Category:Holocaust Children, Denmark (subject)

Holocaust Children, Denmark (see Holocaust Children Studies)

Overview

Thanks to the support of the monarchy and the Danish government and local population, virtually all Danish-Jewish children survived the Holocaust.

Rescued to Sweden

On October 1, 1943, Nazi leader Adolf Hitler ordered Danish Jews to be arrested and deported. In a massive rescue operation, the Danish resistance movement, with the assistance of many Danish citizens, managed to evacuate 95% of the Jews in Denmark, by sea on fishing boats to nearby neutral Sweden.

The total number of people who fled to Sweden in connection with the roundup of the Jews was 7,742. 1,236 were children. The number includes 686 non-Jews, who accompanied their Jewish spouses to Sweden.

265 children were born during the exile, while 101 deaths were registered

Deported to Theresienstadt

• Marcus Choleva (M / Denmark, 1933), Holocaust survivor
• Steen Metz (M / Denmark, 1935), Holocaust survivor
• Jytte Bornstein (F / Denmark, 1936), Holocaust survivor
• Birgit Fischermann (F / Denmark, 1938), Holocaust survivor
• Ib Katznelson (M / Denmark, 1941), Holocaust survivor

Those who did not make it (476 people, including around 50 children) were deported to Theresienstadt. On October 5, 1943 the first transport arrived with 83 deported Danish Jews, on October 6 the second transport arrived with 198 people, and on October 14 arrived 175 people. They were 464 in total (including 8 Jews who arrived in the ghetto individually. Among them was the rabbi Dr. Max Friediger, the former chief rabbi of Denmark, who was added to the Elders Council in the ghetto as the representative of Danish Jews until the liberation.

Initially the Danish Jews were confined to isolated cabins which became vacant after the children from Bialystok were sent from the ghetto. Later, they were housed in better accommodations inside the ghetto. Children were not separated from their families. Danish Jews were allowed to send and receive letters, received a regular shipment of food and medicines from private Danish organizations, under the auspices of the Welfare Ministry and the Social Security office in Denmark, and from June 1944 through the Danish Red Cross. Most importantly, they were immune from transport.

It was the presence of Danish Jews that prompted the visit of the Red Cross on June 23, 1944.

The Danish government was also able to have them repatriated on April 15, 1945, a few weeks before the liberation of the camp. 425 Danish Jews (51 of whom died in the camp, plus 2 newborn) boarded the buses of the Swedish Red Cross, "the white buses". Among them were three children born in the ghetto who had survived, four women (Czech Jews) who married Danes and Danish born Jew who joined their group in the ghetto. All the prisoners came to say goodbye. Two days later they arrived at the Danish border town of Padborg and from there they were transported by ferry to Malmo, Sweden.