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The King of Denmark and the Yellow Star By John Lamperti It is a fine story and has been told and retold many times. After 50 years it can still inspire people, as it did in 1993, in an event described in 52 True Stories of Nonviolent Success, the War Resisters League 2002 Peace Calendar. That year, in Billings, MT, a brick was thrown through a window that had been decorated with a menorah for Hanukah. The window was in the house of one of the town’s few Jewish families. In a positive response to the attack, thousands of non-Jewish homes soon were also displaying menorahs. The Jews of Billings did not have to hide their identity, and the bigotry was put down. The idea for that response came directly from the example of the Danish king in 1943. In reality, the story of the king and the star is a myth. I learned that the hard way, while studying nonviolence 25 years ago. I visited Northwestern University’s library to consult its large collection of Danish underground resistance newspapers and pamphlets from the war years. To my surprise, none of them mentioned that famous incident. How could such a thing have been omitted? Later I investigated the source of the stories in Denmark, through conversations and by visiting the national archives. The obvious (although unexpected) conclusion turned out to be correct: The truth is that the Germans did not order Danish Jews to wear the star, and King Christian did not put one on his uniform. There are many related stories about the king. One, a weaker version of the myth, holds that the king threatened to be the first Dane to wear the star if the Germans imposed it on the Jews, and the threat deterred the Nazis from giving that order. It’s hard to prove that such a conversation did not take place, but there is no evidence that it did. King Christian did not attend services at the Copenhagen synagogue during the occupation, nor is there any proof that he ever threatened to abdicate his throne in protest as was reported in the Western press. All those stories are apocryphal at best. Such facts do not diminish King Christian’s moral stature, for those who knew him emphasize that, although the incidents did not occur, the stories are consistent with his character. He was strongly opposed to all anti-Semitism. One anecdote that might be true relates that early in the occupation a German envoy tried to speak to the king about Denmark’s “Jewish problem.” “But there is no Jewish problem in Denmark,” King Christian is said to have replied, “because we Danes have never considered ourselves inferior to the Jews.” A nice line, but even so the king did not wear the Star of David. What really happened in Denmark in the fall of 1943, however, is a better story. When Germany violated a non-aggression treaty and invaded Denmark in 1940, the Danish government surrendered almost without fighting. The Germans announced a “protectorate” aimed against Britain and France and promised not to interfere with Denmark’s internal affairs, including local government. In return Denmark collaborated to some extent with Germany, allowing Danish agriculture and industry to aid the German war effort. As a result, an uneasy peace prevailed (most of the time) for the first three years of the occupation. During that period the Jews in Denmark lived relatively normal lives. That state of affairs ended in August of 1943. By then it looked as though Germany might lose the war, and political strikes, industrial sabotage and other forms of active resistance were rising sharply. The German occupation authorities demanded that the Danish government crack down on all opposition with draconian laws. The Danes refused, and the government resigned en masse. The Germans then declared martial law and secretly prepared, among other things, to capture all Jews within Denmark for deportation to foreign concentration camps. They planned for the Jews to go literally overnight from relative freedom to slavery and then to death. There would be no intermediate period of ghettoization—and no yellow star. At that point a brave act of nonviolent resistance was committed, not by the King of Denmark, but by a German civilian. Georg Duckwitz was an occupation official in charge of shipping Danish goods to wherever the Germans needed them. He had urged the Nazi leadership both in Copenhagen and in Berlin to take no action against Danish Jews, arguing (correctly) that it would cause unrest and harm the war effort. Despite taking that pragmatic line with the Nazis, Duckwitz did feel moral revulsion against the “final solution.” When he learned the date planned for the round-up of the Jews—October 1, the eve of Jewish New Year—he passed the news to Danish political leaders, who, he thought (again correctly), would spread the warning. That night, when Nazi squads went to every Jewish address, the vast majority of their prey were not at home. Instead of nearly 8,000, they captured only 202 Jews—some who had not received the warning, some who didn’t believe it and a few who simply refused to run. Where were the Jews of Denmark? For the most part they were hiding with non-Jewish neighbors. There are innumerable stories of both friends and strangers who took in whole families, despite the very real danger to themselves and much uncertainty as to the future. Although there were Nazi sympathizers and anti-Semites among the Danish people, they were a small minority. Most Danes, practical people, had yielded to power and accommodated the Germans up to a point. But there was a line they would not cross—and more, a point for many where they had to resist. Deporting fellow citizens who happened to be Jewish to prison and death was not something they would passively allow to happen. And resist they did. During the month of October 1943, more than 7,000 people—most of them Jews, but some non-Jewish relatives and “wanted” resistance figures—crossed the Øresund to Sweden, where they had been promised refuge. This massive evacuation was not ordered by the king, nor was it organized by any government body. Hundreds of people spontaneously acted to organize or assist with the escapes, either from humanitarian motives or from the simple desire to thwart the German enemy. One example among many of this resistance is that of the “Elsinore Sewing Club.” The group was organized by several friends who had all quietly accepted the occupation until that October. The “club” arranged transportation to Sweden for hundreds of Jews, using hired fishing boats, sealed railroad freight cars being ferried to Sweden and, later on, boats of their own. After October they continued to operate, helping resistance fighters and downed Allied air crews reach safety. They fooled the Germans most of the time—but not always. In the end several members of the “sewing club” paid with their own lives. The rescue of the Jews of Denmark is a classic in the history of nonviolent resistance to tyranny. King Christian was an honorable man, but the Danes did not rely on him or any other authority to tell them what to do. Hundreds of people, largely unknown to each other, individually decided they had to act. Dozens of independent groups helped one or a few or many people to escape from Nazi terror. The special circumstances of the German occupation in Denmark and the availability of a haven in neutral Sweden were of course important for success, but an essential factor was the courage and decency of a great many non-Jewish Danish citizens. Their story is told movingly in a number of books icnluding Harold Flender’s 1963 Rescue in Denmark. The Danish people wrote one of the few bright chapters of the Nazi era when they nonviolently defeated the “final solution” in their country. In the process, they left us a better example of moral action than the story of a loyal populace simply following the leadership of a good king. John Lamperti retired recently as professor at Dartmouth College, where he taught mathematics for many years. He has written about probability theory and random processes, problems of nuclear power and weapons, and U.S. policy in Central America. He is currently completing a biography of Salvadoran revolutionary leader Enrique Alvarez Córdova. |
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eople
the world around have heard the account of the King of Denmark’s striking
act of nonviolent resistance in 1943. According to the story, when the
Nazi occupiers of his country ordered all Jews in Denmark to wear the
distinguishing yellow star, King Christian X was the first to put one
on. He wore it on his uniform for his daily horseback ride through the
streets of Copenhagen, giving heart to the endangered Jews and inspiring
the Danish people to resist. Many thousands of non-Jewish Danes followed
his lead and wore stars themselves. This act of human solidarity was a
moral and practical defeat for the Germans, who then had to rescind the
order. The tale is a classic in the annals of nonviolence.