From: kkniaz@eniac.seas.upenn.edu (Krzysztof W. Kniaz)
Newsgroups: soc.culture.jewish
Subject: King of Denmark and the Jewish Star
Message-ID: <89825@netnews.upenn.edu>
Date: 21 Sep 92 20:15:16 GMT
During our discussion about holocaust many readers cited the story
of the king Christian X - the king of Denmark during WWII, who
allegedly wore yellow jewish star to protest against the persecussion
of Jews by Nazis. This undoubtedly beautiful (would have been) gesture is
a (literary) fiction prevalent in the public, despite many attempts
by serious WWII historians, to set the record straight.
I would like to present a part of an article published by a
Danish antropologist Jens Lund more than a decade ago. The author
,trying to find out , why exactly the myth is so largely popular,
gave an honest account of events leading to massive rescue operation of
Danish Jews to Sweden in 1943. The article is quite large and gets
more "scientific" (antropology), so I'm posting only an introduction,
list of entries and small but interesting part about Poland.
---------------------------------------------------------------------
Jens Lund
THE LEGEND OF THE KING AND THE STAR
[Indiana Folklore 8 (1975) pp. 1-37], first ten pages:
>From the German occupation headquarters at the Hotel D'Angleterre
came the decree: ALL JEWS MUST WEAR A YELLOW ARM BAND WITH A STAR
OF DAVID.
That night the underground radio transmitted a message to all
Danes. `From Amalienborg Palace, King Christian has given the
following answer to the German command that Jews must wear a Star
of David. The King has said that one Dane is exactly the same as
the next Dane. He himself will wear the first Star of David and
he expects that every loyal Dane will do the same.' The next day in
Copenhagen, almost the entire population wore armbands showing a
Star of David. The following day the Germans rescinded the order
[1].
This account, a fictionalization contrived by Leon Uris in his 1958
novel, Exodus, describes a well-known event from the dark days of
Nazi hegemony in Europe. It is familiar to the many persons who
heard of the heroic deed during the war or who have heard or read
about it afterwards. Unfortunately, however, the event never took
place. Not only did the citizens of Copenhagen and the King of
Denmark never wear the Jewish badge, but neither did any Danish
Jew, except for the few hundred who were ultimately deported to
concentration camps, and even they only wore it after their
arrival. Furthermore, the Nazi authorities never decreed the use of
the badge in Denmark and King Christian X never, as is also often
believed, threatened to wear it himself, if it were instituted. The
widespread diffusion and persistent popularity, after thirty years,
of crying accounts of the King of Denmark's involvement with the
Jewish badge is a matter of importance to folklorists, historians
and sociologists alike.
Essentially, three separate, similar stories about the alleged
occurrence circulate. For purposes of discussion, they may be
labeled Versions I, II, and III, respectively. They are, in
summary, as follows:
Version I: The Nazi occupiers threatened to decree the use of
the badge among Danish Jews. King Christian was notified and he
informed the Germans that, were the badge decreed, he too would
wear it, because of the principle of equality among all Danish
citizens. The Nazis backed down and never issued the decree.
Version II: The Nazi occupiers decreed the use of the badge
among Danish Jews. King Christian, on his morning ride through
the streets of Copenhagen, appeared, wearing the badge, explaining
to the people his adherence to the principle of equality among all
Danish citizens. The Nazis backed down and rescinded the order.
Version III: The Nazi occupiers decreed the use of the badge
among Danish Jews to aid in their identification for purposes of
arrest and deportation. King Christian, on his morning ride through
the streets of Copenhagen, appeared wearing the badge himself, as
did thousands of other non-Jewish citizens. The Germans were thus
thwarted in their attempt to identify Danish Jews and rescinded the
order.
There are, of course, as many variants of the story as there
are persons with a memory of it and some of them incorporate
elements of two or more versions. As with many modern legends,
the legend of the King and the Star has diffused via the printed
page and the electronic media, as well as by oral tradition [2].
The objective of this project will be to do the following:
1) To describe the actual events surrounding Nazi persecution
of Jews in Denmark and elsewhere that could have given rise to a
rumor that the King of Denmark threatened to wear or actually wore
the Jewish badge during World War II.
