by Bo Lidegaard
Solid ground under the feet, friendly soldiers who continued to bid us welcome. Now everything was good, the most exciting hours in one’s life were over, and now it could not last too long before I connected with mother, yes everything was, under the circumstances, as well as it could be. We were now led into a kind of passport office where we had to present a passport or other papers. I, like several others, had nothing on me that could prove that I was Herbert Levysohn, as everything was burned as I had taken the cover name of Larsen. Well, Preben Holten knew me very well and could vouch for me. From there we were led in the middle of the island to the small “town” Sankt Ibb. It was a 20-minute walk, but we young people were not tired at all, and the atmosphere was good. Here in Sankt Ibb there is a combined hotel-restaurant-theater, which is currently used as a collection point. We went first to the commander, who like everyone else received us very graciously. Papers were prepared and questions and answers exchanged back and forth. The few hotel rooms there were already taken when we arrived, only the boat’s oldest passenger, a lady of about 70 who had fallen and hurt herself, got a bed, we others came to the cinema where we would be the rest of the night, the time was already almost 2 a.m. A real refugee life unfolded here. Some sat and played cards, some slept on paper mattresses on the floor, others tried to sleep on the chair seats but since these, like any other cinema seats, swung up as soon as you lifted them a little, this sleep was quite hopeless. We could buy some sandwiches and beer with Danish money, and it felt very good to get something to eat again. Many had no money, but fortunately Holten and I had so much that we could help the others, so everyone was well fed. The fact that most who came to the island that night were less fortunate exemplars of expelled Poles and Germans was of course sad for the race as a whole, but one could avoid those. Still more and more came to the island, and the cinema became more and more full, the air worse and worse. Luckily we could help them a little, and gradually it all calmed down.
Levysohn’s description of his fellow refugees reflects the deep divide between the well-integrated families who had been in Denmark for many generations, and the so-called Russian Jews who had come much later, not to speak of the most recent arrivals from Poland and Nazi Germany, many of whom still lived at the bottom of society without social or cultural integration. Not without reason were half the Danish Jews at this time estimated to belong to the working class. Typically, those who had arrived more recently were more religious and attached to the culture they came from. Many spoke Yiddish at home and had a less than perfect command of Danish. Most of this group had either weak or no social contacts with non-Jewish Danes (or for that matter with the well-assimilated Danish Jews), and most of them were among those who escaped rather late, compared with families like the well-connected Hannovers or the Marcuses. Often their first contact with the helpers came from the family doctor, who forged links with hospitals or further to the help groups that sprang up in the week after the action. For the affluent young Levysohn, these people were a class he had not previously encountered:
I want to always remember two old, indeed ancient, farmwomen who had been driven from Lithuania at the time, in their worn clothes where they sat huddled together, they could not speak Danish, only a little German, they did not have a dime, and they shook with terror and horror. At one place sat a woman who was expecting a child not later than 10 October. She could not sit down on the hard benches, so I let her sit on my coat. For the rest of the night I was in constant fear that she would give birth on my only decent piece of clothing. Neither Holten nor I could sleep as it was pretty unbearable in the hall, but the weather showed its amiable side, so sometimes we went for a walk in the area where it was allowed.
Holten was not really in a good mood. He had to leave his wife and children home and flee without having said good-bye to anyone. He had helped 46 over, and now had to leave himself because the Gestapo was after him. He belongs to the kind we all have to remember with gratitude. Well, the night passed at last, and the day appeared.2
The Conspiracy
In the days leading to that fatal raid Wednesday night, the rescue work in Gilleleje was characterized by randomness. The small fishing hamlet of less than 600 households and 1,700 residents was a closely knit community where everyone knew everyone else. The primary business of Gilleleje was fishing, but it was also a popular beach resort, and in the hinterland, city people had summerhouses that stood empty at this time of year. In the remote settlement no one had predicted the stream of Jewish refugees now seeking shelter there, and the inhabitants had to improvise as the numbers kept growing. At one point that morning the number of refugees in Gilleleje is estimated to have amounted to one-third of the town’s population. Everyone was involved, and the vast majority of the citizens participated in the efforts to cope with the emergency. But with the Gestapo raid on the church in the evening the whole enterprise had gone awry. The night of horror with its arrests and deportations had brutally exposed the fugitives and their protectors alike.
