Countrymen

by Bo Lidegaard

  By 7 p.m. Wednesday night, as soon as the big police force was in place at the port of Gilleleje, its boss, Sven A. Holten, was contacted by the helpers’ leading men, including the parish council chairman, who had housed Meyer and numerous other refugees earlier in the day. Holten, who was head of the Danish coastal police, indicated that they would check the port and that shipping out from there would not be possible. In turn he assured the helpers that the police would not investigate what happened outside the port area, any more than they would initiate or participate in any raid to find refugees who might be hiding in or around the town.

  Holten warned the refugees’ helpers that the Germans would most likely return in the evening, and he urged that the town be vacated of refugees hiding there. He probably knew that earlier in the afternoon Gestapo-Juhl in Helsingør had received the telegraphic police report on the Flyvbjerg’s departure the same morning. Therefore it was crucial to get the refugees out of the vicinity, but the helpers did not consider it feasible at this late hour to start an evacuation of the many hundred refugees hiding all over town. If the refugees were to be shipped from the beach, it would take time to organize transport from land to the schooner in small dinghies. The helpers discussed many plans, all of which had to be abandoned. A group of young people who seem to have arrived from Copenhagen to help out were apparently preparing to try to open the harbor by force, and a group of armed resistance fighters had gathered in the garage under the barn loft, where Meyer, along with a large group of refugees, spent the night. It was the local helpers who thwarted this idea, because they feared an armed confrontation could lead to a massacre of the huddled refugees and the local people, all of whom were to a greater or lesser extent involved in the relief effort. Marie Olsen, hosting Dr. Meyer’s group in the loft above the stables, described that fateful night in a letter a few weeks later: “At 8 in the evening a big German car stopped outside our garden, while 8 men were here—with friends—and loaded firearms.… The idea was to take over the harbor at night, so all the Jews could come over, but it had to be abandoned; two large trucks came with Copenhagen cops, and so ours dared not start something as they did not know if the police from Copenhagen were trustworthy. So it was decided that we should deal with it calmly the next day. The Gestapo was also in the city—and then it turned out to be such a horrible night.”11

  Both at the church loft, where about eighty refugees were huddled, and in the loft above Kaj Olsen’s stables, the hours crawled by in the intense atmosphere of heightened anxiety. Adolph Meyer writes: “We lay on the bare floor, but at least got a little straw beneath us. They diligently brought us sandwiches, eggs, and drinking water. We were able to relieve ourselves inside the stall, as the hatch could be lifted up and we climbed down the ladder. It was a horrible night. I first was under the sloping window, later to the side with my bag under my head, on my coat, with galoshes and clothes on. Suddenly in the darkness someone stepped on my genitals and I yelled out loud.”

  Between the hours of 9 and 10 p.m. Gestapo-Juhl showed up in Gille- leje with a small contingent of plainclothes Gestapo men. They found the harbor lit by spotlights and completely deserted, except for the Danish police force. Gestapo-Juhl demanded that they assist in searching homes, but Holten flatly refused. Then the Gestapo went to the parish hall and from there to the church. The Danish helpers fled after trying unsuccessfully to evacuate refugees from the church, and at midnight the little church was surrounded by Gestapo-Juhl and his armed men. Wehrmacht soldiers were called in and arrived. Some still remained hopeful that the Germans would not violate the traditional sanctuary of the church, but the Gestapo thundered on the door and demanded it be opened. The key was inside. At 3 a.m. Gestapo-Juhl woke up the gravedigger Jørgensen and demanded that he hand over the spare key to the church. According to a later report, Jørgensen, who for several days had been working with refugee traffic both in and out of the church, exclaimed to Juhl (who held a flashlight to his face): “The poor Jews!” to which Juhl is said to have replied, “It is written in the Bible that this shall be their fate.” Jørgensen answered: “But it is not written that it has to happen in Gilleleje!”12

  Marie Olsen’s property was on Østergade between Lille and Store Strandstræde. It consisted of three wings in a U-shape around a courtyard. The farmhouse faced toward Østergade; the livestock barn with the hayloft was farthest back. It was here that Meyer was hiding out together with other refugees who intended to sail on the Flyvbjerg that morning. In a letter smuggled to Dr. Meyer a few weeks later, Marie Olsen tells further how she experienced the events that night: “At 11 in the evening the Germans came …, and how terribly it now unfolded … those gruesome people took over the parish hall and the Jews who were hidden there—said to be around 40—and they went on searches of almost all the houses. The house beside ours—not ten steps from where you all were hiding here with us—was also examined, oh, thank God they went past our door. When it was 3:30 in the morning they went to the gravedigger at the church and forced him, with a gun to his chest, to hand over the key to the church—his wife fainted, and in the morning the priest had a nervous breakdown when this was told to him—it was all so awful.”

  Gestapo-Juhl could have saved himself the trip to the gravedigger. The wretched and frightened refugees in the church loft asked their helpers to open the door. The impact of the storming of the little church was unimaginable, even for people confronted with the realization of their worst nightmare: capture by the Gestapo and deportation to Nazi concentration camps.

