by Bo Lidegaard
22.15: 2–3 shots were heard from the Trianglen, but it can’t be confirmed.
22.30: There are no tanks at Kongens Nytorv. It is probably a misunderstanding.
22.55: Telex message [from Police Headquarters]: In the places where German soldiers are carrying out operations, Danish police should stay away.
00.15: Police director and deputy director at Police Headquarters. Survey of districts indicates quiet everywhere.
00.40: Loud shooting at Højdevangs School. Station 4 is ordered to send a small car out for observation. Orders NOT to assist the Germans.
00.50: Phone lines reopened.
00.55: Frihavn guard heard loud engine noise along Langelinje [at the main harbor].
00.55: Langelinje quay is open, and there is loud engine noise in the steamer Wartheland, located there.
03.15: German guards are posted out by Grønningen, on the road to Langelinje.
08.00: The German guards at Grønningen are withdrawn. Since the ship at Langelinje dock hasn’t sailed, Station 3 has blocked Langelinje quay from the barge channel and the high promenade.
08.05: Prison commander Kaj Jensen communicates that notification has come from the Horserød prison camp that the German authorities are currently in the process of moving the interned Danish Communists. It involves an estimated 150 prisoners, and the prison camp is very eager to know where they are being taken. A radio truck will follow and observe.
09.15: 8 German transport vehicles with German soldiers and civilians have been observed on Lyngbyvej by the city. A radio truck will observe where they drive to.19
Three times during the evening and night messages are sent from Police Headquarters to the police units on duty not to engage. The orders are clear: Stand by, observe, but do not engage—let alone assist—in the arrests. For the individual policemen, appalled by the German action, these orders must have been understood to mean that they had their superiors’ support to at the very least passively assist the Jews if they could. This was what Danish police did in numerous cases.
From his base at Politiken in central Copenhagen, Bergstrøm reported the same events in his diary: “At 10 p.m. the phones were disconnected. At the same time I was told that lots of German vehicles were seen on the street, the large ones covered with canvas. So that’s how the raid would begin. When you couldn’t use the telephone, it was because they didn’t want the Jews to talk to one another. At the same time, it affected us all. One had a strange prisonlike feeling of being cut off from the outside world. I tried the phone again and again. It was and stayed dead. But the radio played in full force. First a song with an Armageddon-like character. Later patriotic tunes. There was a strange contrast between what was going on and what one heard. I said jokingly to Flemming: ‘What is a home without a father (the embroidered piece in many small homes) and what is a reporter without a phone.’ One could not be sure, of course, that the Germans would not also pay visit to Politiken, which was always being accused by the Nazis for being a Jew newspaper. Therefore I ate a solid meal as a precaution. You never know.”
The action breathed new life into some of the painful questions that had plagued Danes since the surrender of April 9, 1940. Why didn’t we put up a proper fight? And was it right for politicians to have cooperated with the occupying power? Didn’t the assault now show that the Germans were not to be trusted, and that the Danish authorities had been duped? There were no easy answers, and still no one could point out what it was that the government should have done on April 9 or before. The war had amply demonstrated that even much larger countries could not stand against Germany. And it showed the brutality and the terrible devastation that was the result of even futile resistance. So was it wrong, after all, that Denmark had avoided such a disaster?
These issues, too, end up in Bergstrøm’s records: “Some of the young people came, and the issue of defense was again debated. In regard to defense they still asked the question ‘To what avail?’ and I thought it would be irrelevant to discuss what we should have done when we were doing nothing. I slept a little in the chair. The watchman came. He said that the Germans had tanks and guns on the city’s periphery, as if they were awaiting a rebellion. Plenty of cars drove through the streets, and Jews were being arrested everywhere. They were driven to Alsgades School.
“Soon there was a full house. One of the watchman’s friends, whom the Germans had told to lock Jews up someplace, ran away through some backyards. He wouldn’t do it. It was past midnight. The phones were still down.”20
The resistance fighter Erling Foss also put his observations that night into a report sent to Stockholm and London a few days later, including his intelligence on the embarkation in the harbor: “The scenes at the loading of the two vessels are said to have been heartbreaking, as told in the city from the cordoned-off neighborhoods where the prisoners were embarked. Whole families were taken. Two cases were mentioned of women over 80. There was talk of suicides prior to the action, including one for sure—Manager Poul Dessau. There are reports from those released—who are afraid to speak for fear of harassment—that they were roughly treated, including being kicked in the legs.”
In the same report, dated October 4, Foss backtracks in regard to the role of the permanent secretaries: “The message that the permanent secretaries met and decided to give the Germans an offer to intern the Jews was somewhat premature. They refute that anything like this happened, as several permanent secretaries would not agree to facilitate the work of the executioners.”21
It is unclear whether someone deliberately lied to Foss about the Danish offer or—more likely—whether he talked to some of the permanent secretaries who opposed handing over the Danish offer. If that is the case, it reflects that at least some of those directly involved had already gotten cold feet and absolved themselves of responsibility for the failed Danish internment plan, while Svenningsen and Larsen stood by it. It may also reflect some confusion as to what precisely was decided and presented to the Germans.