Now, in the early hours of the morning, some ten citizens of Gilleleje got together at mechanic Peter Petersen’s place. Here they set up what amounted to a conspiracy, later to be known as “the Jewish Committee.” At first the men suggested that the local police officer act as their chairman, but he declined, citing the fact that it was too dangerous for him to undertake this duty. He would, however, remain a member and do whatever he could to sustain the efforts to avoid further arrests. The group then turned to the local elementary school consultant, L. C. Jensen, who accepted the “nomination” and immediately emerged as the committee’s dynamic leader. Other members were the local parish council chairman who had housed Meyer and his group the preceding day, the cabinetmaker, the teacher, the two grocers of the village, as well as a local manufacturer and the town physician. With the exception of one person, grocer Lassen of the nearby settlement of Smidstrup, none of the ten men had any prior experience with illegal work or active resistance. Half of them had been engaged in the relief effort for less than a day, prior to their gathering at Petersen’s house this early Thursday morning. The ten men had little in common. But they shared a strong determination spurred by the tragic events of the past night: Something had to be done to organize help for the many remaining refugees. And if nobody else would undertake this task, they would.
We have several later accounts of the discussions within this self-appointed action group, and the driving motivation of the men is worth noting. It was Gilleleje’s reputation that was at stake. The honor of the local community—and thus that of its inhabitants. “History will be written these days in this town,” the school consultant is quoted as having said that morning. And the group agreed, sharing a sense that somehow they had been called upon to stand up and do their part in a big struggle that so far had seemed very remote from their village. Also there was no disagreement about the task at hand: The Jews who had not been found by the Gestapo the night before had to be saved at any price. The first step was to get them out of town. Food also had to be provided for everybody. Longer term, the committee had to set up a system for transfer to Sweden. Contacts had to be established with the fishermen on the boats, money was to be collected among the refugees, transfer prices negotiated, and arrangements made for those who had no means to pay for their escape. All this had to be accomplished within hours and under great uncertainty as to the further plans and intentions of the Gestapo. Strangely, the members of the conspiracy do not seem to have been concerned with their own fate, should their activity be disclosed. They seem to have trusted that no member of the community would betray the activities of the helpers—or the hundreds of refugees still hiding in almost every house and stable.3
The initiative for the Jewish Committee in Gilleleje follows the same pattern as the simultaneous formation of similar groups in Stubbekøbing and elsewhere, where local communities organized themselves spontaneously to help stranded refugees. In Stubbekøbing the men who a few days earlier, hesitant and bewi
ldered, had tried to help the first refugees at Frey’s Hotel, formed a strong and effective organization based on “Næsgaarden,” the major estate in the area, from where several hundred refugees during the following weeks were shipped off via the Grønsund ferry berth. The previously mentioned Lyngby Group, formed far from any harbor, developed into a management entity, playing a central role in coordinating the work in the area north of Copenhagen during the following weeks.4
Like other similar groups, the citizens’ group in Gilleleje had few features in common with traditional freedom fighters. They were not young and not particularly politically engaged—and did not at all belong to the political extremes. They had no particular issue with the policy of cooperation and were not otherwise in opposition to the existing society; nor for that matter did they take a particularly strong line against the occupation. Rather, they were local patriots, each in his own way a prominent member of the small community on the north coast that suddenly saw its fateful hour arrive. None of the ten had previously stepped onto history’s stage, and none of them appeared there again. They were driven by a belief that the situation required immediate action, and that no one was better positioned than themselves to take responsibility for what was going to happen. They regarded with considerable skepticism the young refugee helpers who began to stream in from Copenhagen—young men, as the locals feared, who would not show the well-considered restraint that in their view was now required. None of the more-resistance-oriented young people who had stood ready with their weapons in Marie Olsen’s stables joined the committee, which worked almost entirely without weapons, and sought to avoid any confrontation with the occupation forces.
