Countrymen

by Bo Lidegaard

  Cohn tells of the route across the Øresund: “I will never forget that trip. There were some mighty seas. I stayed on deck where the air was clear. Unbelievable suddenly to be on the way to freedom, after having thought that you would be taken prisoner by the Germans, sent to concentration camps, etc.

  “There were a few saboteurs along, young, [illegible] and nice people. Furthermore, some Poles who, as usual, could not behave.”

  The remark of Bernhard Cohn seems once again to reflect a general attitude among many within the “old” Jewish families in Denmark in regard to the “Russian Jews.” But it is worth noting that these prejudices did not prevent a strong feeling of solidarity toward a group who were surely less privileged—but nonetheless still countrymen. Bernhard continues: “The lights approached. We were thrust north at the beginning and then east to get around a minefield. I did not think of mines at all. We continued toward the lights and after 1½ hours we reached the port of Höganäs. Soldiers were standing with bayonets turned toward us. When they saw our cargo, they helped us up and welcomed us. I’ve never seen anything like it.”14

  According to Swedish police Bernhard Cohn arrived in Höganäs at 2:30 a.m. Monday carrying eight thousand kroner in cash but without his wife and three-year-old son, who had stayed behind. As the reason for entry into Sweden the prickly lawyer notes “displaced by pogroms” and as for his status, “Danish refugee” or “political refugee.” What had begun as the escape of individual families now began to develop into a mass movement. It is estimated that some five hundred refugees crossed over on Sunday, October 3. Yet fewer than one thousand of the seven to eight thousand people directly concerned had reached safety. The drama was only about to begin.15

  Heinrich Himmler in 1943. Born at the turn of the century, Himmler played a key role in the Nazi leadership and in the planning and execution of the Holocaust. He became a party member in 1925 and soon advanced thanks to his organizational skills. In 1929 he was promoted to leader of the SS, and three years later he was instrumental in the bloody liquidation of the competing SA corps.

  Himmler developed the SS into a powerful elite organization, based on vague ideals of race and strength, ultimately aiming to create a stronger human lineage. His brutality was notorious, and he was the brains behind the buildup of the concentration camps beginning in 1933. With the outbreak of the war, Himmler assumed additional responsibilities, and within the Nazi hierarchy he ranked third after Hitler and Hermann Göring.

  After the assassination of Reinhard Heydrich in June 1942, Himmler took over leadership of the German security headquarters, overseeing the extermination of European Jewry. He was also the mentor of Werner Best, who had been working closely with Himmler to build up the inner security of the Third Reich.

  Himmler was dangerous to his enemies, and his special elite army corps, the Waffen-SS, became a cancer on the Wehrmacht. In 1943 Hitler appointed him interior minister, in addition to his other posts.

  At the end of the war, Himmler sought in vain to achieve a separate peace with the Western Allied powers. He was arrested in May 1945 but committed suicide before facing trial.

  Scanpix

  CHAPTER 9

  * * *

  MONDAY, OCTOBER 4

  THE VILLAGE OF RUDS VEDBY

  Poznan

  It is dangerous to underestimate our formidable ability to close our eyes to what we do not want to see. This ability also influenced contemporary knowledge in Denmark—and elsewhere—of the fate of the Jews in Nazi Germany and in the territories under German control. Despite the fact that from 1942 numerous eyewitness accounts existed and were reported, especially by the BBC, describing systematic mass murder including gas chambers, most people merely accepted the fact that the situation was very grim indeed. To go beyond this was quite simply too daunting, too unthinkable, and too threatening. If the Danish Jews believed or knew of what today is commonly known about the Holocaust, they would probably have sought to escape long before the action in Denmark was undertaken. And had the Danish authorities realized it, they would hardly have been able to cooperate with the occupying power. Most people vaguely knew that it was a grim fate to be a Jew in Nazi-controlled territory, but only a few realized the implication of the Nazi practices taken to their extreme and heinous conclusions.1

  One of the reasons for this lack of insight was that the Nazi leadership had prepared for the genocide in glowing terms. Although hatred of the Jews exudes from virtually all Nazi writing and speech, it is often difficult to pinpoint the specific decisions that put the eradication into effect on an industrial scale. While a series of conferences and meetings have been identified as decisive in the organization of the genocide, there is no overall plan, though the Nazis followed roughly the same sequence in various countries. First, separation and labeling of the Jews. Then the deprivation of rights, confiscation of property, concentration in transit camps and ghettos, transportation under conditions that in themselves eliminated the most vulnerable, the selection of the “able” for brutalizing work details, and the murder of those who were judged “unable” or superfluous. It is not a simple matter to organize the killing of millions of people, and the physical arrangements required a lot of coordination, decision making, and logistics. But even so, all of this was shrouded in euphemisms and understandings, making it hard to nail down the concrete decisions. The only thing there was no doubt about was the intention.

  In the spring of 1943 Berlin issued explicit orders about measures to hide the extensive genocide in the East. Although it is estimated that up to two million Jews had been killed by that time, these exterminations were a consequence more of a common, unspoken effort than of a concrete adoption of specific decrees or legislation. One of the horrors of the Holocaust is that such a comprehensive, systematic, and well-organized genocide could happen without it subsequently being possible to place responsibility at a single locus or on a centralized decision-making body. This is a contributing factor as to why the extermination of the European Jews still attracts so much interest and such intense research. Despite our extensive knowledge, broadly and in the details, the crucial question is still elusive: How did it work?

  The Danish experience adds new features to the broader picture. Here, the perpetrators, the victims, and the bystanders acted in ways that are significantly different from the common patterns known from other occupied countries. Together these differences changed the logic of the genocide and caused it to fail in Denmark.

  One of the few known examples where a leading member of the Nazi hierarchy spoke of the extermination of the Jews in no uncertain terms is a speech made by Heinrich Himmler on October 4, 1943. Himmler spoke to some one hundred prominent SS officers, who were gathered in Poznan, about halfway between Berlin and Warsaw in a section of Poland that was incorporated into Germany after the 1939 invasion. Had it not been for the action against the Danish Jews, Werner Best would probably have been among the participants listening to the words of their leader. He was one of those who were originally invited to the conference, and had actively sought authorization to participate. He belonged to the inner circle of trusted SS officers, who knew what was going on and who each carried their share of responsibility for it. But as it was, he had to stay in Denmark. He had important work to do.

  Under Heinrich Himmler’s ambitious leadership, the SS had gradually developed its influence and leverage in the Nazi power structure, which was characterized by unclear distribution of responsibilities and brutal rivalries between competing centers of power. Among other things, by virtue of its control over the concentration camps and forced labor, the SS was a significant center of gravity in the industrial and economic spheres. Despite significant military losses, the SS continued to grow. Like a cancer, the SS sucked strength from the Wehrmacht, both in Germany and through more or less free recruiting in the occupied countries, where everyone of Aryan origin was welcome. This also included Denmark. Within the Nazi organizations in Germany, the SS was a fast track to
higher posts with more influence, and the undisputed leader of the SS, Heinrich Himmler, was in 1943 one of the Third Reich’s most powerful men.

  In June 1943 Himmler had initiated the first liquidation of all the Polish ghettos, followed by the ghettos in Belarus and the Ukraine. This led to a major expansion of the crematoria and gas chambers in extermination camps like Auschwitz. From July all Jews were formally treated as a matter for the police, and in August, Himmler was appointed interior minister in charge of all the police forces in Germany and in the occupied territories. On Monday, October 4, Himmler stood in Poznan before his most loyal supporters and those who were specifically responsible for putting his murderous plans into practice. For once Heinrich Himmler spoke directly about the extermination of the Jews. He spoke without a script, but his talk was recorded on wax disks and was carefully transcribed so that he could subsequently approve the precise formulations, which were sent to those of his people who had not heard him in person.

