by Bo Lidegaard
For the Marcus family it was less easy, because they had no Swedish visas and no direct connections. But all benefited from the Swedish hospitality and the family ties that were now apparent on the Swedish side of the Sound. Kis tells of the Marcus family’s arrival:
When we were finished at the customs station, we went to the police. They were very gracious to us. Palle, Dorte, and Mette were allowed to write on their typewriters while we waited, and Allan was put on a sofa, where he promptly fell asleep. In return the officers got to eat the remnants of our sandwiches, which they were enthusiastic about. We were just to hand over our passports and then come back the next day, and our money was actually also kept by the police. It was easy for Poul and Inger, who had visas. They would soon be allowed to go wherever they wanted. The police called and ordered a room for us at the Hotel Continental, and we drove there by car, as Allan was so worn out that he couldn’t stand on his own two feet.
As soon as our suitcases came, I bathed the kids, washed their hair, and put them to bed.—We used the phone to call to see if any of the family had come; we were disappointed not to hear that Ada [Kis’s older sister] was there, as we thought she had come over.
We knew nothing about all the others. Poul called his cousin and found out a little about his family.… Later in the day we found out about more arrivals. We were happy about each one we heard about while we were extremely anxious for those who had not yet come.
After having taken a bath myself I also went to bed. (Gunnar was sleeping with the newspaper lifted high in one hand.) At 9 p.m. we got up and had dinner in the restaurant.
Poul Hannover was fortunate because as a longtime director of the engineering and electronics company Titan, he had close contact with the great Swedish electronics company ASEA, which had interests in Titan. ASEA’s CEO, Herman Wernekinck, was a close acquaintance: “I asked Wernekinck, who gave me a warm welcome and assured me that we had been in their thoughts in the last days, to telegraph ASEA in Copenhagen … and told him where we were.… Then our luggage came—and I now felt I couldn’t do any more. In the meantime Inger had washed Mette and herself and put Mette to bed. We left a message that we would sleep until 7 p.m., and I fell asleep right away.”
It was not a long sleep for the Hannover and Marcus families in Ystad. A few hours after they had gone to bed, they got up for their first evening in Sweden: “We managed to get a hot bath—it was wonderful. When we got up at 9, we all went to dinner. The police had said we should not worry about ration coupons—that would be arranged later. When we had eaten, I called Walter [a relative living permanently in Sweden] again—this time I reached him and got the first information about who had come—including Uncle Carl Johan and the whole family as well as Inger and Hans. It was great—but what about Mother? Yes—a man was sent over to try to get her and Aunt Ida over. Although the children, who had recently been put to bed, were dead tired, they were happy to hear the names—and not 10 minutes later Walter phoned: Poul—I am pleased to tell you that your mother and Aunt Ida came over here—and Father’s going down to pick them up tomorrow.
“So we slept—as best we could—happy and grateful for those who had come—anxious and worried about those we knew nothing about. We had no idea if Else and Knud [Poul’s brother and sister-in-law] had come over with Mom—and don’t know yet.”
Allan has his own account of the arrival in Ystad:
As we approached the harbor two workers jumped up on the dock and shouted “Välkommen,” and the soldier who stood guard on the pier also greeted us. Then a rowboat came toward us with four sailors from a patrol boat, threw us a line, and came on board. When we came ashore and had taken leave of the fishermen, we were to go to the customs building. However, I had to use the toilet and asked a soldier to show me the way. When I finished, my hands were so frozen stiff that I could not even button my pants. Our suitcases were looked over in the customs building, and we were inspected for typhus by the doctor.
While suitcases were being examined, we found out that the fishermen, who had sailed further into the harbor, were now on their way out. Everyone in the customs building came out and waved good-bye to the fishermen and to the Dannebrog [the Danish flag]. While we stood outside the customs building and waited to see what would happen, a bag of apples was lowered down to us from the second floor.