  Marie Olsen goes on: “Then the Germans went to the church and opened it and broke into the high loft and dragged all these poor people down and put the car lights on them. Then they were all separated into different groups and were collected in the parish hall; all this was going on while you and your friends were with us. We were so unhappy when around 5 a.m. that morning we came out and learned all this. We stayed up all that night watching and praying for you who suffered and endured such hardship, and this saved you all. Yes, such is our faith.”13

  (If there is a hint of Christian mission in Marie Olsen’s last remark to Dr. Meyer, it is a point in itself, because it illustrates again that the dividing line for her did not run between the Christian and Jewish faiths but between those who persecuted innocent citizens on the one hand, and the persecuted and their helpers on the other.)

  Only one escaped from the church loft: A young man had climbed up the ladder from the loft to a dormer in the bell tower, where he hid in the open air, until he was found by helpers next morning and brought down, more dead than alive. This young man, Bruno, died tragically just a few days later, when he and nine other people tried to cross over to Sweden in a rowboat that capsized not far from the Danish coast. Of the ten passengers three drowned, including Bruno, while five of the others were rescued by a dredger. The last two managed to swim ashore. In the country as a whole, at least twenty-two people of Jewish lineage are documented to have drowned in their attempt to get to safety in Sweden. The figure is probably higher, because the fates of all of them are not known, and many took the chance alone or in small groups in miserable vessels and without knowing enough about conditions on the water in those cold and windy October days.14

  In Copenhagen on Wednesday, Bergstrøm writes a brief but telling passage in his diary, returning to the protest the bishop had ordered to be read out in all the country’s churches on Sunday. With priests as sources the journalist could report: “On Sunday the priests had been prepared to be arrested for reading the bishop’s protest. The letter was distributed to several who were prepared to read it out loud if something had happened. It had been said that the Germans did not like this protest, which also reached the farmers.”15

  The cynical Bergstrøm identified an important point. Protests by townspeople were one thing for the occupying power. It would be even worse if the popular response to the Jewish action provoked a situation that had an effect on production and deliveries to Germany. Here agricul
ture and the farmers stood front and center—not the cities. It was also an important shift in the entire strategic picture that many refugees were now hiding in the countryside, where for many farmers and fishermen the refugees were their first direct encounter with the human consequences of the Nazi exercise of power. This was another good reason to proceed cautiously—unless, like Gestapo-Juhl in Helsingør, one was consumed by an unholy fire.

  In Safety

  While these fatal events unfolded in Denmark, Poul Hannover was already in Västerås deeply involved in the process of arranging things for himself and his family:

  On Wednesday morning I was at ASEA, where Dector Lilliekreutz took me up to the managing director, Thorstein Ericsson. I could not have wished for a more beautiful and dignified reception—the sincere and cordial way in which he assured me of his joy at seeing me, and knowing we were here, went straight to my heart. How different things would be arranged we could always talk about—for the time being I was not to worry about anything—but sleep, rest, and eat. One could hardly ask for more.

  Later in the day I met Wernekinck—an equally warm reception. As I sat there the telephone rang from Göteborg. It was one of our technicians—I knew he had taken the trip and had asked our friends to make sure that he took some of my clothes along—they were already there. He was told to send them on—he sent greetings from everyone at Titan, regretting my absence—our house was still standing when he left—probably untouched Monday or Tuesday—and he thought everything had been removed as agreed. A large stone fell from our hearts.

  There was ongoing concern for family members, and every phone call brought further clarification: “At lunchtime Knud called and said that Hjalmar had come over with the family. Again a wonderful message. A small soldier who had come to the hotel in Ystad, and who knew that Esther’s brother, Julius, had come over, had initially said that he believed that Hjalmar had been taken—so it helped considerably to learn this.”

  Hannover is also aware that he must help his sister- and brother-in-law come north as soon as possible: “God knows how many times that day I sent a card off to Gunnar, who was on the way—but I had spoken with him by phone to see if he needed money because I immediately had what I needed from ASEA. For dinner we ate with the Wernekincks here at the hotel—they have a nice boy who is a few years older than Allan—he was very sweet to play with the kids, and they were delighted.”

  Criminal Adjutant Hans Juhl, better known as Gestapo-Juhl, was solely responsible for around half of all arrests of Jews after the German action on the evening of October 1, including the raid on a church loft in Gilleleje the night of October 6–7, in which eighty-five Jews were arrested.

  The thirty-nine-year-old Juhl was born and raised in Schleswig-Holstein in the old border region between Germany and Denmark and was originally a farmer not far from Flensburg. He spoke reasonably good Danish. Shortly before the Nazi takeover in 1933, he became a member of both the Nazi Party and the SS, which earned him a ticket to the Gestapo, where he pursued a mediocre career. Juhl came to Denmark shortly after the German invasion and as the head of the Gestapo border police in Helsingør (Elsinore) had the responsibility of combating all illegal traffic across the Øresund. We do not know Juhl’s precise orders for the Jewish action, but it is reasonable to assume that his activities were part of the general fight against illegal routes.