2) To describe the methods of diffusion of the story -
printed, electronic and oral - and how this diffusion crystallized
one of the thousands of war-rumors of the l940s into a persistent
legendary form.
3) To offer a sample of some oral variants of the story
as it exists today, with sufficient ethnic and social data to
speculate about the nature of its persistence and of its adherents'
belief in its veracity.
HISTORICAL BACKGROUND
Badges of distinction are probably as old as humanity and
have been used through the ages to denote civil, military and
clerical authority. On the other hand, they have also been used to
specify those deemed worthy of punishment, as for example, the
well-known use of the red letter "A" by the Puritans to identify
convicted adulterers, as related in Nathaniel Hawthorne's novel,
The Scarlet Letter [3]. Religious differences, especially when
stigmatized, have also been cause for decreeing a peculiar mark to
be worn by the outsider. A few distinctions of dress for Hebrews
are mentioned in the Old Testament, including a prohibition of
fabric of "mingled linen and woolen" [4] and the obligation that a
fringe of thread entwined with a blue cord be worn on the outer
edges of the garment [5]. After the fall of Jerusalem, Diaspora
Jews often wore distinctive garments varying with their places of
residence. In the ninth century Muslim world, Caliph Omar II
decreed vestments of a distinguishing color for non-Muslims and in
Sicily during the same century, the Saracen governor decreed that
all Christians must display on their houses a badge shaped like a
swine and all Jews a badge shaped like a donkey [6].
In Medieval and Renaissance Europe a number of distinctive
badges were forced upon the Jewish population. A shield
representing the Tablets of the Law was decreed in thirteenth
century England [7]. At the same time, a red and white wheel-shaped
badge was decreed in France and in Italy a yellow wheel was used
[8]. The First Lateran Council, meeting in 1215, decreed that
throughout Christendom, Jews and Saracens should be "marked off...
through the character of their dress" but left it up to local
authorities to devise the precise form of distinction [9]. Yellow
wheel-shaped badges were later used through much of Europe until
finally prohibited by Emperor Franz Josef II in 1781 [10]. There is
also some evidence that a six-pointed star was used as a Jewish
badge in fourteenth century Portugal [11]. Not until 1797 was the
yellow wheel abolished in the Papal States, and then only by the
French Revolutionary authorities [12]. It is ironic that on 4 April
1933, the morning after the Nazi takeover in Germany, the German
Jewish newspaper, Juedische Rundschau, mentioned the old Medieval
badge metaphorically in the statement, "Wear it with pride, this
yellow badge" [13].
The six-pointed Star of David (more properly called the
"shield of David", when translated from the Hebrew, Magen David)
was not widely used as a symbol of Judaism until the nineteenth
century. It did appear on some Jewish buildings and gravestones as
far back as the early Middle Ages, but seemingly only as a part of
general kabbalistic heraldry. Its adoption by nineteenth century
Zionists seems to have been a deliberate attempt to give Judaism a
simple symbol, comparable to the cross of Christianity [14].
Animosity towards the Jewish people has been endemic to
European civilization since the early Middle Ages. Although
originally based on religious grounds, anti-Jewish feelings were
given quasi-racial justification by some nineteenth century
nationalistic movements, particularly in Germany and Russia, and
"Anti- Semitic Leagues" sought to exclude Jews from national life
during the early decades of the German Empire [15]. After World War
I, Adolf Hitler's National Socialist party blamed Germany's severe
economic and political problems on its Jewish population, and
following the Nazi takeover in 1933, systematic persecution was
instituted. In 1935, special laws, the Nurnberger Gesetze, excluded
Jews from German citizenship, ostensibly on racial grounds, and
after the outbreak of war, Nazi persecution was instituted in the
portions of Europe under German occupation, ending with a program
of mass extermination "the final solution to the Jewish problem"
[16].
As early as 1935, Jewish-owned shops in Germany were forced by
law to identify themselves as such with a prominently displayed
sign. The same year, passports and rations cards of Jews were
stamped with a large letter "J" [17]. Also, inmates of German
concentration camps during the 193Os were forced to wear
distinctively colored badges according to their dissenters, etc.
The badge for Jewish prisoners consisted of a yellow and red
six-pointed star [18].
It was not until October 1939 that Jews were again forced to
wear a distinctive badge in public. This was first promulgated by
a local SS commander in the Wloclawek district of Poland and
gradually spread throughout Polish territory under German
occupation. Not until 19 September 1941 was the wearing of the
distinctive yellow badge, consisting of the Star of David with the
word Jude in pseudo-Hebraic characters made mandatory in Germany
proper [20]. Other nations under German occupation, with the
exception of Denmark, were eventually forced to comply with the
regulations instituting the badge, which was officially designated
der Judenstern ("the star of the Jews"). In 1942, the SS
publication, Das Schwarze Korps, even advocated the additional
identification of Jews by forcing them to wear black bowler hats,
since the star was too easily concealed. This measure was never
instituted [21].
Nazi forces overran Denmark on 9 April 1940 and the Danish
government quickly capitulated. In exchange for Danish cooperation
with the occupying forces, the democratic Danish government and
constitution were permitted to continue free from German
interference until July 1941 when, in response to the German
invasion of the Soviet Union, anti-Communist regulations were
decreed. In November 1941, the Danish government was pressured into
signing the Anti-Comintern Pact, Germany's anti-Soviet alliance. As
early as 1939, a congress of pact members in Berlin had declared
that the pact signatories considered "a position on the Jewish
question" to be part and parcel of the pact's intentions [22].
Public awareness of the anti-Semitic implications of the
Anti-Comintern Pact, as well as violent street demonstrations
opposed to its ratification, led to a Danish government
proclamation that "the pact's ratification does not involve any
responsibilities for the Danish government not already enumerated
in the wording of the pact". The German authorities did, however,
engage a Danish Nazi constitutional lawyer, Dr. Julius Popp-Madsen,
to draw up a legal brief based upon the Nurnberger Gesetze for
consideration by the Danish parliament. This brief included an
article prescribing a distinctive badge for Jews [24]. In December
1941, Cecil von Renthe-Fink, the German ambassador and
plenipotentiary, approached the pro-German Minister of Transport,
Gunnar Larsen, about the possibility of anti-semitic measures by
the Danish government. A special cabinet meeting was called to
discuss the topic and it was declared that any such actions would
be dangerous to public order and could conceivably cause sabotage
and unrest against the occupying power [25]. Although the small
Danish Nazi party (DNSAP) had been agitating against Jews since
1930, the relatively important pro-German and pro-Nazi Danes,
including several cabinet ministers, the director of the national
railways, and the leaders of the farmers' organization, never
involved themselves in the rowdy conduct of the DNSAP. They further
advised that no anti-Jewish measures be instituted until the war's
conclusion. A German communique agreed to let the matter rest until
further notice [26].
Although Denmark is by no means free from anti-Semitism,
Danish kings and governments have traditionally protected the
rights of Jewish subjects. The constitution of 1848 guaranteed full
religious freedom, and even at the end of the nineteenth century,
when Jews were being subjected to violence and discrimination
elsewhere in Europe, no outbreaks of anti-Jewish hostility occurred
anywhere in Scandinavia [27]. Frederik VIII, king of Denmark from
1906 through 1912, and father of the wartime king, was a personal
friend of Denmark's chief rabbi, David Simonsen. In 1907, King
Frederik personally prevented a threatened outbreak of pogroms in
western Russia, by repeatedly writing and wiring his sister, the
mother of Tsar Nikolai II [28]. King Christian X, who acceded the
throne in 1912, took a personal interest in the Copenhagen Jewish
community's welfare. In 1933, the king attended the Copenhagen
synagogue's centennial celebration [29]. In 1941 and 1942, two
abortive attempts were hatched to bum the Copenhagen synagogue,
probably by domestic Nazi hooligans. After the second of these, the
king sent a personal message to the congregation expressing his
relief that the arson attempt was thwarted. A special auxiliary
police unit was then organized by the Copenhagen police to guard
the building [30].
