The Shoah (1939–1945)
Failed roundup in Denmark
1-2 oct. 1943·Danemark
The toll is reproduced exactly as the source states it — never rounded, never added to another. Tolls overlap from one event to the next.
Warned a few days earlier, the community is hidden then taken to Sweden by fishing boats: approximately 7,200 people escape deportation.
Warned a few days in advance by a German diplomat, Georg Duckwitz, the Jewish community of Denmark vanished from the addresses where the police came to find them in the night of October 1st to 2nd, 1943. Hidden with neighbors, in hospitals, presbyteries, and farms, they were then brought to the fishing ports of the Øresund and ferried to Sweden, a neutral country, on fishermen's boats.
Nearly the entire community thus escaped deportation. Those who were caught — the elderly, the sick, the slow to flee — were sent to Theresienstadt, where the Danish government secured the right to have them visited by the Red Cross and supplied with packages; almost all of them returned. Denmark is the only occupied country whose Jewish population was saved in its entirety.
- Period :
- The Shoah (1939–1945)
- Type :
- Shoah
- Region :
- Western Europe
- Country :
- Danemark
Archives danoises de l'occupation ; témoignages des passeurs et documents du ministère danois des Affaires étrangères.