(Originally published in The Alegmeiner, February 21, 2018)
https://www.algemeiner.com/2018/02/21/remembering-the-danes-heroic-holocaust-actions/
by Dr. Richard L. Benkin
On February 13, 2018, Prince Henrik — husband of Danish monarch Queen Margrethe — died at the age of 83. Many Jews recall the courage of the Danish royal family, and the entire Danish people, during the Holocaust — specifically how they saved approximately 99 percent of all Danish Jews from the Nazis.
Danish Jews were relatively safe until October 1, 1943, when — after increasing effectiveness in protecting Jews by the Danish resistance — Berlin ordered them arrested and deported. After the order, Danish civil servants started identifying and contacting Jews; but unlike the contacts made by their counterparts elsewhere, these contacts were made to warn Jews and get them into hiding.
Unlike most of Europe, Denmark tried to save the Jews from Nazi clutches, rather than deliver them.
Then, over several nights in October, ordinary Danes — led by the Danish resistance movement — evacuated all of Denmark’s remaining Jews (more than 7,200) across the Baltic Sea to neutral Sweden. This was an event unfortunately unique in the annals of the Holocaust. After that rescue, the Danish government continued to intercede on behalf of the almost 500 Danish Jews in the Theresienstadt concentration camp, saving almost all of them, too.