  Juhl was far down the hierarchy and had only a few helpers to carry out his duties. It is characteristic that he had to summon soldiers and vehicles from the Wehrmacht to the raid in Gilleleje. There was no help available from Mildner, the Gestapo chief.

  Juhl testified during the trials following the liberation of Denmark, but walked away without being punished.

  Frihedsmuseet

  Allan also describes the evening: “Once again both nations’ flags were on the table. During dinner the orchestra played the overture to the Danish national music play Elverhøj, and we heard the national anthem, ‘King Christian’ standing up, played by the Swedish orchestra.”

  In her diary Kis Marcus relates the family’s new lives as refugees in the reception center: “In the morning I immediately went to the doctor with Palle. The rest of us had already been checked the night before. We were photographed for our passports, were questioned about various things, etc. I played with the kids for part of the day. They were slightly bored. In the evening more refugees came, and we got an old blind lady, a young girl, and a wife with 2 kids in our room. I slept really very well despite everything, but we could not wash ourselves properly and everything was in general so primitive that I was happy at the thought that we would move on the next day.”

  On the same day Kis Marcus and her husband completed their visa applications for the Swedish social authorities. The completed forms still exist. In the section concerning the purpose of the visit both Gunnar and Kis wrote with a new tone of defiance: “political refugee.” It was a different world from the one they left less than two weeks before when they had first started to take the idea of escape seriously.16

  CHAPTER 12

  * * *

  THURSDAY, OCTOBER 7

  THE HOPE

  Night Harvest

  In the small hours of the night the search in Gilleleje was also extended to several farms in the surrounding area, including Søborggaard, where the Germans found about fifteen of the refugees who had arrived on the Wednesday evening train to Paarup. All the captives were taken to the parish hall, where they were searched and interrogated, after which they were driven to Horserød camp for new interrogations. Here half Jews and Jews married to non-Jews were separated and released. These were almost half of the 107 who were taken prisoner in Gilleleje during the night. The others were deported on October 12 to Theresienstadt, where three later died.

  Although a German action was expected and in some ways almost inevitable with the massive and overt refugee pressure on Gilleleje at the beginning of the week, Gestapo-Juhl’s targeted action raised the question of who had told the Germans that a large group of Jews were hidden in the church loft and on Søborggaard. Local suspicions focused on three named individuals, all of whom had been seen in questionable circumstances, or were known for their contact with Gestapo-Juhl. In particular a waitress from the Gilleleje Beach Hotel, a known hangout for Gestapo and Danish collaborators, was locally proclaimed an informer. After the liberation two of them were brought to justice. The waitress was sentenced by the district court after testimony from, among others, Gestapo-Juhl, but she was acquitted in the Supreme Court. Another who was active in Gilleleje was later convicted of informing, but not for the action in Gilleleje. And the third, who according to several of the refugees in the loft was present both at the church and in connection with interrogations in Horserød, was not charged in the case. Thus it has never been resolved whether Gestapo-Juhl had active informers in Gilleleje, or whether he raided the church at random.

  That same morning, while hearings of those arrested were being held in Horserød, Supreme Court lawyer Bruun talked again with C. L. David, who was becoming more and more nervous about staying in Denmark. As he had in previous days, Bruun advised his friend to wait and see, but only until later that day when he spoke to a senior police contact, who told him that Danish Nazis had participated in Friday’s raid. That was news to Bruun, who again went to David, this time with a different set of considerations. It was probably still possible to trust German officialdom, but Bruun had “become more afraid of excesses against David from the Danish Nazis’ side.” Clearly Bruun remains confident that the Germans themselves will stick to their line—but he is losing confidence that they can—or will—control their local cronies. According to Bruun’s notes David is now “more shaken than in the morning. He said he was aware that he had to take responsibility, but that he had only asked for my help to get as much information as possible.”

  H. H. Bruun ends his notes on his advice to David with two short paragraphs that reflect the excruciating question of whether to attem
pt escape or to stay. The lawyer was aware that both decisions were risking David’s life, and he felt the weight of having counseled his friend in a matter that could have fatal consequences. It is probably also the reason why the Supreme Court lawyer asked his friend to countersign a short summary Bruun drew up describing the sequence of their conversations on the matter: “I was aware when I left him that his decision was probably departure and that our conversation had helped push in this direction.

  “I was very upset by the whole situation and deeply moved at having to say good-bye, so tragically, to a close friend. As always, David preserved his outward calm, sober and clear, balancing the pros and cons without expressed fear or bitterness. It was a deeply sad good-bye and my joint responsibility in his decision rests like a weight on my mind.

  “Whether the decision was right or wrong, maybe the answer can never be given. Ultimately, it depends on David’s strength of nerve, and that would be tested only by living through what David evaded by leaving.”1

  Hven and Horserød

  Herbert Levysohn spent his first night in safety at the improvised refugee reception center on the small island of Hven. Here he shared his fate with strangers who had not necessarily felt any sense of community before they arrived at Hven. Seen though the eyes of the wealthy heir to a large family enterprise, it was a motley crowd, including some who were not nearly as privileged as Levysohn himself: