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Last update - 05:51 03/10/2008 Danish Jews mark anniversary of evacuation that saved community By Assaf Uni, Haaretz Correspondent Tags: Denmark, Holocaust, Sweden  BERLIN - Rosh Hashanah of 1943 was supposed to be the date when the Jewish community of Denmark would be terminated. Toward the end of September, Adolf Hitler had ordered the 7,000 Jews in Denmark be arrested and sent to concentration camps in Eastern Europe. The operation was scheduled to begin on October 2, at 10 A.M. It was one of the first Nazi interventions in Denmark since they occupied the country three years previously, years in which the Danish parliament rejected the anti-Semitic decrees passed around Europe, and after a summer of intense activity by the local resistance. Now the Jewish community was going to pay the price. Ellen Oppenhejm, who was 17 years old at the time, knew about the plan in advance. The German naval attache in Denmark, Georg Duckwitz, had secretly informed the heads of the Danish Social-Democratic party of the plan, and they had passed the information on to the heads of the Jewish community. The Oppenhejms received the news on time, left their house before October 2 and took refuge with non-Jewish friends in Copenhagen. Other Jewish families were hidden in churches and hospitals. Advertisement On the night of October 1, the Oppenhejms tried to sail to nearby neutral Sweden. "We reached the Danish coast before midnight and found an empty row boat," Ellen Oppenhejm recalled yesterday in a telephone conversation. She boarded the boat together with her parents and four other Jews, but their attempt to reach Sweden failed. "Water seeped into the boat and we couldn't steer it. A morning fog obscured the coastline and we did not know which way to go. A ferry sailing from Sweden to Denmark picked us up." The captain of the ferry locked them in a cabin and informed the German authorities that he was returning a group of Jews to Denmark. "My Dad tried to appeal to his heart to let us return to our boat, but the captain refused," Oppenhejm said. "My Dad returned to the cabin and my Mom prepared a potion of morphine prepared by a doctor friend in case we were caught by Nazis and chose to end our lives. It was awful and I cried. I was just 17. I remember thinking I was too young to die." But the Oppenhejms' lives were saved, together with the vast majority of the Danish Jewish community, in one of the most impressive operations to protect Jews carried out during the Holocaust. In a joint operation organized by the Danish resistance, the church, student unions and other local citizens, some 6,000 Jews were ferried to Sweden. Still, the Germans managed to catch some 500 unlucky Jews and deport them to Theresienstadt concentration camp in what is now the Czech Republic. Thanks to pressure from the Danish government, they were spared being sent to the even more notorious Auschwitz concentration camp, and were permitted to receive aid and medicine sent from Denmark. About 50 Danish Jews perished at Theresienstadt, most of them elderly. In total, less than one percent of Denmark's Jews perished in the Holocaust - the lowest percentage in German-occupied Europe. Yesterday, the Jewish community in Denmark marked the 65th anniversary of the evacuation operation. Ellen Oppenhejm, now 82, was due to speak at Copenhagen's main synagogue and tell her story for the first time. "After we took the morphine we fell into a deep sleep, but the Germans had a doctor waiting on the shore who pumped our stomachs and we were put in custody near Copenhagen," Oppenhejm said." Her family was then sent to Theresienstadt, where they survived thanks to food sent from Denmark for a year and a half. When her family returned to Denmark after the war they found their property intact, and easily reclaimed it. In recent years some facts have emerged that contradict the notion that all Danes opposed the persecution of Jews: Danish fisherman demanded exorbitant sums to transfer Jews to Sweden and the number of Danish volunteers to the SS was high. Historians also agree that the Nazis knew about the operation to evacuate the Jews but turned a blind eye, allowing it to succeed. "I think it's enough to look at the result to be impressed: The majority of Danish Jews were saved, they went back to Denmark and their houses were intact," Jacques Blum, a senior member of the Jewish community, said. One of the key speakers slated for yesterday's event was Erling Olsen, a former senior Danish minister who fled to Sweden with his family during the war. "If I had to pick one reason why there was such an effort to save the Jews it's because they blended in such a way that created solidarity with the Danes," Olsen says. "Danish policemen refused to cooperate with Germans." Blum added: "I know a survivor who was stopped by a Danish policeman while he was on his way to a boat to be evacuated. 'I just wanted to wish you good luck,' the officer said to him." Related articles: Report: Holocaust denier using Danish gov't grants to study SS Beisky's court of the righteous How Belgium sacrificed its Jews to the Nazis Bookmark to del.icio.us   Saudi peace plan Barak says it may be time to pursue an overall peace deal for the region. Wiesel on Ahmadinejad Nobel laureate says president's UN speech shows world hasn't learned from Holocaust.   1.   Contrast Danish behavior & results towards Jews... 07:39  |  bat yam 03/10/08   2.   Perspective 09:46  |  Sherlock Holmes 03/10/08   3.   Not all Germans in Denmark were the same 12:01  |  Fritz T. 03/10/08   4.   To Sherlock 12:29  |  Sebastian 03/10/08   5.   How many British Jews died 12:54  |  Paul Wood 03/10/08   6.   easy for the Danish 14:26  |  bologna 03/10/08   7.   On Denmark, Italy, & Switzerland ... 14:36  |  David Ostisi 03/10/08   8.   #5 14:37  |  Mark B 03/10/08   9.   Poul Wood,inhabitants of Guernsey denounced their Jews to Germans 15:16  |  Absolute Sweden 03/10/08   10.   Re: Bologna 23:48  |  thundercloud65 04/10/08   11.   to bat yam 14:08  |  Jakub 22/10/08   12.   to bat yam 14:10  |  Jakub 22/10/08

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