We went on to the police station and presented our passports. As I was very tired, I was placed on a couch in the guardroom, where I fell asleep, and when it was Mother’s and Father’s turn to be questioned, they could not wake me up. They finished what was needed, and agreed that I could come and sign it the next day. I was eventually awakened, and we got a taxi to the Hotel Continental, where we—after being given a cup of tea—went to bed and slept until 7 p.m. At around 9:30 p.m. we went down and ate and then back up and slept again.
It is obvious that Allan’s report, at least to a degree, reflects the versions of the crossing and the arrival that have already started to settle into the family’s story. Because the processing of dramatic events is achieved partially through the telling and retelling of experiences, it can already be difficult after a short time, even for those who have lived them, to distinguish between what was seen and what is told. An additional entry in Allan’s diary demonstrates that his report was written a little later than the other two: “By refugees who reached Sweden later from Falster, we were told that in Stubbekøbing, where the whole town was involved with our departure, an informer had made the Germans aware of our presence, and Frey’s Hotel had been searched only a few hours after we had left it.”
Allan’s account is confirmed by the report from Vicar Niels Lund in Stubbekøbing about the families’ departure: “The negotiations, which now appeared to be founded on more solid ground, continued in the afternoon and resulted in the whole group in the evening getting off happily to Sweden from Grønsund ferry landing. It was not a moment too soon. In the evening a small, private air-raid siren sounded in Stubbekøbing, while a company of Germans turned the police station and all the city’s hotels and guesthouses upside down. Someone had kindly reported that there were Jews in Stubbekøbing. The expedition, however, yielded no result. The birds had flown, and naturally no one here knew that they had been here at all.”9
If the families at the Hotel Continental in Ystad took a look at that day’s edition of the leading Swedish newspaper, Dagens Nyheter, they would have seen that the action against the Danish Jews was front-page news, with the headline that sixteen hundred had already been deported. The newspaper also declared that all Danish Jews were welcome in Sweden. The editorial was titled “Sacrificing to Idols”: “There exist some pseudo-religions with ritual murders as part of their cult. Sometimes it happens that a resourceful tribe first uses a threat as a means of pressure to achieve what it wants—and after that the prestige of the idol enters the picture. It can also happen that the highest leadership at a given moment is blind to anything but the holy mission—blood mission, extermination mission. In which direction such a leadership may guide itself and its people can be left unsaid. It provokes the horror one experiences in face of that which no longer belongs to the community of humanity.”
These are strong words, significantly stronger than the Swedish press’s past criticism of Hitler’s regime and Nazism. The editorial concluded: “Pogroms in Copenhagen—this is the unfathomable, which has to arouse even the most complacent, open the eyes of those who have been willing to keep them closed harder and longer than the rest. Far stronger than before, popular sentiment, all the way down to the commonest people, will rise up against anything that can be construed as Swedish favors to the suppressors of our brothers and sisters. Between the Swedish people and the leaders of the German people, the vapors from the burned offerings now rise ever thicker, ever more suffocating and sickening. They infuriate people. Anything else would be shameful.”
More subdued, but still not to be misunderstood, the competing Svenska Dagbladet headed its editorial “Agai
nst Divine and Human Order”: “With deepest disgust and outraged feelings the Swedish people learn that racial hatred against the Jews, which last year led to such terrible scenes in Norway, now has been unleashed on Danish soil.… What it is about, and what is contrary to all divine and human order, is the sinister and ruthless disregard for humanity’s advances through the long centuries of Western history, which these persecutions of Jews demonstrate.”
The announcement that Sweden would accept all Danish Jews had already opened a perspective that no one had previously imagined. Now the Swedish authorities came up with orders for the Swedish navy to repel all German war vessels in Swedish waters, as well as orders to refuel the boats of Danish fishermen who came over with refugees.
