ONE afternoon in 1935 Julius Margolinsky’s bookshop in Copenhagen was visited by a German-speaking man. Could he have a look at the Emil Ludwig book on Nazi concentration camps? Yes, of course he could. Did the book-seller have any more such material? No, he did not. By coincidence, the same day Margolinsky had written a polite letter declining an invitation to a Paris conference on the persecution of Spanish Loyalist youths; the pamphlet advertising the conference was still on his desk when the customer was in the shop.
Margolinsky forgot both of these things until five o’clock one morning in 1942 when German criminal policemen took him from his home to Copenhagen’s Vester Prison for interrogation. Was he a Communist? No. If he was not Com munist, why had he been so interested in Spanish youths back in 1935? Mr. Margolinsky tried to explain. Only after seventeen days of almost continuous questioning was he allowed to go home, and he was not bothered again by the Germans until the following year when they decided the time had come to arrest all Danish Jews.
At the start of the occupation, Denmark’s sole synagogue of any noticeable size, in Copenhagen, was attended every week by no more than three or four hundred people; and of slightly less than 8,000 Jews in Denmark, nearly 1,500 were half-Jewish and about 1,400 were young refugees from Nazi Germany who worked as farm labourers on Sealand. Until the autumn of 1943, most Danes were unaware of this mini scule Jewish community.
Nazi hoodlums had tried unsuccessfully to burn the Copenhagen synagogue in 1941, but this was almost the only open Nazi act of anti-Semitism in Denmark before October 1943. On the 29th August, when the Government fell, the syna gogue had been closed by the congregation’s elders, but Rabbi Melchior opened it again himself. Because of Denmark’s lack of racial prejudice, the Jews in the country considered themselves safe, and practically none tried to get to Sweden until the fatal autumn of 1943.
On 28th September, 1943, Attaché Duckwitz, a German maritime shipping expert in the Reich embassy in Copenhagen, warned Hans Hedtoft of the Danish Socialist Party that Denmark’s Jews were about to be arrested by the Gestapo and deported to the Theresienstadt Concentration Camp in the Reich on 1st October. The Gestapo apparently had been working steadily since the beginning of the occupation, checking telephone books and other directories to determine exactly which Danes were Jews. This was quite a task because the last official list of Jews in Denmark had been compiled in 1920, and even the Jewish Community Centre in Copenhagen did not have an up-to-date mailing list—although the list they did have was confiscated by the Germans.
Who exactly, Danes now wondered, were the Jews in Denmark? How to find them? Most important, how to keep them out of the Germans’ grasp? In the synagogue at the end of the Rosh Hashanah service on 29th September the congregation was advised to go into hiding. Some of these people thought this warning absurd, but most took the rabbi’s advice and moved out of the city to hide in villages or on the farms of friends.
On 1st October, just as Duckwitz had said, the Gestapo order for the Jews’ arrest was given, and that same night the Germans temporarily switched off Copenhagen’s telephone service, frustrating last-minute attempts by Danes to warn their Jewish friends. Gestapo men raced all over Copen hagen to every Jewish home.
That day, in every hospital in the city, registers were carefully checked by staff doctors, and all patients with Jewish-sounding names were discharged, then readmitted under false names. A family of perfectly healthy Jews went to the 1,200-bed hospital in Copenhagen’s Bispebjerg suburb where they were registered as patients and given beds. Another Jewish family that came to the hospital were hidden that night in a cellar. Dr. K. H. Køster, a junior surgeon of Bispebjerg’s staff, began to wonder if he could help these and other Jews out of Denmark.
Mogens Staffeldt’s bookshop, having been evicted from Dagmarhus when the Germans took over the building, was now opposite the Nazi-occupied Hotel d’Angleterre on the large square, Kongens Nytorv. During the first week in October the shop ceased selling books as Staffeldt used his Resistance contacts to get many of his Jewish friends transport to Sweden. Soon the shop resembled a harried travel agency as more and more Jews learned that it was a gateway to safety, but the Germans across Kongens Nytorv never noticed the activity.
A group of university people in the north-west suburb of Lyngby began carrying small boats overland from Lyngby Lake to the Sound to row Jews across to Sweden. A few Jewish families were able to persuade fishermen to carry them across the Sound, but most of these people had to pay outlandishly high fares; a fisherman would lose his boat and probably his life if caught helping such people. During the first days of October some Jewish families paid as much as 50,000 kroner for their escape.
