{"id":1914,"date":"2023-09-24T10:56:36","date_gmt":"2023-09-24T08:56:36","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.israelreport.org\/?p=1914"},"modified":"2025-06-10T15:40:58","modified_gmt":"2025-06-10T13:40:58","slug":"80-years-since-rescue-of-7000-danish-jews","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.israelreport.org\/en\/80-years-since-rescue-of-7000-danish-jews\/","title":{"rendered":"80 years since rescue of 7,000 Danish Jews"},"content":{"rendered":"
\n
\n
\n
\n
\n

80 years since rescue of 7,000 Danish Jews<\/h1>\n<\/div>\n
\n

The rescue operation in October 1943 that saved most of Denmark\u2019s roughly 7,000 Jews from the Holocaust led to the Danish resistance movement, the Danish people and the Danish king being among the first to receive the award \u201cRighteous Among the Nations\u201d by Israel\u2019s official Holocaust Museum Yad Vashem<\/strong><\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n

\n
\n
\n
\n
\"\"<\/span><\/div>\n
<\/div>\n
\n

Approximately 7,000 Danish Jews were saved from the Nazi concentration camps by escaping across the straits to neutral Sweden. Photo: Commons Wikimedia<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n
\n
\n
\n
\n
\n

I<\/span>n early October this year, it will be 80 years since around 7,000 Danish Jews were saved from the Nazi concentration camps by escaping across the Oresund to neutral Sweden.
\nOf Denmark\u2019s Jews, less than one percent fell victim to Nazi genocide, making the country one of the few exceptions in the terrible history of the Holocaust.<\/p>\n

In 1963, Yad Vashem, Israel\u2019s Holocaust Memorial and Museum began to confer the \u201cRighteous Among the Nations\u201d award to non-Jewish people who saved Jews during the Holocaust, and among the first to receive the award were the Danish resistance movement, the Danish people and the Danish king.<\/p>\n

Raoul Wallenberg then became number 31 among the approximately 28,000 who have received the award to date.<\/p>\n

Orna Keren-Carmel, historian at the Hebrew University in Jerusalem, has in her research focused on modern Scandinavia\u2019s relationship to the Holocaust and to the state of Israel in the years following the Second World War.<\/p>\n

Her PhD at Aarhus University in Denmark focuses on the rescue of the Danish Jews and how this has been portrayed in Israeli history.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

\n

Firm stand<\/strong><\/h3>\n<\/div>\n
\n

Orna Keren-Carmel states that all the Nordic countries \u2013 to varying degrees \u2013 attempted to save their Jewish population.<\/p>\n

\u2013 Denmark is perhaps the most interesting example. The Danes\u2019 clear stance made the Germans turn a blind eye to the rescue operation in October 1943. It was more important to them to have favorable relations with Denmark than to complete the Holocaust of the Danish Jews, she says, pointing to the importance of how states and authorities get involved in humanitarian crises.<\/p>\n

\u2013 The Danish authorities said: \u201cWe do not want our Jewish population to suffer.\u201d The Swedish authorities offered surviving Norwegian Jews as well as those in Denmark and Finland to come and find a safe haven in Sweden.<\/p>\n

It was decisions from above that made these extraordinary rescue efforts possible during the war. The Danes\u2019 clear position meant that the Germans turned a blind eye to the rescue operation in October 1943.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

\n

Nation-wide radio warning<\/strong><\/h3>\n<\/div>\n
\n

When Sweden heard that Danish Jews were to be deported, the Swedish government made a radio broadcast at six o\u2019clock in the morning of October 2 where Sweden warned Nazi Germany of consequences should the deportation take place and that all Danish Jews were welcome to Sweden.<\/p>\n

\u2013 When the BBC also reported on Sweden\u2019s official statements on October 3, it made a big impression around the world, says Orna Keren-Carmel,<\/p>\n

In many occupied countries in Eastern Europe upwards of 90 percent of the Jewish population was killed. Also in Belgium, the Netherlands and Norway, a large number of the Jews were sent to Auschwitz.<\/p>\n

Of the 773 Norwegian Jews who were sent to Poland and Germany, only 38 of them survived, which means that 35 percent of the Norwegian-Jewish population \u2013 which consisted of about 2,100 people \u2013 was murdered.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

80 years since rescue of 7,000 Danish Jews The rescue operation in October 1943 that saved most of Denmark\u2019s roughly 7,000 Jews from the Holocaust led to the Danish resistance movement, the Danish people and the Danish king being among the first to receive the award \u201cRighteous Among the Nations\u201d by Israel\u2019s official Holocaust Museum […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":1898,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[55],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1914","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-historic-flashback"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.israelreport.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1914","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.israelreport.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.israelreport.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.israelreport.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.israelreport.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1914"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/www.israelreport.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1914\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":3576,"href":"https:\/\/www.israelreport.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1914\/revisions\/3576"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.israelreport.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/1898"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.israelreport.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1914"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.israelreport.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1914"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.israelreport.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1914"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}