Today we know more about what actually happened that night than Bergstrøm could know on Rådhuspladsen while the events were unfolding, or what Foss subsequently gleaned. During the night German military police, helped by Danish SS volunteers and the Schalburg Brigade, carried out a comprehensive action across the entire country, but most intensely concentrated in Copenhagen, where the majority of Danish Jews lived. The action was well prepared and well staffed, and it was implemented consistently and brutally. It is estimated that there were thirteen to fourteen hundred German policemen in Denmark—enough to carry out a full-scale action, all the more so, since in the provinces there were Wehrmacht soldiers available to assist. The order was that all “pure Jews” and “half Jews” married to Jews were to be deported. There is no doubt that the goal that night was to arrest as many people as possible. Yet the result of the raid in Copenhagen was meager, with fewer than three hundred out of the German estimate of six thousand Jews arrested. This was due first and foremost to the fact that the vast majority had fled from their homes, but also because of the order not to break into houses and apartments if the owner did not open the door. A grim exception was the Jewish old people’s home in the synagogue courtyard. Many there had not been warned or evacuated, and about thirty of the residents were taken during the operation and deported.
The raid was completed at 1:00 a.m. and the arrested were immediately brought on board the cargo ship Wartheland, which had sailed to Copenhagen for this purpose. The ship could hold up to five thousand prisoners. Paul Hennig, the leading Danish Gestapo man, was aboard cross-examining those arrested to establish whether they should be deported according to the given criteria. This procedure led to the release of nearly a third, who were not rated as pure Jews, leaving 202 individuals to be deported. To these were added some 150 Danish Communist detainees from Horserød, brought to the ship that night. In the provinces eighty-two Jews were arrested and placed in three of the forty waiting freight cars destined for Theresienstadt in the p
resent-day Czech Republic.22
Ekstra Bladet’s front page on October 2, announcing the release of the soldiers, at the bottom lower left, and—subtly—also the purge of the Jews.
The last thing the Germans wanted was publicity about the action against the Jews in Denmark. At the same time, some explanation had to be provided. The result was the announcement that the Danish soldiers who had been held hostage since August 29 were now being released, as the Jews who had instigated the sabotage were removed from society. The attempt to blame the sabotage on the Jews, and to link the much-wanted release of the hostages to the rounding up of Jewish citizens, only served to fuel public anger and contempt for the Germans.
Even if Werner Best noted in his reports to Berlin that the action had not been met with violent demonstrations or protests, and that the release of the soldiers had served its purpose, it is clear that the German authorities in Denmark were well aware of the profoundly negative impact of the action on relations with the Danish authorities and the Danish public. No German wanted to be responsible for a further manhunt, and though a notice about further efforts to arrest the Jews was drafted, it was never made public. The Germans wanted to proceed to other matters.
The legal Danish press, thus, made no reference to the stunning fact that overnight some seven to eight thousand people had vanished into thin air or to their obvious efforts to escape to Sweden. Nor did the press step up anti-Semitic rhetoric or direct further accusations against the Jews or those coming to their aid. The issue simply disappeared from the press—except in Sweden, where the free papers reported in detail on the percecution of the Danish Jews and on the stream of refugees landing on the Swedish coast.
Mediemuseet, Odense
It was already clear from Duckwitz’s warning and later from Best’s information to Svenningsen in the evening that the detainees would be taken to Theresienstadt. According to some of the initial information, the deported would be divided by age and ability to work, but it seems to have become clear very quickly that all the Danish internees would go first to Theresienstadt. The camp was used partly as a collection camp for older prisoners, partly as a transit station from which thousands were sent on to the extermination camps. Thus, although Theresienstadt was not an extermination camp, the key factor was whether prisoners remained under the relatively orderly conditions there, or whether they were sent to death camps.23
After the raid thousands of Jewish refugees went underground, in many cases whole families with their elderly and children who traveled together, particularly in Copenhagen and the northern part of Sjælland. Where earlier they had been on the run from an action they feared would come, now they had become hunted and critically dependent on help from the surrounding community.
CHAPTER 7
* * *
SATURDAY, OCTOBER 2
THE TRANSFER
After the Storm
That morning, a brief, laconic telephone message from the police summed up the situation: “German patrols seen tonight in numerous places leading entire families with children and suitcases. They’re moving in the direction of Langelinje. Besides that nothing is known.”
When Vilhelm Bergstrøm brought his bike into Politiken’s courtyard, the worried guard asked him: “Are they allowed to do just anything?”
In the harbor the Wartheland was ready for those to be deported. Jesper Trier, who went with his ninety-year-old father to the ship, reported: “The climb to the ship up a high, steep and very awkward ladder took place under brutal shouts and blows. A few German military police officers stood behind the railing equipped with long bamboo rods, bent into a hook at one end, with which they caught the neck of victims and dragged them up, if their ascent did not go fast enough.”