Although all these practical measures were of great importance, perhaps Sweden’s most important contribution was to publicize the German action directly and intensely, both in official statements and in the Swedish press. The press conveyed greatly exaggerated and dramatized figures about captives and deportees, and not least the Germans’ persistent attempts to stem the flight and capture the fugitives. For the first time the Nazis had to pursue their persecution of the Jews under scrutiny by a free press, reporting daily on the situation in Denmark and the desperate situation of the refugees. This awareness was anything but welcome and may in itself have contributed to reducing the German authorities’ desire to take effective action against the flood of refugees now gathering to flee Denmark.10
“The Psychopaths … Rule the World”
By Sunday, October 3, only a few Danish Jews had arrived in Sweden. But many had now set themselves in motion, and they sought very different roads to get across the Øresund. Hospitals in particular served as collection centers, and hospital doctors took action as coordinators of large refugee flows.
At Copenhagen’s municipal hospital Ella Fischer followed the developments with growing concern. One report that gave cause for hope was the message that Jews would be welcome in a safe haven in Sweden, as shown by Ella’s short diary entry from Sunday after a visit from her sister, who apparently continued to move about the city regardless of the prevailing conditions: “Edith came and visited me. She said that Sweden had offered Germany to create a haven for the Jews and was, in that case, quite optimistic. She said that if we were allowed to travel to Sweden legally, she would make sure that I could come along.”11
In Ruds Vedby in the middle of Sjælland, the twin sisters’ father, Dr. Meyer, sat in his friend’s home with major concerns. There were still practical matters to be arranged and money to be deposited. In his brief record from that Sunday he notes that he has been told that the weather was good and would stay that way for a few days: “There was a good chance of crossing.… In the evening, when Hart came home, he told me about the raid and people’s rage and helpfulness, and thought that my children were all safe.”
That was the message Dr. Meyer had been waiting for. The time had come when the head of the family also had to take steps to reach safety.
The same day, not far from Ruds Vedby, where Adolph Meyer was hiding, twenty-five-year-old Herbert Levysohn, using an alias, sought out Dr. Stubbe Teilberg at the hospital in Dianalund. Levysohn was the grandson of the prominent textile merchant William Levysohn, and his father, Willie Levysohn, was among the leading members of the Jewish community who were taken hostage on August 29 and who were still in Horserød camp. Herbert had been hiding in the previous days with friends in the village of Stenlille, a few kilometers farther east, but like so many others he now realized that the situation was untenable and that he had to go to Sweden. The chief physician was helpful but would not, according to the report Levysohn wrote later in October, keep him in the hospital: “He continued, ‘I cannot keep you in my department. It is the epilepsy department and it will hurt you more than benefit you. But you can go to a farmer outside the village of Kongsted. I often have patients there in need of rest. It’s in a lonely place and won’t attract attention, as there often are guests. I have spoken to the farmer, and you are welcome. There is also room for your mother and sister, who I understand may come in a few days.’ I was happy with this arrangement and Wenzzel [a helper] and I went back again, after the doctor finally uttered the following truth: ‘In 1930 we wrote major medical treatises on how to deal with psychopaths, and now it’s the psychopaths who rule the world.’ ”12
That same evening another solo refugee, Bernhard Cohn, made his circuitous way to the tiny fishing hamlet of Gilleleje at the northern tip of Sjælland, where good friends had told him that refugees were being shipped to Sweden. All day long young Cohn had struggled with the leg he had strained when he let his temper get the better of him as he disembarked that same morning in Havnegade. About events in Gilleleje on Monday evening, “Bubi” Cohn writes:
So we traveled individually to Gilleleje. When we got up there, after some negotiation we were led to a house where others were waiting.… I could feel something had not worked out right. It turned out that the skipper with whom we should have sailed had run away. A connection with another skipper was then established, and we went down to the harbor. A strange sight. There were lots of fishermen with their hands in their pockets. Furthermore, Danish police officers strutted around as guards armed with rifles, etc. These officers showed us the way.