It is important to note at this point that the Jewish
community in Denmark was, to a large degree, assimilated into
Danish national life. Probably less than thirty percent of Danes of
Jewish origin took any part whatsoever in Jewish community life,
and an even smaller percentage were actually practicing the
Jewish religion. The rate of intermarriage was so high that many
individuals were only dimly aware of their past Jewish heritage
and non-Jewish neighbors were often totally ignorant of their
acquaintances' non-Christian background. Danish society in the
twentieth century is highly secularized and the characteristic
religious laxness of the Lutheran majority seems to have spread to
the smaller religious groups as well.
The first few years of German occupation were remarkably
lenient, due to a number of factors. First of all, the Danes
offered little resistance to the initial invasion - indeed some
people welcomed it as an alternative to becoming a German-British
battleground. A degree of pro-German sympathy also existed
among some of the Danish peasantry, who were interested in
expanding the produce export market to the south and freeing
themselves from their economic dependence upon Great
Britain [31]. Then there was the "racial" element. Nazi racial
theories included Scandinavians within the so-called "Aryan race"
and the Danes were supposed to be especially fine specimens of
this dubious variety of humanity. Hitler's personal admiration for
Denmark resulted in the policy of the Musterprotektorat ("model
protectorate") which was supposed to show the world the
advantages of peaceful submission to Nazi rule. Although it is
doubtful that most Danes appreciated foreign occupation, even at
first, Danish and German authorities took great pains to
emphasize the continuing normality of life under occupied
circumstances. King Christian himself rode daily through the
streets of Copenhagen on horseback as he had done before the war,
probably to emphasize the continued legitimacy of the Danish throne
and government [32].
The false normalcy of German occupation was, however,
doomed to failure. First of all, the unconstitutional anticommunist
laws decreed by the government under German pressure after July
1941 led to much bitterness. The Danish government's signing of the
anti-Comintern pact late in 1941 and the violent suppression by
Danish police of the subsequent demonstrations also took its toil.
The drain on the Danish economy of the German war-machine, the
gradual imposition of political censorship, the raising of a
volunteer corps of Danes (Frikorps Danmark) to fight for Hitler in
Russia, and German complicity in DNSAP rowdyism and anti-Semitism,
all eventually led to a profound hatred of the occupiers.
Widespread sabotage against railways, German installations and
industries supplying the occupiers swept the country and numerous
covert anti-Nazi organizations appeared, many of them with ties to
the Allies. Ordinary citizens stopped fraternizing with Germans and
private resistance ran all the way from simple unfriendliness to
instances of direct violence. The German authorities responded with
increasing severity, arresting, deporting and even executing both
perpetrators and hostages [33].
The first instance of a direct breakdown in Danish-German
co-operation was the so-called "Telegram Crisis" - an incident
personally involving King Christian himself. In September 1942, on
his seventieth birthday, the king received a letter of
congratulation from Hitler. His answer, "My best thanks", was
deemed an insult in its brevity by the Nazi government and a major
crisis resulted. The German ambassador and plenipotentiary, von
Renthe-Fink, was recalled and Hitler demanded that a Nazi puppet
government be established in Denmark. Von Renthe-Fink was replaced
by Dr. Werner Best, a leading Nazi police official. Best eventually
calmed the situation after being counselled by his advisers to
resist Berlin's demands [34].
Symbolic actions against the Nazis by the Danish populace took
a variety of forms. Red and white badges with the royal monogram,
"CX", were widely worn. One account by a Danish Jew who was
deported in October 1943 mentions that the monogram badge was worn
universally by Jewish prisoners in the Nazi camp at Horserod,
Denmark, where they were held before deportation, until this was
forbidden by the commandant [35]. Great patriotic song festivals
were organized all over Denmark. Persons voting in the
controversial 1943 election wore red and white badges proclaiming,
"Har stemt", ("have voted"). The red, white and blue roundel of
Britain's Royal Air Force was worn as a knitted stocking cap by
many Danes until this was prohibited by the Nazis. Likewise, four
coins tied together with a red and white ribbon (the Danish colors)
and equalling nine are were worn in the buttonhole to commemorate
the ninth of April (9/4) - the date of the occupation. Humorous
classified as subtly attacking the Nazis were purchased in Danish
newspapers [36]. This type of symbolic resistance also occurred
outside Denmark, especially in France, the Netherlands and Norway
[37].