  The speech, which lasted over three hours, dealt predominantly with other issues, but in one part, devoted to the Judenevakuierung (evacuation of the Jews), he reveals the mind-set making the extermination of Europe’s Jews a common goal that for those directly concerned also entailed a strong sense of communality and shared destiny: “I also want to mention a very difficult subject before you here, completely openly. It should be discussed among us, and yet, nevertheless, we will never speak about it in public.”

  Himmler then refers to the so-called Night of the Long Knives on June 30, 1934, when an internal showdown laid the foundation of the SS’s power through the liquidation of the Nazi Party storm troopers, the Sturmabteilung, known as the SA, and the original security organization overseeing the SS: “Just as we did not hesitate on June 30 to carry out our duty as ordered, and stand comrades who had failed against the wall and shoot them. About which we have never spoken and never will.”

  Himmler’s tone is understanding, friendly, and almost compassionate about the burden imposed on the chosen ones, and which they had undertaken. The aim is both to share responsibility and to spread it out, so no one can escape his part in it. It is also a warning against “weakness,” which could cause the individual to hesitate in the face of atrocity:

  I am talking about the extermination [Ausrottung] of the Jewish people. It is one of those things that is easily said. “The Jewish people are being exterminated,” every Party member will tell you, “perfectly clear, it’s part of our plans, we’re eliminating the Jews, exterminating them, ha!, a small matter.” And then along they all come, all the 80 million upright Germans, and each one has his decent Jew. They say: all the others are swine, but here is a first-class Jew. And none of them has seen it, has endured it. Most of you will know what it means when 100 bodies lie together, when there are 500, or when there are 1000. And to have seen this through, and—with the exception of human weaknesses—to have remained decent, has made us hard and is a page of glory never mentioned and never to be mentioned. Because we know how difficult things would be, if today in every city during the bomb attacks, the burdens of war and the privations, we still had Jews as secret saboteurs, agitators, and instigators. We would probably be at the same stage as 1916–17, if the Jews still resided in the body of the German people.

  Himmler’s mission is to convince the assembled SS officers of the inevitability of the genocide. Even more than that, of its honor. Of the treacherous hazards of compassionate objections, he concedes that it may be difficult to be responsible for the death and destruction of so many people, but hastens to reassure his men that it is the victims who are guilty, and that those who have taken responsibility for the killings are the righteous. The credit for Germany’s salvation goes to them.

  Himmler then momentarily ventures into the importance of the SS officers not exploiting the situation to enrich themselves personally. The Jews’ riches belong to the Third Reich, the state. He ends this section about the Jews with an assurance: “We have carried out this most difficult task for the love of our people. And we have taken on no defect within us, in our soul, or in our character.”2

  Himmler’s repulsive words notwithstanding, we have to accommodate the paradox that the assembled SS officers, even though they shared a single and terrible goal, were also independent individuals with their own particular interests, ambitions, and strategies. Self-preservation was also a driving force that, at least in some cases, exceeded their hatred for the Jews. Werner Best is an example. He realized that he had nothing to gain by sending the Danish Jews to the gas chambers. On the contrary, he knew what he stood to lose. Therefore he tried to both soften the blow and shirk responsibility. This gave Danish activists the breathing space they needed to build a bridge to Sweden.

  Werner Best’s Pledge

  That Monday, shortly after noon, Nils Svenningsen paid a visit to General Hanneken, whose headquarters was at the Nyboder School, and who wished to tell Svenningsen of the release of the Danish soldiers and the lifting of martial law, which was set for Wednesday, October 6. But before he got that far with this “happy news,” Svenningsen interrupted, according to his own account of his conversation with the general. Danish officials were, the Foreign Ministry’s director emphasized, “deeply shaken by what has happened. We feel our sense of justice has been profoundly violated. We have the greatest compassion for the poor people who are affected. For the purpose of relations between Denmark and Germany in the coming times, we deeply regret what has occurred. The combination of the Jewish action and the soldiers’ release has attracted the most embarrassing attention.”