At 10:00 a.m. the steamer left Copenhagen heading for Swinemünde on the German Baltic coast, just east of today’s border with Poland. The eighty-two arrested Jews from Jutland and Fyn were picked up by one of the special trains departing from Aalborg at 11:10 a.m. The purpose of the trains was revealed only shortly before their departure, and the report from Danish Railways noted that “railway staff was very shaken by what they witnessed, however they performed correctly.”1
To many the action against the Jews was a humiliating negation of the cooperative line the elected politicians had promulgated. The indiscriminate exercise of power against innocent citizens, which the politicians had been so resolved to deter, was now a reality and confirmed the worst fears of August 29 that the introduction of martial law, the internment of Danish forces, the application of the death penalty, and deportations were only the beginning. Despite all protests the Germans had not hesitated to carry out an operation that lacked even the flimsiest legitimacy. This was Nazi ideology in its purest form, deeply threatening to a society that had hitherto been remarkably successful in avoiding such abuses in daily life. Bergstrøm met a friend who told him in a frightened whisper: “It is good that we are not Jews.” But Bergstrøm, who had now understood the bigger picture, could not reassure her: “We mustn’t rejoice too soon. Our turn could be next. And in any event, it is a very sad story.”2
For the families in the forest, Bergstrøm’s perspective was already an urgent reality. The restless night at the cabin had not lessened their problems. On the contrary, they were now more perplexed than ever even if they had no idea of the wider events of the night. Uncertainty and responsibility weighed, and Poul Hannover began to question the decisions they had already made, and the blind alley in which the family seemed to find itself. If one wants to travel from Copenhagen to Sweden, Falster is neither the straightest nor the most obvious way. On the other hand, it was not so easy now to begin to head north again. They were also hungry, thirsty, and tired.
Poul continues:
We wondered just how early we could risk going up to a farm the next morning—and when it was 7 o’clock, Talleruphuus went on the road—Erik and I—we had seen a paradise apple tree [a kind of crab apple] in the forest, less than a kilometer from the holiday camp—we went down, and Erik shook it like crazy, so that we downed a good dozen small apples—those we ate to clean our mouths. At last Talleruphuus came back—he had been calling about a car—and he said something about the ignition, which had blown, so that the boat could not make the trip. It did not sound encouraging. We cleaned up as well as we could—and after having packed the family out the door, we put a new latch on it—went with our flashlights back to the window we had broken into and crawled out of—and hung the broken shutter up again—and grabbed our bags. It was not so easy to carry them a good kilometer. When we got to the place where the car had left us the previous day, we put down the bags—and Gunnar and I walked on—it was our intention to go to Horbelev, approximately 4 kilometers away, as we were aware that the car could not possibly take all of us.
The families had decided to go to the town of Stubbekøbing, ten kilometers north of Hesnæs, partly to solve the problem of the hungry and thirsty children, partly to find further transport. Panic is kept in check, and the cottage is left as decent people would do. But everything is suddenly very difficult, and even getting a few kilometers up the road entails great challenges and risks: “When we had gone some way, the car passed—it came back somewhat later with all of them and the luggage—when it stopped, the nice driver gave us a lift and we went off—toward Stubbekøbing. I sat in front with Mette and talked with the driver—although he didn’t say anything, he knew what was going on. Later I was told that the police had called him and asked where he had been the previous day. I’m pretty sure that they did it to help us—but of course we saw ghosts everywhere. A forest ranger cast a long look after us—who would expect to see a dozen people with suitcases come out of the woods? The driver had answered the police that he had been in another small town—and he detoured to bring us as directly as possible to the hotel.”
Meanwhile in Copenhagen, Dr. Best sent his first report on the night’s action to Ribbentrop. Best chose to go on the offensive, but he did not
mention the number of detainees. Instead he chose to build on the overall objective, which was fulfilled. The Danish Jews had evaporated: “Starting today, Denmark can be considered cleansed of Jews [entjudet] as no Jew can legally reside or work here anymore.” Best skillfully tried to push the responsibility for continuing the search over to General Hanneken, who according to martial law still held the executive power in the country. Best thus continued his efforts to tie the Wehrmacht in to the action, and in his early reporting to Berlin he quoted an official statement supposed to be published later that same day to the effect that all Jews had to report to the authorities and that anyone who helped the refugees would be “punished according to the laws of war.” Curiously, the announcement was never released—a fact Best subsequently blamed on Hanneken and on Dr. Mildner. The fact is that no one within the German top brass in Denmark wanted to get his fingers dirty, and that everybody was seeking to avoid direct responsibility for the continuation of the search. Still, in relation to Berlin they all had to play it subtly and be seen as doing neither too much, nor too little.
While the proclamation threatening anyone helping the Jews was never issued, the German authorities explained the action in an official announcement on Saturday morning, published in newspapers and broadcast over the radio: “Whereas the Jews, who by their anti-German agitation and their moral and material support for terrorism and sabotage have contributed significantly to the radicalization of the situation in Denmark, have been removed from public life by the measures taken by the German side and thus are prevented from continuing to poison the atmosphere, the authorities will meet the demands from a wide circle of the Danish population and in the next few days begin release of the detained Danish soldiers.”3