Illegal publications, as well as orally diffused tales of
heroism by crimes and atrocity by Germans, circulated widely [38].
Underground humor lambasted the Nazi authorities and their Danish
cohorts. DNSAP was reputed to stand for, "De naar sateme ailrig
Petrograd" ("They'll never [sateme is a profane expletive adverb]
reach Petrograd"). The Jewish badge in use outside of Denmark was
lampooned by illegal wit. The yellow star was called "Pour le
Semite", in a burlesque of the name of the old German military
decoration, Pour le Merite. The letters "J" ("I"), "U," "D," and
"E" on the badge were said to represent, "Italien und Deutschland's
Ende" [39]. A number of numbskull tales about Hitler and Mussolini
circulated, some of which involved a Jew as a protagonist, as did
a number of apocryphal tales about King Christian snubbing Hitler
or the Germans in general [40].
In the summer of 1943, the political situation in Denmark
became completely chaotic. The German military proclaimed
martial law and issued a series of demands to the Danish
government. The cabinet, headed by the pro-German Prime Minister,
Erik Scavenius, refused to capitulate and resigned, and the Germans
attacked Danish military and naval installations. Most of the
Danish fleet was scuttled, and an emergency committee of
departmental chief-of-staff took over the administration of the
Danish government. The German plenipotentiary, Dr. Best, demanded
police reinforcements from Berlin, agreeing to the condition that
they were to be under direct command from Germany. At this point
the story becomes complex. Best evidently suggested that these
additional troops could be used to deal with Denmark's "Jewish
problem". After their arrival, however, he repeated his own and his
predecessor's earnest counsel that Danish Jews remain unmolested in
order to prevent further public disorder. To this date, Best's
intentions regarding the Danish Jews are still unclear. But due to
the direct control of the police reinforcements from Berlin,
Hitler's obsessive hatred of all Jews was finally able to prevail
over the advice of his counselors in Denmark [41].
The arrival of representatives from Adolf Eichmann's
Jewish affairs office of the German security police in September
1943 evidently caused considerable consternation among the higher
German authorities in Denmark. Best agreed reluctantly to cooperate
and was given back his authority as plenipotentiary, which had been
temporarily suspended during the martial law. General Hermann von
Hanneken, the military commander, was ordered to cooperate with
Best in spite of the general's protest that the army did not take
part in such political matters. Best notified his traffic attache,
Georg Ferdinand Duckwitz, about the impending deportation of the
Jews. Duckwitz, himself a former Socialist, immediately contacted
the leaders of Denmark's Social Democratic Party, who in turn
notified the chief of staff committee and the leaders of the Jewish
community. Duckwitz then commandeered a plane at great personal
risk and flew to Sweden, where he negotiated a secret agreement
with the Swedish government to receive as many Danish Jews as could
arrive on Swedish soil. Meanwhile, agents of the German security
police burglarized the Copenhagen synagogue, stealing its
membership list. When Niels Svenningsen, chief-of-staff of the
Prime Minister's department, protested this action to Best, he was
assured that it was only a routine anti-sabotage action. On the
morning of 29 September 1943, Rabbi Marcus Melchior of the
Copenhagen synagogue warned his congregation that on October 1, all
Danish Jews would be arrested and deported. They were advised to
seek refuge in the homes of their Gentile neighbors and await
further instructions. On the appointed day, which was also the
first day of Rosh Hashanah, the raid took place. Hundreds of German
police troops and Danish collaborators rushed to the homes of
Danish Jews. Of over 7,000 known Danes of Jewish faith or descent
only two hundred and eighty-four could be found. After several
weeks in hiding, the other 6,700 who had gone into hiding began
perilous journeys to Sweden on fishing boats, private yachts and
other small craft. Some were lost at sea and some were captured and
deported, but most of them reached safety [42].
Along with the highly co-ordinated warning and rescue system,
which involved thousands of non-Jewish Danes, there was also a
storm of public protest. The Nazis attempted to placate public
opinion by releasing the Danish officer corps, interned during the
martial law episode in August. This caused even more outrage, as
officers refused to be released in exchange for innocent Jews.
Chief-of-staff Svenningsen repeatedly sought audiences with Dr.