Arne Sejr, living in a small villa in South Sealand while he recovered from his wound, soon made his hiding place into a transit centre for the young Jewish refugees who were farm workers and whom the Student’s Resistance cells would get across to Sweden on secret scheduled transports they operated. Sejr’s helpers in the Students’ Enlightenment Service were at that time hurriedly combing all the rest of Sealand for hidden Jews to rescue.
During the first five days in October, Dr. Køter made few contacts with Jews, but he was visited on the seventh by Dr. Secher, chief anæsthetist at the Copenhagen University Hospital. ‘Do you know,’ Secher asked, ‘that Jews are living in the cellars of their own homes all over Copenhagen ?’
‘They won’t be able to hide for long,’ Køster replied gloomily. ‘Food rationing will force them out.’
But for the first time Køster realized that many Jews had not been caught by the Germans. Although the Gestapo had looked everywhere, because of Duckwitz’s warning, less than a few hundred of the eight thousand Danish Jews the Gestapo had catalogued had been arrested.
Køster and Secher recalled that although Denmark has a State-subsidized Church, few Danes are churchgoers. Any Danes in trouble, the doctors decided, would probably call on their family doctors. Why not contact as many general prac titioners as possible, ask them to locate the Jews they knew, and tell the doctors to have these people keep in touch with Bispebjerg? Køster and doctors on the staffs of many other Copenhagen hospitals began calling on family doctors, and nearly all the physicians seemed to be in touch with Jews in hiding. Now the problem was how to save these people. Dr. Secher said his hospital could arrange the boats if the Bispebjerg doctors could have the passengers ready.
Bispebjerg Hospital’s buildings sprawl over many wooded acres; and large buildings enclose the hospital’s grounds somewhat like a walled city. Its main buildings, like those of almost any major hospital, are connected by long tunnels. Since no German troops used the hospital, it was an ideal collecting point for the Jews.
On 8th October Dr. Køster arranged to have a canvas-covered lorry come to the hospital to take the first group of Jews to fishing boats Secher’s colleagues would have waiting. The two doctors again contacted the local practitioners, telling them that the Jews were to come to the hospital in the morning, to wear dark clothes, and to ask to be shown to the chapel deep inside the hospital grounds. They must pretend to be coming to a funeral. Altogether about forty Jews were expected.
All morning the hospital head porter directed refugees to the chapel where a young intern waited to welcome them. Many of them worried and confused, some of the Jews arrived on foot from the nearby tram stop, and many came in taxis. By the time Dr. Køster was able to visit the chapel he found the pews crowded by at least eighty people—old and young, grandparents and infants. Koster and the interne selected about twenty-five and led them outside to the lorry, saw them aboard, and lowered the canvas curtain to shut them in. As the lorry rolled away Køster saw a small hand poke out around the canvas to wave farewell.
To keep the rest of these Jews in the chapel too long on that bright and sunny day would be risky, so Køster began leading small groups down a wooded lane to the hospital’s psychiatric building. In a lecture room in the basement they were to wait until the doctors could decide what to do with them. About fifty more Jews arrived at Bispebjerg that afternoon. How to house them inconspicuously? This was the doctors’ first experience of underground work, and they were groping their way. By ten o’clock that night the hospital had managed to send about eighty people to boats arranged by a doctor Køster knew on the island of Arnager, but that still left about a hundred people, and Køster knew he could not send them away.
Outside the main grounds of the hospital were the nursing sisters’ blocks of flats; senior nurses each had a two-room flat, and juniors were paired in such apartments. There the nursing sisters somehow managed to find accommodation for all of the fugitives.
Køster became worried when he noticed that some of his refugees were obviously not Jews. Some of them later confessed they were Resistance people on the run. But could they also be fugitives from less pardonable crimes? Or Gestapo plants? Perhaps the Germans would raid the hospital at any time. But even if Køster had had experience with security techniques, there was no time to sort out the people who had dumped themselves on him.
In the morning most of the refugees were taken to boats, but by now a slow, though regular stream of Jews was flowing into Bispebjerg. Køster and other doctors in Copenhagen decided that at least several thousand more must still be at large in the city. Their estimate was accurate. The Lyngby group was regularly transporting people out of the country, as were the students’ group, Staffeldt’s bookshop, and almost every other Dane who could help in this dangerous movement. The Germans, almost totally unaware of what was happening, assumed that eventually Danish Jews would have to come out of hiding for food and would be caught.