When we came out to the ship, the captain would not sail because he had heard that the Gestapo were on their way to the port. While we stood and anxiously discussed this with him, there was a cry: “Scatter, the Germans are coming!” I ran with the small suitcase I had stolen from Mogens up into the city. However, I was overtaken by someone who told me that I should just go back, they would sail anyway. When I came down to the cutter, an unbelievable 12 elegant suitcases were lined up at the deck. I loaded the suitcase into the hold, where all the others were sitting, and joined them.
And then came 45 minutes which I shall never forget. We heard people coming out on the pier in rhythmic steps. We heard them approaching and someone went up into the back of the ship. We heard a voice asking to see an ID, then a voice replied that he didn’t damn well have such a thing. We were not supposed to utter a word. Ingrid Seligmann, who sat next to me, was very agitated. She had to hold my hand. Allan wasn’t any better. They complained all the time: we won’t get over, we won’t get over. Old man Meyer and I were the calmest. I didn’t do anything but tell the others in the group to shut up. Suddenly the bulkhead was lifted and a man with lit match looked over our faces. I thought that our time had run out. I had decided to jump into the water in the dark and maybe swim to the beach, or the like. But the man proved to be a fisherman.
Many years later the fisherman Poul Jorgensen tells of the events of that night, when two vessels had already slipped away from Gilleleje with refugees. Several fishermen would not sail because it was Confirmation Sunday, and many were either holding a confirmation party within their own family or were invited to attend one as a guest. Poul Jorgensen, however, had met the thirty-seven-year-old skipper Juhl Richard Svendsen, who agreed to sail, and together they got the group, which Cohn also belonged to, on board the cutter Danebrog, which lay in the inner harbor by an old wooden bridge. “At 7 to 8 p.m. the Germans came. They had been hanging around at the hotel. I cast off, and we drifted out from the pier—Juhl Svendsen lay hidden in the wheelhouse, and I lay flat on the deck. All boats in the harbor were searched but we got away, and we were the only ones who had Jews. The Germans were probably in the harbor for a few hours, but they did not set up spotlights and there were no shots fired.
“We drifted toward a pair of schooners that were next to each other by the north pier, and we laid up on the side of the outermost. A man on board told us that the Germans had already been there, and I moored. A little later I went ashore, but I ran straight into the arms of Gestapo-Juhl. I had my exit pass and gave him some cock-and-bull story and got away. I hid in a well-box, where I could see through the holes. When it was quiet in the harbor, I crept out of my hiding place,
and ran into Sergeant Koblegaard, who was able to tell us that the Gestapo were about to leave the hotel. After this Juhl Svendsen wouldn’t sail.”13
Bubi Cohn continues his account, seen from the hold in the boat, which drifts quietly from one side of the harbor to the other, thereby avoiding the Gestapo raid. “After some time we were picked up and taken to another boat. [illegible] was pulled up around the harbor. It caused a huge racket. It was said that the Germans had left. After a quarter of an hour, we sailed out of the harbor, got some [illegible] and then our trip continued. I forgot a little intermezzo, which has some meaning [illegible] had only 2,000 kroner in assets and we had to pay 2,500 kroner. I immediately gave him 500 kr. It was all about a person’s life.”
The last detail is not uninteresting. Poul Jorgensen, one of the fishermen who sailed the group over, has a very different memory twenty-five years later of the five hundred kroner that changed hands because of a generous gesture that night: “I met Oluf Andersen and asked if he would take the Jews, and he said yes. One of the refugees was a Jewish farm worker who had no money. He wanted to row over, but I told him that he should come with us. He went to Oluf Andersen and said: ‘I have no money.’ Oluf said, ‘Here’s 500 kroner. You should not come to Sweden without money.’ ”
Both stories may be true, of course. But it is also possible that the story has changed over time. In that case it would be one of countless examples of the difficulties in unraveling a story that happened years ago, before the rationalizations of posterity. This is especially true for events where later knowledge completely changes our perceptions, as with the Holocaust. That is why this account tries to limit itself to the perspective of those who went through it.