The Danish Jews were one of the most common Jews at Terezin ,(Theresienstadt) a Ghetto in Czechoslovakia. The Danish Jews were friends with their fellow non-Jewish Danes.  You will soon be learning about the ways the Danish Red Cross helped the Jews out.  How the people helped the Jews  across the North Sea to to Sweden, and how a brave man took risks to save over 8,000 Jews.  
   In 1943 Terezin had about 450 Danish Jews who were unable to escape.  In November 1943 the Danish Red Cross got permission to send clothing parcels, but not medicine.  The Red Cross wanted to send food to them but the Germans wouldn't let them.  They would let them send personal parcels to them, so the Red Cross sent food to the individuals.
   In the winter of 1943, the Danish Red Cross requested that they wanted to investigate the ghetto.  Germany agreed to it, but only on one condition, they wait until next summer.  During that time they made the Jews clean up the ghetto.  They started planting flowers, painting, and scraping off the old paint. Now this grody ghetto into a cheerful Jewish town.  The Germans didn't want the town to overcrowd, so they sent the incoming Jews strait to death camps.  
   When the committee arrived in June of 1943, the Germans provided the Jews with scripts. A group of Jews greeted the Red Cross.  the committee toured the town passing parks, playgrounds and other homey objects.  The committee left with a pleasing report on the town.  The Danish Jews however, were not pleased with the report. They were saddened that the Red Cross didn't find the real truth. They were happy about the outcome of the Germans fearing that the Red Cross might want to come back, so they promised the Danish Jews that were there they could stay instead of going to death camps. They also improved the living conditions and the food rations to the Jews.  Upon the liberation in 1945, only 17,320 prisoners of an estimated 140,000 remained in camp.  All others were sent to death camps.  Some died from diseases.  400 of the 450 Danish Jews sent to the camp in 1943 lived.

Rescue In Denmark
   In spite of all the risks there were in helping the Danish Jews.  A small number of individuals refused to just sit back and watch.  These people had the courage to take risks, even if it ment sacrificing their lives to help the Danish Jews, by giving food , providing hiding places, underground escape routes, clothing, money, sometimes even weapons. Denmark was the only occupied country that actively resisted the Nazi's regime's attempts to try to deport the Danish Jews.  
On Sept. 28, 1943 George Ferdinand Duckwitz informed the Danish resistance group about Germany's plan to deport the Jews. The Danes acted quickly, they organized a worldwide effort to smuggle the Jews by sea to neutral Sweden. Jews began to leave Copenhagen, where most of the 8,000 Jews lived. The Jews found hiding places with help of their fellow Danes. The Plan was not completely successful.

FEAR
Today the ghetto knows a different fear,
Close in its grip, Death wields an icy scythe.
An evil sickness spreads a terror in its wake,
The victims of its shadow weep and writhe.

Today a father’s heartbeat tells his fright
And mothers bend their heads into their hands.
Now children choke and die with typhus here,
A bitter tax is taken from their bands.

My heart still beats inside my breast
While friends depart for other worlds.
Perhaps it’s better-who can say?
Than watching this, to die today?

No, no, my God, we want to live!
Not watch our numbers melt away.
We want to have a better world,
We want to work-we must not die!

                                                                                                                                          Eva Pickova

 

A Rescuers Story
As a member of the Danish Resistance in his youth, Munch-Nielsen helped save nearly 7,000 Jews from certain deaths at the hands of the Nazis.  Munch-Nielsen "Did what he had to do". He couldn't do anything else.  When Germany interned the Danish army and navyin 1943, the Danish Resistance quickly acted. Young men and women like Nielsen published underground newsletters to tell the real truth.
And so the Resistance mobilized it's rescue of the Danish Jews, hiding them in churches and homes until they could ferry them across the North Sea straits to Sweden.  At night 12 at a time, the Jews would sail 21-foot long boats to Sweden.  The nearly 30-minute trip could take hours as the resistance had to evade German ships at sea. 
Of the country's 7,000 Jews, only 60, were not saved.  Munch-Nielsen didn't know any names of the people he saved.  Munch-Nielsen did not speak publicly about his experience until 10 years ago, when a friend asked him to tell his story with a group of Jewish travelers in Denmark.  At 59 his speaking career began.  Following the war many Danish Jews returned to Denmark. He doesn't think about who is a Jew or Non-Jew.  But now that the Jews have returned, he added, "Denmark is complete again". 
 

 

 

Robert Cooper

7th Social Studies

Rossville Jr. High

Holocaust Project

2004

Bibliography