At Bispebjerg the doctors felt they must publicize their work in the right quarters in order to attract Jews who needed help, but the Germans must not know what was happening. There had to be a clean break somewhere along the hospital’s escape route, and the logical place for that break proved to be in the nursing sisters’ quarters.
All Jews arriving at the hospital were shown to the flat of the head matron where someone would try to make certain that the escapees were genuine. Then the people would be hidden in other sisters’ flats until transport could be set up. Fairly new buildings, the sisters’ blocks of flats had snug, warm cellars—good temporary billets when other flats were too crowded. Later, when the sisters’ quarters were full, the hospital hid some Jews in nearby private houses. Many of the nursing sisters stopped reporting to their wards and worked full time with the refugees. Records of the people had to be kept, and passengers had to be selected according to the form of transport, for it would not do to send old people or very small children on boats that made the crossing roughly. On scraps of paper the nursing sisters kept track of everything.
Somehow the hospital would also have to provide bedding and clothing for these people—and food. Dr. Køster was called in by one of the hospital supervisors who asked: ‘These meals you’re ordering, doctor—who’ll pay for them?’
‘Oh, just charge them to me,’ Køster answered airily.
‘Can you pay for all of them?’
‘Well, no, I can’t,’ Køster confessed. ‘But I suppose you have to charge them to somebody.’
The supervisor smiled sympathetically. ‘Yes, I suppose we do.’ No bill was ever rendered, and nobody in the hospital’s kitchens spoke about the large quantities of food being consumed that October.
Other hospitals in Copenhagen kept finding boats to carry out the Jews, but many fishermen still wanted more money than seemed reasonable. The Contagious Disease Hospital’s staff was able to find fishermen who would not charge too much, but the doctors needed more money than they could raise among themselves. Dr. Steffen Lund of Copenhagen’s Central Patients’ Admission Office began approaching large business firms and factories. Merely claiming he needed money for ‘our suffering countrymen’, Lund raised many thousands of kroner, and the Danish Medical. Association also donated money. Sometimes Dr. Lund received as much as fifty or sixty thousand kroner from a single source—yet he never dared tell how or why the money was being spent. Soon the doctors at Bispebjerg Hospital had collected more than a million kroner which they hid in the oven in the chief matron’s flat.
Danish Red Cross ambulances transported many of the fugi tive Jews from the hospital; if stopped along the way by German patrols, the ambulance drivers were to explain that their passengers were lunatics being transferred from one asylum to another. Many Jews were also moved away from Bispebjerg Hospital in taxis, because almost unlimited numbers of cabs could be driven into the hospital’s grounds without arousing notice. The Copenhagen taxi companies were secretly alerted never to send to the hospital cabs driven by drivers who might be pro-German. The fares were always paid from the chief matron’s oven.
Jewish refugees flowed smoothly through Bispebjerg Hospital’s escape routes before the month was half over. So many different groups of Danes seemed to be helping Jews that quite often individual refugees did not even know who the people were who got them to safety. Clandestine boat fares were finally set at about 500 kroner per passenger, but when Jews came to Bispebjerg without money the physicians helped them from the oven.
Not all of the escape attempts were rewarded with success, however. One of the other groups transporting refugees took about two hundred to a wood along the coast near the North Sealand resort town of Gilleleje. After dark these people walked down to the beach and used an electric torch to signal to a large boat they thought was their transport. The boat drew in toward the beach and began to play a searchlight back and forth on the shore. Then the vessel swung about, revved up its engines, and headed back out to sea. It was a German patrol vessel—as the Jews realized too late.
The men in charge of this party moved quickly to get the refugees away before the Gestapo could sweep down. They were taken to a nearby church, and led up the stairs to the only safe hiding place, the tall attic, where for hours they huddled together in the dark. Their refuge, however, turned into a trap when a Danish woman, no doubt well paid for her trouble, informed upon them to the German searchers. Troops surrounded the church, and before anyone could escape, the entire group was arrested and eventually shipped to Theresienstadt.
Another group of Jews were taken to Amager to board a boat within view of a large hotel. In the hotel bar, overlooking the quay, several German Army officers were drinking. A young lieutenant glanced out of the window, saw the scurrying people, watched them for a moment, and then rushed excitedly to his superior officer. ‘Sir, there are people out there climbing into boats!’
