Director’s Note: Moral Courage
The exhibition Resistance and Rescue: Denmark and the Holocaust, opening on June 10, presents photographs by Judy Glickman Lauder related to the heroic rescue by the Danish people of more than 90% of the Jews then living in Denmark from deportation to German concentration camps.
The exhibition combines her portraits (taken in the early 1990s) of the rescuers and the rescued with their compelling stories. I urge you to take the time to read their stories in the gallery; the effect is a deeply moving and inspiring experience of the power of moral courage.
From 1933 to its invasion, Denmark had welcomed approximately 4,500 Jewish refugees from Germany and eastern Europe. When Germany occupied Denmark in April 1940, the Jewish population was about 7,500 (0.2% of the total). Approximately 6,000 of these Jews were Danish citizens; the others were refugees.
For several years, the German occupation regime took a more benign approach in Denmark than in other western European nations, allowing the Danish government to control domestic affairs, including the legal system and police forces. The Danish government did not require Jews to register their property, identify themselves, or to give up their homes and businesses. Jews were not required to wear a yellow star or badge. The Jewish community continued to function and hold religious services regularly.
In the face of increasing Danish resistance, the German military commander in Denmark declared martial law in August 1943 and took direct control over the Danish military and police forces. The next month, the German civilian administrator in Denmark telegrammed Adolf Hitler, urging the use of martial law to deport the Danish Jews. In the brief time before Hitler’s final order for deportation was received in Copenhagen, some German officials warned non-Jewish Danes of the plan. In turn, these Danes alerted the local Jewish community.
Acting quickly, Danish authorities, Jewish community leaders, and countless private citizens mobilized in a massive operation to move Jews into hiding or temporary sanctuaries. When German police began the roundup, they found few Jews. In general, the Danish police refused to cooperate, denying German police forcible entry into Jewish homes and overlooking Jews they found in hiding. Protests against the German actions promptly came from the Danish royal family, churches, and various social and business organizations.
The Danish resistance, assisted by many ordinary Danish citizens, organized a partly coordinated and partly spontaneous rescue operation. Resistance members and sympathizers helped Jews move to hiding places throughout the country and from there to the coast, whence fishermen ferried them to neutral Sweden. The rescue included participation by the Danish police and government. Over a period of about a month, about 7,200 Jews and 700 of their non-Jewish relatives traveled to safety in Sweden, which accepted these refugees.
Despite the rescue efforts, the Germans seized about 470 Jews in Denmark and deported them to the Theresienstadt ghetto in occupied Czechoslovakia. Danish protests deterred the Germans from transporting these Jews to killing centers. The Jews from Denmark remained in Theresienstadt, where dozens died, until April 1945. Virtually all of the survivors returned to Denmark, where most found their homes and businesses intact because local authorities had refused to allow seizure or plundering of Jewish homes.
In total, some 120 Danish Jews died during the Holocaust, either in Theresienstadt or during their flight from Denmark. May their souls be bound in the bond of eternal life.
Resistance and Rescue: Denmark and the Holocaust offers an exemplar of the necessity in every society of respect for those different from ourselves and the imperative of moral courage in protecting those vulnerable to discrimination and acts of hate.
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From 2015 to 2021, recorded hate crimes in the United States — most based on race — increased 37%. Between 2020 and 2022, incidents of antisemitic assault and vandalism in the US spiked by 78%. Countering these trends requires education against bigotry, cross-cultural engagement, advocacy, and, ultimately, moral courage.
Bruce Barnes, PhD
Ron and Donna Fielding Director
May/June Bulletin 2023