Best in an attempt to call off the deportation. King Christian, the
leaders of religious, political and youth organizations and
numerous other prominent citizens sent letters and telegrams of
protest, and in churches throughout Denmark an outraged
proclamation composed by the Lutheran' hierarchy was read by local
pastors [43].
The two hundred and eighty-four Jews originally captured in
the first raid and another one hundred and ninety apprehended in
hiding or on the way to Sweden were shipped to the special "honor"
concentration camp, Theresienstadt, in Bohemia. In spite of the
cruel regime of the camp, eighty-nine percent survived to return to
Denmark. This was because of the Danish and Swedish Red Cross's
insistence upon regularly sending food parcels. Two months before
the end of the war, all Danish and Norwegian prisoners, including
Jews, were sent by bus to Sweden under the supervision of Swedish
Red Cross chief Count Folke Bernadotte. The buses passed through
Denmark on the way, and they were given heroes' welcomes by the
local populace along the route, in spite of German attempts to
disperse the milling crowds. After V-E Day, all of the refugees in
Sweden returned to Denmark and Norway. Fifty-two Danish Jews died
in Nazi captivity [44].
The murder of approximately six million Jews by Nazi
authorities in Europe (commonly called "the Holocaust") was one
of the most notorious crimes in history [45]. The efficiency of
Nazi extermination policy was to a great extent augmented by the
traditional European hatred of Jews, which gave silent assent and
often even active support for the deportations which preceded the
murders. In all countries under Nazi rule, including Germany
itself, there were also individuals who were sufficiently
conscience-stricken to take personal action at great risk in
attempts to rescue individual victims [46]. The Danish rescue was
probably the most elaborate of these efforts, involving thousands
of policemen, government officials, physicians, and persons of all
walks of life [47]. The Finnish government, although allied to Nazi
Germany, flatly refused to allow any action to be taken against
Finland's small Jewish community [48]. Until the Arrow Cross coup
in 1944, Hungary, also an Axis satellite, refused to take
anti-Semitic actions, and even served as a haven for Jewish
refugees from elsewhere. Most of Hungary's Jews were, however,
exterminated after the German- engineered change of government
[49]. Another ally of Germany, Bulgaria, successfully resisted Nazi
demands for the arrest and deportation of its Jewish population, in
spite of its occupation by large numbers of German military [50].
Belgium, which was under the direct military rule of the Wehrmacht
for the duration of its occupation, managed to prevent the
deportation, but not the internment, of its indigenous Jewish
population, although Jewish refugees from other countries did not
fare as well. Belgium's railroad workers sabotaged Nazi deportation
trains, as did the railwaymen of the Netherlands [51].
------------------------
References:
1. Leon Uris, Exodus (Garden City, N.Y. 1958), p. 75.
2. Other print-diffused and mass-media-diffused legends include
"The Vanishing Hitchhiker" and the legends affirming the survival
of Adolf Hitler and John F. Kennedy.
3. Nathaniel Hawthorne, The Scarlet Letter (Boston, 1850).
4. Lev. 19:19; Deut. 22:11.
5. Num. 15:38; Deut. 22:12.
6. Encyclopaedia Judaica 4 (New York, 1971) pp. 62-63.
7. Ibid., p.63.
8. Ibid., p.64.
9. Guido Kisch, "The Yellow Badge in History", Historia Judaica
4 (1942), pp. 103-105.
10. Ibid., p.119.
11. Ibid., p.139.
12. Ibid., p.133.
13. Encyclopaedia Judaica 2, p.71.
14. Ibid., pp.687-97.
15. There are numerous works about the history of anti-Semitism both
by Jews and non-Jews alike. The most complete is probably Leon
Poliakov's still unfinished The History of Anti-Semitism 1
(New York, 1965).
16. The Holocaust of the Jewish people is also a thoroughly documented
topic. The leading surveys are Gerald Reitlinger's The Final
Solution: The Attempt to Exterminate the Jews of Europe (London
1952) and Raoul Hilberg's The Destruction of the European Jews
(Chicago, 1961).
