Texas Jewish Post (Fort Worth, Tex.), Vol. 47, No. 44, Ed. 1 Thursday, November 4, 1993 Page: 6 of 32
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TEXAS JEWISH POST, DALLAS, THURSDAY, NOVEMBER 4, 1993- IN OUR 47TH YEARI
Dallas Interfaith Event, Nov. 11
Marks
50th Year of Danish Rescue of Jews
The 50th anniversary of
the rescue of the Danish
Jews by their fellow Danish
citizens will be commemo-
rated at an interfaith event,
Thursday, Nov. 11, 7:30
p.m., at Lovers Lane Meth-
odist Church, Inwood Road
and Northwest Highway in
Dallas.
“The Danish Rescue of
the Jews: A Nation Which
Saved the Honor of Human-
ity" is presented by an inter-
faith steering committee of
the Dallas Memorial Center for Ho-
locaust Studies in cooperation with
the Anti-Defamation League.
Keynote speaker will be the Hon-
orable Leif Doodc, Consul General
of Denmark to the United States.
Donde, a Jew, was rescued as a
child with his family and sent to
Sweden. Also featured on the pro-
gram is Knud Dyby, a former mem-
ber of the Danish underground dur-
ing World War n who helped trans-
port Jews across the water to safety
in Sweden.
On Rosh Hashana. 1943, which
corresponded tnat year to OcL 1-2,
the Nazis had planned an aktion
(roundup) to liquidate Denmark* s
7.800 Jews. Thanks to a deliberate
Symbol of resistance and rescue.
leak by a decent German named
George F.. Duckwitz, who served
German interests in Denmark as a
shipping expert, Danish Jews were
given sufficient notice to go into
hiding.
Miraculously, and with virtually
no organization, Christian Danes
began smuggling their Jewish
neighbors through the countryside
to Danish ports that faced Sweden,
just two-and-a-half miles away. In
boats of every description, often
right under the noses of the Ge-
stapo, Danes carried the Jews to
Sweden, where they waited out the
war in safety.
Communities around the coun-
try are celebrating the 50th anni-
versary of the
now famous op-
eration that
saved more than
7,000 Danish
Jews from cer-
tain death
At a commu-
nity meeting in
Cleveland,
Ohio, Preben
Munch Nielsen,
who as a Dan-
ish high-school
student helped
smuggle Jews
out of Nazi-oc-
cupied Den-
mark said “It
cannot be
unique to be
decent...of
course you give
a helping hand wt
is in need."
The survivors-and history-argue
that Nielson’s statement is unduly
optimistic. That Denmark saved all
but 5% of its Jews was frequently
contrasted to the fact that only 5%
of Polish Jews survived. What was
it about the Danes that prompted
them to risk their lives to save their
Jewish neighbors?
h
A typical rescue boat by which Jaws were ferried to safety in 1943 by their
fellow Danes . •
• lift
your neighbor
Neilson, a white-haired septua-
genarian, who currently serves as
president of the Sundets Venner
(Friends of the Strait,” those who
once smuggled Jewish and other
Danish refugees), explains that the
timing of the Gestapo aktion was
critical to the Danes’ success. By
Oct. 21,1943, Danes had been liv-
ing for over a month under odious
martial law. Members of the Dan-
Consul General of Denmark...
One of Those Rescued
Leif Donde was bom on May 30,1937, in Copenhagen, Denmark. His
family was active in the Jewish community there, where the majority of
Denmark’s 8,000 Jews lived. Soon after the German take over of the
Danish government on August 28,
1943, the Donde family left
Copenhagen and traveled to the
shore, where they were smuggled to
Sweden on a fishing boal After the
Germans surrendered in Scandinavia
on May 4, 1945, the Donde family,
along with the other Jews who had
spent the occupation in Sweden, re-
turned to Denmark.
He received his education in com-
mercial studies at Union College,
Schnectady, New York, and the
Copenhagen School of Economics
and Business Administration. In
1955, he began work in the Danish
Consul G«in«ral of Danmark bevcrag,e and chennucal md^ncs,'
export divisions. Between 1961 and
1963 he served as a commercial attache for the Danish Ministry of
Foreign Affairs. A string of government appointments followed. Before
becoming consul general for the Royal Danish Consulate General in
New York in 1988, he served as consul general to Hong Kong, Macao
i South China.
Yad Vashem Medalist
Laif Don da
A native of Jutland, Knud Dyby joined his father in the printing
business following high school and technical college.
In 1943, the Germans sent a contin-
gency of soldiers to Denmark to mobi-
lize against the Jewish population, whom
the Danes had refused to persecute. Dyby
joined the newly-organized police force,
which the Nazis expected to keep the
general population from anti-German
demonstrations. But the Danish police
actually were helping the growing resis-
tance movement.
As a member of the Danish under-
ground, Dyby organized a fleet of small
boats to ferry Jews the 30 kilometers
across the water to Sweden, which of-
fered refuge. Anyone caught with Jewish
passengers was immediately killed or
sent to a concentration camp, but Dyby found four fishermen willing to
carry the dangerous cargo past the German patrol boats.
When the Germans realized that they could not trust the Danish
police, they arrested the police force and shipped them to concentration
camps, but Dyby eluded capture. Subsequently reported for “anti-
German activities," Dyby lived underground, moving constantly, one
jump ahead of the Gestapo.
He has received many citations for his bravery and has been desig
nated a Righteous Gentile by Yad Vashem, Israel’s national Holocaust
authority.
Knud Dyby
isb Resistance were being arrested
and executed.
Angered by the new restriction^
and ashamed of having accepted
more than three years of Nazi occu-
pation, the Danes were ready to
take a stand, he said. Besides, Ger-
many had suffered its first military
losses (in Stalingrad, North Africa
and Sicily) and was losing its aura
of invincibility.
“The Nazis figured, based on
their observations of the rest of
Europe that no one would help the
Jews." In fact, for the first two
weeks of the six-week sea lift, the
Gestapo wasn’t even suspicious that
a rescue effort was underway. Even
when the Gestapo caught on, how-
ever, the rescue continued, often at
great danger to the Danes.
Nielson says that the Germans
failed to take into account the ab-
sence of anti-Semitism in Denmark.
"There had never been real ten-
sions in our country, so there was
no need to create a scapegoat...In
Denmark, you can’t find the soil
for racism.’’
Dr. Judith Goldstein, who beads
the New York-based Thanks to
Scandinavia foundations said
“...The Danes under King Chris-
tian X, made a five-year commit-
ment to the Jews.. .Their agreement
with the Germans was that the Jews
would not be touched (or forced to
wear a yellow star) and that com-
mitment continued through the end
of the war.”
The stories of that commitment
are as numerous as the Danes them-
■■I RESCUE p n
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Wisch, J. A. & Wisch, Rene. Texas Jewish Post (Fort Worth, Tex.), Vol. 47, No. 44, Ed. 1 Thursday, November 4, 1993, newspaper, November 4, 1993; Fort Worth, Texas. (https://texashistory.unt.edu/ark:/67531/metapth755551/m1/6/: accessed July 17, 2024), University of North Texas Libraries, The Portal to Texas History, https://texashistory.unt.edu; .