‘So?’ the officer asked, taking another sip from his drink.
‘But, sir, I think they’re Jews! Escaping—’
‘Can’t you see I’m having a drink?’ the senior officer snapped.
‘But Jews—escaping—getting away—’
‘Dammit! Those people are the Gestapo’s responsibility, not ours !’ the officer raged. ‘Now let me finish my drink in peace.’ That group fled without being stopped.
One party of Jews sent from Bispebjerg also had difficulties. Fifty taxis were ordered to the hospital and lined up outside the nursing sisters’ quarters while 150 refugees were placed in them. The taxis moved through Copenhagen down to a hook of land near Rødvig, due south of the capital. On a lonely coast road the taxis stopped and the Jews and their doctor escorts alighted to await the boat. As a precaution, the taxis were told to stand by. From over the water the people heard the hollow chugging of a small ship, and when its silhouette appeared through the mist one of the doctors signalled to it. The boat’s answer was a burst of gunfire. It was a German coastguard vessel.
‘Back into the taxis!’ one of the doctors ordered, climbing into the first one himself. As soon as the cars were loaded they raced inland toward a large manor house the Resistance often used as a hiding place for people awaiting shipment out of the country. A doctor telephoned Bispebjerg and asked that food for the 150 people be sent down to the manor house. The food arrived and no questions were asked.
In his taxi the leader of the doctors raced to the south tip of Sealand, then crossed over to the island of Møn. He was in a hurry—a terrible hurry. In a small port he found a trawler. ‘Quick!’ he shouted to a fisherman on board. ‘Sell me your boat!’
The fisherman stared back blankly.
‘Hurry up, man! I’ve no time to waste! What’s your boat worth?’
Without hesitating, the fisherman drawled, ‘A hundred and fifty thousand kroner. But—’
The doctor was already reaching in his pockets and pulling out large wads of notes. Rapidly he counted out the money— 150,000 kroner. Sending away the taxi, he climbed aboard what was now his group’s trawler and told the fisherman to set out for Sealand.
Many hours later all fifty of the taxis reported back to the chief matron’s flat at Bispebjerg. ‘Our meters are still run ning,’ one of the cab drivers grinned, ‘and that jaunt cost you three hundred kroner for each of our cabs.’
As Dr. Køster went to the oven for the money the taxi drivers’ spokesman explained that the 150 Jews had been put aboard the trawler and were by then probably in Sweden.
Toward the end of October transport was even more perfectly organised, and Danish customs boats, harbour patrol launches, police boats, and lighthouse inspection craft were all carrying out Jews without charge. Contact was made through a Danish shipping agent to get refugees on to freighters, and the risk of sending Jews on the smaller trawlers was no longer necessary.
Several big Finnish ships managed to smuggle twenty Jews on each run they made from Denmark to Sweden. Only a few Jews, who had refused to believe the seriousness of the Gestapo threat, were taken by the Germans, as were about twenty of the young refugees who, handicapped by their inability to speak Danish well, tried to escape by passing as Danes. By the end of October there were almost no Jews left in Denmark, and many groups such as the Bispebjerg one now began to use their knowledge of illicit transport to get other Danish refugees out of the country. Many of the nurses worked at this until the end of the war, and Dr. Køster had no more time for surgery until, toward the end of 1943, he had to flee to England, where he served in the R.A.M.C.
Altogether Denmark sent 7,200 Jews to Sweden; only 570 were captured and sent to Theresienstadt. The Danish welfare ministries asked the Germans for permission to send food and clothing parcels to the concentration camp, but after permission was denied the officials learned that private individuals who had sent parcels to the Jews had received signed receipts. So the ministry took money from a secret government source, bought parcels, and sent them regularly to the camp in the guise of private gifts. Only about fifty Danish Jews died in the concentration camp, and some of these were old people who might have died even had they not been incarcerated. The Bispebjerg Hospital could account for all of the nearly million kroner spent getting about 2,000 Jews out of the country without losing a single person—more than were transported by any other cell. Mogens Staffeldt’s bookshop also moved out a great number, as did the Lyngby group, the students, and others. Since the groups co-operated freely with each other, no single unit deserves more credit than another. What was important was that Denmark, Hitler’s canary, was the only German-occupied country in which almost the entire population worked to save its Jewish countryman—and succeeded.