17. Kisch, "The Yellow Badge in History", pp. 122-123
18. George M. Karst, "The Beats of the Earth (New York, 1942), pp.88-89.
19. Philip Friedman, "The Jewish Badge and the Yellow Star in the Nazi
Era", Historia Judaica 17 (1955) p.55.
20. Eric Thomsen, Deutsche Besatzungspolitik in Daenemark (Duesseldorf,
1971), p. 122.
21. Encyclopaedia Judaica 2, p.71.
22. T. Thaulow, Konge og Folk Gennem Braendingen (Copenhagen, 1945), pp.
218-219.
23. Frit Danmarks, Hvidbog 1 (Copenhagen, 1945), pp. 218-19.
24. Thomsen, Deutsche Besatzungspolitik, p. 122.
25. Leni Yahil, The Rescue of Danish Jewry: Test of a Democracy
(Philadelphia, 1969), p.56.
26. Ibid., p.94.
27. Ibid., pp.9-10.
28. Julius Margolinsky, Danmark Loge (Copenhagen, 1962), p.64.
29. Yahil, The Rescue of Danish Jewry, pp. 48-49.
30. Th. Thaulow, "Kongen", in Vilhelm la Cour, ed., Danmark under
Besaettelsen 3 (Copenhagen, 1945), p. 231.
31. Hartvig Frisch, Danmark, besat og Befriet (Copenhagen, 1945),
passim.
32. Ibid.
33. Richard Petrow, The Bitter Years: The Nazi Invasion and Occupation
of Denmark and Norway, April 1940-May 1945 (New York, 1974), passim.
34. Johannes Broensted and Knud Gedde, De Fem Lange Aar 1 (Copenhagen,
1945), pp. 365-73.
35. Ralph Oppenheim, The Door of the Death (London, 1948), p.57.
36. Per Eilstrup and Lars Lindeberg, De Sa det Ske under Besaettelsen
1 (Copenhagen, 1969), pp. 168-71.
37. Magnus Jensen, Norges Historie 2 (Oslo, 1949), pp. 615-17, 623 and
Philip Friedman, Their Brother's Keepers (New York, 1957), p. 39.
38. Leo Buschardt, Albert Fabritius, Morten Ruge and Helge Toennesen,
Den Illegale Presse, 1940-45: En Antologi, (Copenhagen, 1965).
39. Edvard Andersen and Edward Clausen, Underjordisk Humor
(Copenhagen, 1945), pp. 22,66.
40. Ibid., pp. 137-39.
41. Practically all of the major secondary sources on wartime Denmark
describe the same events. The most detailed coverage of Best's
complex role occurs in Yahil, The Rescue of Danish Jewry, pp. 113-
146; and in Aage Bertelsen, Oktober '43 (Aarhus, 1947), pp. 15-20;
[Bertelsen also (Muenchen, 1960) and Oktober '43 (New York, 1954)].
42. The major sources on the rescue of Danish Jews are: Yahil, The Rescue
of Danish Jewry; Harold Flender, Rescue in Denmark (New York, 1963);
Bertelsen, Oktober '43; Cilia Cohn, En Joeisk Familie's Saga
(Copenhagen, 1960); Torben L. Meyer, Flugten Over Oeresund
(Copenhegan, 1945); P. Welnen, Krigen mod Joederne (Copenhagen,
1946); and Elliott Arnold's political novel, A Night Watching (New
York, 1967) and Petrow, The Bitter Years, pp. 196-229.
43. Yahil, pp.207-09;232-37.
44. Ibid., pp. 288-313.
45. Norris McWhirter and Ross McWhirter, eds., The Guiness Book of
World Records, 1974 (new York, 1964), p. 389 lists the Nazi "Final
Solution" as one of the "Greatest Mass Killings" together with
political purges in Stalinist Russia and Revolutionary China in
its "Crime and Punishment" chapter.
46. Friedman, Their Brother's Keepers, passim.
47. Yahil, pp. 223-84.
48. C. Leonard Lundin, Finland in the Second World War (Bloomington,
1967), pp. 164-66.
