertz was personally powerless. But rooted in his simple observation was precisely what made the implementation of an action against the Danish Jews so difficult: Few felt it was necessary, fewer that it was right. And even injustice needs a semblance of law. That is hard to find when the entire society denies the right of the stronger.
Hannah Arendt is quoting Leni Yahil when she says that “for the Danes the Jewish question was a political and not a humanitarian question.” Axel Hertz confirms that thesis. He did not react as a victim but rather as someone who rejected the political rationale behind the Nazi atrocity.44
Dr. Meyer continues his account:
Through the Foreign Ministry the representatives learned that the investigation was caused by “an indication of sabotage.” Dr. Best still assured the Foreign Ministry that no action against the Danish Jews was intended. Rumors swirled, and they assumed more and more certain form after September 22, but through Bishop Fuglsang-Damgaard and Mr. Nils Svenningsen, and also through the outgoing prime minister Scavenius and Trade Minister Halfdan Henriksen, we still got soothing assurances, originating from Dr. Best, the German Reich representative, and from General von Hanneken, the head of the German Wehrmacht. I acted in good faith, therefore, when I denied the rumors.
Leni Yahil summarizes, in her historical retrospective, the situation after the government’s resignation on August 29: “With the annulment of Denmark’s democratic institutions, in reality, the Jews’ protection was also repealed as a constituent part of legal society.”
What Yahil overlooked, Erik Seidenfaden—a Danish journalist, resistance fighter, and leader of the Danish Press Service in Stockholm—noted. In a book written under a pseudonym and published in Sweden shortly after the Jewish operation, he explains why the Danish Jews had their sense of relative security confirmed during 1943, rather than the opposite: “It had become clear that persecution of the Jews was unthinkable as long as Denmark’s king and legitimate government functioned, and the Best period showed many signs of a strong German desire to maintain to the end ‘the Danish form of occupation.’ The impression that the prevailing conditions could be preserved had gradually been reinforced. When persecution of the Jews began in Denmark, it came suddenly, and it seemed all the more violent as the German strongmen went directly to deportations, without preparing the Danes gradually through the Nuremberg Laws, Jewish stars, and individual pogroms.”45
It is against this background that one should understand the confidence with which Dr. Meyer accepted Werner Best’s assurances. Of course the action against the Norwegian Jews in October and November 1942, and the rumors about what was going on elsewhere in Europe, were deeply troubling. But despite all fears, Best had turned out to work for the stabilization of the situation in Denmark. After all, since his arrival elections had been held, and he had assured that no measures would be taken against Danish Jews. Thus Best had built up considerable trust among leading Danes, including the Jewish community. But after August 29 anxiety spread, intensifying by the end of September to deep concern, as is clear from notes Poul Hannover, Meyer’s son-in-law, made the same day:
I called up Knud [his oldest brother]—he spoke very carefully on the telephone, but I understood that he had received the same warning as we did, just not from the same source.
Sunday afternoon two people came from the factory, neither of whom I had anything to do with at all on a daily basis, to warn me. In addition, a man who is married to Inger’s cousin came to give a warning. When the children were out we went over to Kis and Gunnar. They were very nervous. Eventually we went home, but on the way back we met a police officer whom we knew. He reassured us—though he had certainly heard some of the rumors—but definitely did not think that the Germans had enough people to do anything to the extent that was being talked about. But he did promise to warn us if he noticed anything. For safety’s sake I went over to an old friend who has a house in the countryside north of Copenhagen to hear if I might borrow it if need be—but I didn’t find him. Eventually I went home—but I spent the night away—and got Inger and the children to do the same, although Inger shook her head. But as the children had a day off from school the next day they just considered it exciting.
Thirteen-year-old Allan Hannover now also began to register that something was wrong. With his uncle and aunt he had been to a concert downtown at the Odd Fellows’ Palace on the occasion of the king’s birthday, and when he came home by trolley, he asked his mother if there were any other plans for the evening. She said she didn’t know yet, but the boy understood from her tone that “there was something afoot” and noted in his diary: “A little later, when I came up to the bedroom, I saw that some suitcases were packed.” Allan was told that he should spend the night with a friend in the Søholm Park neighborhood where they lived. The neighbors there, after the imposition of the August 29 curfew, had built small stepladders, so that they didn’t have to walk on public thoroughfares after nightfall and could move around in the neighborhood unimpeded, through each other’s gardens. The family now sought refuge with neighbors or acquaintances living nearby, where they spent the night.