  About the general’s response to this condemnation Svenningsen notes that he asserted that “he was not responsible for the Jewish action, and that, moreover, it had not been particularly extensive,” a recital Svenningsen sharply rejected with the comment that it “was certainly not quantity it depended on. It was the principle.”3

  The minutes of the conversation are Svenningsen’s own, and should probably be taken with a grain of salt. The permanent secretary knew that he had to distance himself quite explicitly. He was also aware that posterity would very carefully examine his actions in the aftermath of the roundup, and that what he had said and not said to the occupation’s highest representatives would come under close scrutiny. No doubt he strengthened, rather than weakened, his lines in relation to how they were actually spoken face-to-face with the Wehrmacht’s commander in Denmark. Even with this caveat, the image of the chastising Danish diplomat and the self-exculpatory German general is remarkable. Svenningsen’s remarks were effective. Only a few hundred Jews had yet been captured, and the general’s Wehrmacht soldiers constituted the largest German power in the country. The fewer that were assigned to the hunt, the fewer Jews would be arrested. Svenningsen had every reason to express the disapproval of the permanent secretaries.

  Later that afternoon Svenningsen also went to see Werner Best at Dagmarhus. Since the action Friday night Best had done what he could to avoid having to see his closest Danish partner eye-to-eye. Best had lied to Svenningsen to his face, and he knew that the permanent secretaries’ head man knew it. What Svenningsen could not know was the nature of the meeting in Poznan that Himmler had just hosted and that Best had been invited to participate in. Now, on Monday afternoon, Best could no longer decline a meeting with Svenningsen, which began with an urgent complaint about the action against the Jews in the same terms he had used with Hanneken. But Svenningsen went even further with Best in sketching out the damage the action would have on relations between the two countries: “The action against the Jews was very deplorable in terms of future relations between Denmark and Germany in the coming times, because with it so much had been destroyed in this country. In fact, for the immediate future it would not even be conceivable to start working to rebuild confidence between the two countries.”

  There was deep frustration among the heads of the administration, but it was Svenningsen’s assessment that “provided that there were no new extreme ac
tions against the Jews or in other areas, … there was no danger that officials, in general, would not continue to work at their posts. A prerequisite for this, however, was that we have quiet at the workplace, and that the Germans did not interfere in our affairs.”

  Svenningsen clearly is back in business, trying to use the situation to squeeze concessions out of the occupying power. If cooperation was to continue, the Germans had to refrain from more “extreme actions” and in general allow the permanent secretaries to work in peace. The warning was clear: If the arrest of a few hundred Jews had brought tempers to the boiling point and the permanent secretaries had been on the verge of resigning, what would the consequences be if they succeeded in arresting thousands, who were now deep in hiding?

  Svenningsen did not let it go at that. He wanted firm guarantees for those who, according to the Germans’ own announcements, were excluded from the roundup, mainly half Jews and Jews married to Aryans. Svenningsen pointed out that “for those concerned there was a strong anxiety and fear that the first action would be replaced by a new one in which they themselves could become victims.” When Best willingly assured him that half Jews and Jews married to Aryans had nothing to fear, Svenningsen asked for a written guarantee. Best had to promise to further investigate this and to confirm his guarantees in a letter to his Danish counterpart. It was also important that Friday’s action remain an isolated case, and that a further manhunt not be launched.

  In addition Svenningsen asked whether visa rules could be relaxed so that more of those who were not covered by the action could leave legally. Best skirted around an answer, but he did make one observation, which may contain a key to his balancing act in the run-up to the raids and the lack of strength with which the action was carried out. Best explained that “he personally saw no reason to regret that a number of people had saved themselves by their flight to Sweden. From a German point of view it was important first and foremost to cleanse Denmark of the Jews, and whether this was achieved by the Jews traveling to Sweden or by deporting them to Germany didn’t really matter. It was not about catching as many people as possible.”4