*Originally posted by even sven *
**During the Holocaust, the people (and leadership) of Denmark did some amazeing things. When the Nazis came to Denmark, they wanted it to be their model state. It became anything but.
IANAHistorian, but I’ve heard many stories of the Dane’s heroic actions (feel free to add to this or correct anything that is false). When Hitler announced that all Jews would have to wear yellow stars, the King of Denmark announced that all Danes were equal, and therefore all Danes would wear the star, starting with himself. They next day, almost all the Danes wore yellow stars. Hitler quickly got rid of the yellow star ordinance.**
An apocryphal story, unfortunately. King Christian never actually wore the yellow star. He was publicly supportive of the Danish Jews, though.
**They Danish resistance made real progress against the Nazis, mostly through sabotage of factories that fed the war machine. They even blow up Denmarks own Navy in order to block the harbor and ensure that Hitler could not use the ships.
Perhaps most importantly, almost all of Denmark’s Jews survived. The Danes took mass action sheltering them, and smuggling them to Sweden’s saftey. While the Jews of every other occupied area were murdered in unspeakably huge numbers, Denmark’s Jews lived.
My question is, does this bode good or bad for humanity. At first it seems good. The Danes’ acts were noble in the highest. It might give one a little hope for humanity.
But, that hope is quickly dashed. The big question is, if the Danes did it, then why could no other country do it? Why did they sit complacently in the face of such extreme evil? Surely the Danes knew what was going on, that is why they were so insistant on delivering their Jews to safety. Now if the Danes knew, how can we hedge and say the German people had no clue? And if the Danes could create such an effective resistance, shouldn’t we expect that of others as well? In light of the Danish resistance, I just can’t believe the excueses that resistance in other countries was impossible. The facts are, the Danes saved people from muder, while other countries let their people be murdered en masse. **
There were a number of factors which allowed the rescue of Danish Jews. The Danes were tipped off by German authorities about an imminent deportation, which meant that, unlike the cities and towns descended upon by the Germans in the east, the population had time to mount a rescue effort.
Second, probably the most important point; there was no pervasive anti-Semitism in Denmark, unlike Poland, Germany or eastern Europe. Non-Jews were extremely willing to help their fellows evade the Nazis.
Third, the Jews of Denmark were an assimilated population, unlike the ghettos and shtetls of eastern Europe. They had close ties with non-Jews, and thus could count upon at least some support.
Fourth, the Jewish population of Denmark was small, slightly under 8000, and possessed an amazingly handy escape route to Sweden, which the peoples of occupied Europe did not have. Smuggling even a small percentage of the several million Jews out of east Europe would have been largely impossible. Ditto for Western Europe. Helping Jews in the rest of Europe consisted of sheltering them for the duration of the war, a more prolonged and thus more dangerous task than simply helping them to escape.
Last, German policy in Denmark insured that wholesale retribution for acts of resistance a la Lidice and Lezaky were unlikely. The Danish people were regarded as fellow Aryans, not as sub-humans like the Slavic or Jewish peoples. In Poland, for example, the punishment for helping Jews evade capture was death, not just for the perpetrator, but his/her entire family. I don’t know what retributions for resistance (if any) were conducted against the Danes, but likely they were restrained compared to other regions.
There were, in fact, efforts to resist deportation of Jews in other nations, also on a national and official level. Bulgaria, despite being a German ally, did not have a tradition of anti-Semitism, and the majority of Bulgarian Jews survived the war. Italian Jews survived in large numbers, largely due to the acquiesence of the Italian people and government. Italy even went a step further than Bulgaria and protected Jews in areas occupied by its military. Other acts of kindness were found across Europe.
**Does this really mean what I think it means- that people of occupied countries (and the Germans themselves) could have chosen to save the Jews (like the Danes did) but instead chose something else? When faced with the choice, did that many people choose evil instead of good? Does this really give damning evidence that humanity is so low? **
Quite frankly, the Holocaust itself damns humanity enough that whichever answer one gives to your question, the difference seems hardly noticeable.