Poul Hannover’s sister-in-law, Kis Marcus, describes the turmoil in her diary, and her sister and brother-in-law’s visit that Sunday afternoon: “We got visits in the afternoon, first from Erik Schottländer [a friend] and then from Poul and Inger, who advised us to go away for the night. We then went down to Erik and Elsa Nyegaard, who had agreed last week that we might live in their little guesthouse if it became necessary.”
Erik Nyegaard was vice president of Automatic, a telephone manufacturer. He lived with his wife, Elsa, in a villa on Strandvejen 184—not far from Kis and Gunnar’s own residence. The Nyegaard and the Marcus families had close ties, and apparently Erik Nyegaard had early connections with a non-Communist resistance group, “Holger Danske,” named after the legendary Danish warrior and knight in Charlemagne’s army—though little is known about Nyegaard’s precise involvement in armed resistance.
Within the Jewish community everyone sat tight. But it is clear that on Sunday hopes were still that the anxiety would pass and that soon things would calm down again.
Allan Hannover drew a sketch of the Søholm Park neighborhood. He depicts the houses and gardens, and also the small stepladders the family fathers had built in order to be able to move freely between houses during the curfew. The brief account written by the boy in the days before his family’s departure reflects how the entire community rallied behind them, each seeking in his or her own way to help out and find a solution. The implicit assumption is that everyone was threatened and that no one at Søholm Park could be indifferent.
Private family collection
CHAPTER 2
* * *
MONDAY, SEPTEMBER 27
AT HOME
Beliefs and Doubts
The next morn
ing it seemed to be over, like a nightmare that disappears at the break of day. Daily life restarted, and they had, using Poul Hannover’s expression, “almost the impression that there was a relaxation of the situation. Possibly it was because one could not stand continuing the excitement. We were home at night.” Kis and Gunnar also took it easy, now that Sunday’s stir had subsided. Kis writes: “The next morning we went home. I had an ironing day, and hired a new maid to begin Friday, October 1. We were home that night and thought again that it was all rumors.”
Young Allan reports that the maids who had stayed in their house overnight reported in the morning that everything had been quiet at night. The family returned home, unpacked their suitcases, and the children were sent to school as usual. It all seemed to be a tempest in a teapot, and on Monday night everyone slept safely at home as if nothing had happened. So did Dr. Meyer, who “spoke optimistically” to anxious friends. He also went to bed at home, but noted the rumors: “It was said that a raid was to be conducted on the Jews and that there were ships in the ‘Free Port’ to take the Jews to Germany or Poland, etc.”
For most people it was hard to believe that it really could come to an action against the Danish Jews, the majority of whom were fully integrated into society. A contributing factor was that the threat of an action against the Jews was included as a standing item in the more-or-less explicit threats the occupation authorities resorted to whenever they wanted to pressure the Danish politicians and authorities. After August 29 in particular, when martial law was imposed, and rumors swirled about the Wehrmacht or the German security establishment taking direct control of Denmark, it was widely perceived as part of the Germans’ usual campaign of intimidation to scare the Danes into place and form a new government more to the liking of the occupying power. This fooled many politicians and indeed many Jews.
Most Danes simply could not bring themselves to believe that it could happen there. A short note from Vilhelm Bergstrøm’s diary for September 25 illustrates the mood: The husband of the famous cabaret singer Lulu Ziegler, the actor and stage director Per Knutzon, was among the hostages the Germans had taken on August 29: “Lulu Ziegler every other day storms against ‘Dagmarhus’ to free her husband, Per Knutzon. She is on speaking terms with the people there. She asked if there would be any Jewish laws in this country, but they didn’t think so.”1
A few days later, on September 27, a source within the police tells Bergstrøm that something is not right: “Bjerring [the police commissioner] said there were probably 500 to 600 Gestapo up here at the moment and that the police general [Kurt] Daluege himself had been here and seen the situation. Bjerring observed that the news from Russia sounded kind of strange. Was there anything left out? The Germans had retreated almost too willingly. We talked about a possible Russian victory and its consequences. It was by no means pleasant if we got Russia too close. It was just about the worst thing that could happen.”2
Bergstrøm voted for the Conservatives, but his view of Russia closely reflects the policy the Social Democratic and Center Liberal Party coalition government had also followed for more than a decade: The danger came from totalitarian thought itself. Nazism, Communism, and persecution of the Jews all originated from the same totalitarian mind-set. One evil was no less dangerous than the other; Communism could not be fought with Nazism or vice versa. This view made the Danish politicians deeply skeptical of early armed resistance because it originated mainly from the political extremes, especially from the well-organized Communists who had gone underground in 1941 after the German campaign in the East and the subsequent Danish arrests. For the ordinary citizen—like Bergstrøm—this perspective was so fundamental that it overshadowed most other political views. The nation’s existence was threatened by the rise of totalitarian ideologies that also entailed the degradation and elimination of people because of race, creed, or political conviction. This was the front line that separated the “them” and the “us.” It was also the line that the Danish people somehow had to defend.