49. Reitlinger, The Final Solution, pp. 412-18.
50. Ibid., pp. 379-84.
--------------------------------------------------------------------
In the remaining chapters of Lunds' article the author deals with
anthropological aspects of disseminating the legend. Of a particular
ineterst, however, is the following short fragment regarding wearing the
yellow badge in Nazi-occupied Poland in the early years of the war:
"In Poland, many non-Jews owned stars which they wore for such specific
purposes, as entering the ghettoes to trade, avoiding German conscription
into special Polish labor battalions, and even avoiding arrest as hostages
when Polish underground activities were being avenged. A Polish
underground organization in Lodz reportedly also advocated the wearing of
the badge as a general anti-German gesture [57]"
57. Friedman, Their Brothers' Keepers
--
Krzysztof Kniaz, University of Pennsylvania |Due to circumstances beyond
Lab for Research on the Structure of Matter |your control, you're master of
Philadelphia, PA, 19104, USA |your fate and captain of your soul
From cbnewsj!att-out!pacbell.com!iggy.GW.Vitalink.COM!cs.widener.edu!dsinc!netnews.upenn.edu!eniac.seas.upenn.edu!kkniaz Fri Sep 25 17:46:31 GMT 1992
Article: 38785 of soc.culture.jewish
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From: kkniaz@eniac.seas.upenn.edu (Krzysztof W. Kniaz)
Newsgroups: soc.culture.jewish
Subject: Re: King of Denmark and the Jewish Star
Keywords: Denmark persecution
Message-ID: <90353@netnews.upenn.edu>
Date: 25 Sep 92 13:29:53 GMT
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goldberg@techunix.technion.ac.il (Jacques Goldberg) writes:
>In soc.culture.jewish Sam Saal writes:
>>Although he says he found no proof for the king having worn the Jewish
>>star, he presents no evidence that the king did NOT wear (or threaten to
>>wear) one. The rhetorical argument "well, I never heard/found...." says
>>more about the debators ability to do research than it says about history.
> Here are three statements. If, as I feel, they are exhaustive and
> mutually exclusive, which one is correct?
> 1-The Court of Denmark has never heard that such a "legend", involving one
> of its most prestigious Kings, is being circulated.
> 2-The Court of Denmark, King Christian himself or any sibling or speaker,
> has denied the "legend" but nobody ever noticed, including the author
> of the quoted research (who may then have been less exhaustive than it seems
> at first sight, and may have missed other facts as well).
> 3-A King of Denmark was in need of false, forged, legends to create or
> maintain an image and therefore never denied what he knew to be a forgery.
> LET ME MAKE IT VERY CLEAR THAT I CONDEMN ITEM 3 AN INSULT TO KING CHRISTIAN.
> I DO NOT ENDORSE THIS INSULT. It is here only to make the list exhaustive.
> What have the original author (Jens Lund) and poster to say on that?
As to whether the Lunds' article is exhaustive or not, I recommend to read
it all, the full reference was included. I am in no position to scan the
whole text (BTW the article *was* posted on soc.culture.polish as well
as on Poland-L).
Jens Lund is serious enough an investigator to have first secured the
information from the source. In another text Lunds writes that he had
received a formal letter from the Danish Court denying the fact of
King Christian wearing the yellow star. Therefore item 2 above is the
case.
The main reason I posted the fragment of Lunds' article and all the
article of Deak (The Incomprehensible Holocaust) has somehow escaped
the attention:
It appears from both articles that what a given country could do for the
Jews was principally determined by the German occupation policy in that
country. As Lunds testifies, Denmark enjoyed a very special status of a
"Musterprotektorat", which somehow was also bestowed on its Jewish
citizens (vide the fate of Danish Jews sent to Theresienstadt who
were released alive before the end of the war - an event unheard of
any other Jews in Nazi-occupied Europe).
A similar thing happened e.g. in Hungary where Raoul Wallenberg was able
to save thousands of Jews only because the Nazis decided to recognize
the Swedish travel documents issued by him, in the full knowledge who
the persons bearing them were (this in no way denies his personal courage).
Equally well these Jews could have been sent to Auschwitz like hundreds
of thousands of their brethren from Hungary - the gist of Deak's article
is that we will probably never know what the deciding factor in such
apparently random decisions was, and hence the title: "The
Incomprehensible Holocaust".
>Yaakov Goldberg