For the ten men now forming the Jewish Committee as well as for all the inhabitants of Gilleleje, the events of the preceding day and night had completely changed their perception of the occupation. It had dawned on them that Denmark was not only occupied by neighboring Germany but ruled by a criminal regime that arbitrarily perpetrated violence against the defenseless. It was the first time since the occupation of April 9, 1940, that ordinary citizens were directly confronted with Nazism’s ugly face. Yes, one had heard and seen things, and the occupation forces were not popular even if they behaved correctly. But by and large one’s life could continue relatively undisturbed, and the Danish social order prevailed. Now, from one day to the next, the Nazis had shown what it meant when the rule of law and humanism were cast aside and a group of criminals persecuted and terrorized Danish citizens who had done nothing to provoke the occupying power’s anger. To the villagers of Gilleleje this was a dramatic turning point, and it seemed to most of them that standing by passively would somehow damage their reputation and indeed that of their village. Suddenly it became imperative to take action and to demonstrate that Gilleleje did not take part in the crime but—very much to the contrary—took action to stop it. Seen this way, there was no going back: The fate of the refugees now crowding the town had been inseparably linked to the town itself.
Also, something else was at stake. The refugees hiding in Gilleleje were anything but an abstraction, a story, or an anonymous group. These were real, ordinary men, women, and children, families with the old and the fragile, the magnanimous and the petty, everyday people who were hurting—frightened and desperate to get away to safety. They had descended upon Gilleleje in great numbers, forcing every citizen of the village to look into the eyes of misery and to realize that these wretched refugees might as well be themselves. It was impossible to look the other way and pretend not to see. One could not be deaf to the knocks on the doors, the pleas for help.
If everything Gilleleje citizens believed in and what the minister—literally—preached in the church were to have the slightest credibility, this was the moment when the town had to step up. If they did not do so, it was not only their reputation that was at stake: It was the very social order the ten citizens represented, in their different ways. It was the democracy they swore to, and the respect for the individual on which it was based.
The pressure was overwhelming, the task unmanageable, and the consequences unpredictable. But the arrests in the church showed that it now had to be met with full force. The small church had been on the main street for four hundred years, and it featured in the high points in its parishioners’ lives: baptisms, confirmations, weddings, and funerals. There is a long tradition of the church’s sanctity, which lived strongly in the collective sense of justice. Only the most ruthless assailant does not respect church peace—and even secular society usually steps back from violating it. Conflicts and disputes are settled elsewhere. With the arrests in the church Gestapo-Juhl had demonstrated the ruthlessness that permeated the Nazi mind-set. It was a slap in the face of the local community, and it was perceived as a demonstration of contempt for the values they treasured most.
The reaction was not a sort of popular uprising; there were no riots, no resolutions, no demonstrations. It was the profound realization that Denmark wasn’t occupied by Germany, but by a violent regime of criminals that could in no way be trusted. The action was a watershed because it made perfectly clear that there was no possible compromise between what Nazism stood for and the societal norms of ordinary Danish citizens. Before the action against the Jews, the Danish public in general resented the occupation forces. After those days, they opposed them. The difference may seem subtle. But the leaders of the occupation authorities knew and feared that difference.
The reaction was not long in coming. It took root in mechanic Peter Petersen’s living room where the ten men swore to one another that such a thing would not happen again. Not in their community. Fate had momentarily handed history’s pen to Gilleleje. And the town had no doubts about what story it would write.
“A Gripping and Unsettling Thought”
That very morning the first results of the committee’s efforts began to affect the refugees hiding throughout the village. Fresh milk was brought from the dairy, eggs and sandwich packs for the hidden, and plans were made for their immediate evacuation to safer shelter.