Meanwhile in Sweden
There are many similarities in the development of the Danish and the Swedish attitude toward Nazi Germany. In both countries the electorate overwhelmingly rejected Nazism as well as radical anti-Semitism. Both countries stood out as firmly anti-Communist and both sought to remain neutral in regard to what the Social Democratic Swedish prime minister, Per Albin Hansson, called “the war of the great powers.”
Sweden and Denmark also pursued largely the same restrictive policy, attempting to stem a feared wave of refugees as Germany, in the lead-up to the war, sought to expel its Jewish population. Both countries kept a firm focus on their own internal social stability, and in both the authorities sought to discourage critical press reports on events in the Third Reich and, after the outbreak of war, in regard to atrocities committed by Germany. As in Denmark, a coalition government spanning political parties was formed in Stockholm, where significant voices on the Right favored active and far-reaching cooperation with Germany. In general the extreme Right in Sweden was stronger and more radical than in Denmark, but the dominating Social Democratic Party held firm control of most government institutions.
Sweden maintained extensive exports of strategic goods to Germany and provided concessions that pushed the government to the edge of its declared neutrality, including a controversial access that allowed transit to Norway of German troop contingents. After the occupation of Norway and Denmark, public opinion in Sweden grew more and more hostile to Nazi Germany, and the attitude to refugees from the Nordic countries was favorable. Opinion in Sweden in the fall of 1942 turned increasingly against the policy of concessions pursued by their government. It was not only the changing fortunes of the war but rather the increasing press reports on Nazi repression in Denmark and, in particular, in Norway that had a decisive impact within most of the Swedish population.
Still, the action against the Norwegian Jews in the fall of 1942 took Sweden by surprise, and efforts to intervene came too late, provoking widespread criticism. This taught the Swedish authorities a lesson that came to good use in Denmark in 1943, and again in 1944 as Sweden intervened to help the Hungarian Jews.
Gradually Sweden became more defiant in relation to Nazi Germany. As the danger of an outright German attack on Sweden seemed more and more remote, the need to demonstrate vis-à-vis the Allies and the other Nordic countries a will to resist the Reich seemed more pressing. In the summer of 1942 Sweden, for the last time, returned German deserters to the Wehrmacht in Norway, and that same fall the press was granted more freedom. By the spring and summer of the following year efforts by the Swedish government to control the news ceased.3
After the August unrest in Denmark, anxiety in Sweden grew over the fate that now awaited the Danish Jews. Up to this point only a total of some hundred Danish resistance fighters and other refugees had managed to escape illegally to Sweden, but in the first week of September the refugee flows increased dramatically and quickly reached six hundred people. The fugitives were primarily Danish military personnel who fled to safety or who wanted to proceed to Britain and volunteer for the fight against the Germans. But about sixty were Jews who already felt the earth moving underfoot.
On August 31 the Swedish foreign minister, Christian Günther, told the Danish minister in Stockholm that Sweden would do everything possible to help the Danish refugees, and that a castle in southern Skåne, not far from the Øresund, the narrow strait separating Sweden from Sjælland, the island on which Copenhagen is situated, had been prepared as a reception center. At the same time the Swedish minister at the legation in Copenhagen was instructed to issue Swedish visas with a considerably freer hand than usual. Minister Gustav Dardel, who was a committed activist, did everything in his power, but in practice the acquisition of a Swedish passport was a viable option only for the very few Danish Jews who already had manifest personal ties to Sweden. The first days of September intensified the stream of rumors, and the minister tried through interviews with
Danish authorities and Dr. Best to clarify how much was true. Best assured him that he would prevent the action, but Dardel did not believe him, probably partly because the same day Duckwitz indicated that an operation was indeed under way.
Duckwitz traveled to Sweden on September 21—by all accounts with Best’s blessing, maybe even at his request. The next day he reached Stockholm by train, where on the evening of September 22 he met with Prime Minister Albin. We know nothing from Swedish sources about the content of their three-hour conversation, but judging from Duckwitz’s brief notes the conversation focused broadly on Swedish-German relations. They also appear to have agreed that a Swedish diplomat, Nils Erik Ekblad, was to join Duckwitz on his return in order to step up Sweden’s efforts to issue papers allowing Danish Jews to travel out of Denmark legally. There is nothing to suggest that the meeting in Stockholm changed the Swedish position. But it is reasonable to assume that it further strengthened the Swedish government’s decision to prepare for a German action against the Danish Jews and the possibility that it would trigger an influx of refugees into Sweden.