The situation was bleak, noted Adolph Meyer in his diary, and spirits low at the hayloft Thursday morning after a long uneasy night. Though in an impossible situation, the doctor tries a bit of black humor about the night’s inconvenient bed:
Naturally, the night was uneasy with interrupted sleep, but we did sleep some, and on the morning of October 7 I found a beer bottle and an iron file underneath me. Hands and especially nails were dirty. The parish council’s chairman came and told us that we would be split up for a few days among the town’s residents, but shortly after, we heard that house searches were taking place both yesterday and today all over Gilleleje (I learned that many unhappy refugees were found in the apartment in the parish house and in the church attic).
Later we heard that the Gestapo had been in the horse barn, where six horses stood stamping away, fortunately the ladder behind the troughs was not discovered by the criminals. Later in the afternoon the chairman came again, and we noticed that he was very nervous. “You will all be helped, let’s just not get nervous,” he said. We heard that there had been an informer, who helped the Gestapo get wind of the refugees in the church.
For the coastal police the night’s actions were difficult to handle, caught as they were between their efforts to protect the refugees and the risk of being caught in the act by the Gestapo. The two sides had no mutual trust, and the local police had to act with utmost care, knowing that the reports to Copenhagen were also scrutinized by German police there. That morning police chief Mortving sent in a report on the German raids with a note that the Germans now seemed to be loosening their grip on the harbor and leaving more to the Danish police: “Chief Criminal Assistant Juhl from Elsinore arrived today at 10:30 a.m. at the police office at the harbor, declaring that the German Wehrmacht would discontinue the occupation of the harbor at 11:00 a.m. He requested, however, that the harbor henceforth be controlled by Danish police. Five posts were established, spread throughout
the entire harbor.
“Chief Criminal Assistant Juhl also announced that last night, here in Gilleleje and environs, 107 people were arrested, including women and children as well as two Swedish citizens. The Swedish nationals are soon to be released. In addition, today in nearby Paarup at 5:00 a.m., a seriously injured person was arrested. The prohibition on sailing from the port is lifted.”5
Part of the Jewish Committee’s activity was to set up a system for payment for the crossing. Those who had declared themselves able and willing to pay were now asked to actually make the payments, and Dr. Meyer was among those who paid willingly. He seemed satisfied to be in a position where he and his sister-in-law jointly provided for one-fifth of the entire amount collected within their group. He notes that others—among them probably the agricultural students—could pay nothing and didn’t have to: “We now paid for the crossing. We might have achieved it cheaper, but paid for many who had no money, so I don’t regret it.”
The affluent doctor was also aware that many who helped in the little fishing community were far worse off socially and economically than most of the refugees. The entire situation entailed a distinct social paradox: A good part of the refugees in Gilleleje were well-off city dwellers, while their local helpers were mostly from the opposite end of the social spectrum. Dr. Meyer was among those who recognized this dilemma and together with the more prosperous of the other refugees he acted to address the issue: “In the attic we pitched in for the poor in Gilleleje, because the residents of Gilleleje had been magnificent to us. We collected 1,270 kroner, which we gave to the local priest to hand out. (Mary gave 200, I gave 500 kr.)”
This gesture bears witness not only to the mental strength of the refugees who, in the midst of their own compromised position, collected for those who were most disadvantaged in the community. It also testifies to the very state of mind that made the escape possible. (And in a curious way it links up with Poul Hannover’s reluctance to break into the abandoned summer colony in the forest, and his preoccupation with taking responsibility and making good the damage done.) The Jewish refugees in the attic over the stable in Gilleleje were certainly exhausted and terrified, but they insisted on maintaining their dignity. They refused to be reduced to fugitives on the run, desperate, hungry, and without a will of their own, and this refusal constituted a resistance to the very purpose of the Nazi assault against them. It was a dramatic revolt against the deliberate strategy to characterize Jews as outcasts, antisocial creatures who were unworthy of the surrounding community’s respect. It was precisely this view of the Jews as barely human that elsewhere had robbed them of their fellow citizens’ natural sympathy and protection. In Denmark, however, this attempt was met not only with massive rejections by their fellow Danes, but also with an active defiance by the Jews themselves.