By Victor Borge
Once upon a time there happened – a true story! Even as it happened, it was so remarkable. It became a legend! People said, “It’s a legend!” Then people said,
“And it’s all true!” Years have passed, but the legend lives. Forever true! Forever beautiful!
To begin our story – once upon a time, there was a lovely land placed in the silver sea!
Denmark! Her name rings! The clash of Viking arms! The ghost of Hamlet’s father upon the ramparts of Kronborg Castle! Sea mist upon her meadows. This was an ancient land where farmers tilling the soil turned up helmets, broadswords, antique armor, from the time of heroes!
Sometimes, her tideland marshes gave up boats, long wooden relics, from a thousand years before! Sea wind blew the wheat, ruffled the children’s hair, spun the windmills and filled the sails of all the fishing boats!
Denmark! Jutland – Zealand – Peninsula and island. All sea-embraced – All Denmark was a happy land! Four million people lived there and by a wonderful chance, they were Danes! All kinds – Audacious Danes! Sagacious Danes! Pretty Danes with blonde lashes! Fat Danes with black moustaches! Freckled Danes! Speckled Danes! Brandy Danes! Candy Danes! Dandy Danes! Four million Danes! Their good king, King Christian the Tenth, He loved them all! God bless this noble King! God bless his son, The King!
Now, surprising to say, Denmark was not the biggest country in the world! In fact, there was a bigger country! Right next door! Below! This was most unfortunate! This other place was not a happy land! (to put it mildly!) An evil spirit had taken possession of its people! The spirit’s name, we long forget.
On the Ninth of April, Nineteen hundred and forty, this evil spirit broke into Denmark! Uninvited! Unwanted! Unwelcome! And, most crudely, before breakfast!
Denmark is flat! Her highest peak, hardly a good-sized hill, is only five hundred sixty feet – above the sea . . of course, which is why we say – “flat as a Danish pancake!” Brute force rolled in like a giant rolling pin and flattened the pancake – even flatter! However, this Danish pancake gave the Brute indigestion! Every Dane became a pain! Chronic resistance set in From Copenhagen to Ringkøbing, from Søderbrarup to Brønderslev. Every Dane refused to be digested! So the Brute suffered “Constipation of the Occupation!”
So he beat his head against the wall. He shrieked and hollered. He tore out his hair. He frothed at the mouth, and like this always did- curious to say – all this reminded him of the Jews! He had this thing about the Jews! All sorts of monsters hate people! Ogres! Trolls! Werewolves! Vampires! Banshees! Witches! Demons! They all hate people! But this monster hated the Jews first of all! After the Jews, he hated everybody else! And, at the end, himself! Which was only fair! Considering the source, it was almost an honor to be hated first of all! An honor, perhaps, but not much fun!
In Denmark, it so happened, lived eight thousand Danish Jews! They belonged there! They ate Danish pastry! Drank Danish coffee! Smoked Danish cigars! (The women did, too!) You see, they were Danes! They took their children to the Tivoli Garden, read them fairy tales, written by Hans Christian Andersen! (Another Dane!)
“The Tin Solder”! “The Red Shoes”! “The Emperor’s New Clothes”! “The Little Mermaid” they were sad for! While “The Ugly Duckling” they were glad for! “Big Claus and Little Claus” was their story, too! All about big bullies and about little people, of good will!
October first nineteen forty three, the bully struck in a lightening raid! Big Claus, the Bully knocked on every Jewish door, but Little Claus was nowhere at home! A month later, the brute had caught only four hundred seventy two! Mostly the aged, the sick, the dying who could not, or the stubborn who would not, go into hiding!
Here is the legend to be remembered, beautiful and true: Only in Denmark did the evil spirit fail in this! Only in Denmark did the people openly unite to save their Jews! It was because the Danish people – by national custom – are opposed to Anti-Semitism! And other – of that kind of “isms” are opposed to ghettos! To discrimination! To intolerance!
From the Seventeenth century this policy of human rights had had official strength in Denmark, from Parliament and from the Crown! And so for three years nineteen forty – to forty-three – the invading evil spirit could not even touch the Danish Jews! People – Parliament – and Crown! All resisted! The Jew walked free, worked free, wore no badge! Their synagogue protected by the Danish people. Their rights demanded by the King! But, this was intolerable! The crisis neared!
In September nineteen forty-three the raid was planned – a troop of brutes brought in to do the brutal job! The ships stood ready to carry the Jews away! But, in charge of shipping was Georg Ferdinand Duckwitz, one of the enemies, not a Dane! Still a friend! A man of conscience! Fifteen years living in Denmark Duckwitz had the Danish spirit! At great personal risk, he learned the plan, he warned the Jews! In a few hours Chief Rabbi Marcus Melchior told his congregation they must be in hiding or they would all be doomed! It was true, in every country where this had happened the Jewish People had been doomed! But not in Denmark!
Spontaneous – The Rescue! From every side without a moment’s hesitation, without thought of self, without a question, without appeal, the Danish people took the Jews out of sight, into hiding! Into attics! Into cellars! Into haylofts! Into silos! Overnight the Jews had vanished! The brutal troops were empty-handed!
Empty vans were waiting – empty concentration ships! Door to door the big boots, Tramp-Tramp-Tramp tried to find the Jews! Hide and seek! A game with lives! With little Jewish families hidden under every bush and barrel! For information for where the Jews were hidden, the Brute offered bribes, release of hostages high-ranking Danish officers! Danish Army General Goertz refused such freedom! Danish Vice Admiral Vedel replied: “There is no point in exchanging one Dane for another Dane!”
Seldom in history has a national honor risen to such a passion! The Danish minister of trade – Christmas Miller – wrote in the paper of the underground: “The episodes of the past two nights have to us become a part of Denmark’s fate and if we desert the Jews in this hour of their misery, we desert our native country!” This was the difference! In other countries the evil spirit had split the people, while in Denmark the whole people defended the whole people! Bispebjerg Hospital became an underground to smuggle refugees! Jews came in by taxi, were put to bed with Christian names! They went out by ambulance to rendezvous with fishing boats! The Exodus to Sweden had begun!
Professor Niels Bohr – atomic scientist had been smuggled out of Denmark one day before the raid. Bohr asked asylum for all the Danish Jews whereupon, His Majesty, the King of Sweden, to his everlasting grace, risked war –invasion to offer freedom with the Swedish people to the persecuted. Back and forth by day and dead of night, fishing boats took out with refugees, hidden with the fish, wrapped up in sails, disguised as sailors or simply huddling on the decks and hoping!
The Sirens screamed! Brute patrol boats ripped the fog! Machine-gunning! Searchlights swept the darkened water! But, even so, most fishing boats slipped through! By hook and by crook, at cost of life and capture, by luck and by squeak, seven thousand five hundred –slipped through!
I translate, from the old hymn To The King: “King Christian stood beside the mast! His heroes ‘round him ranged!” Who were the heroes – but the people! Some say we come from the sea, that man was a crawling thing – who learned to walk! Some said, in the darkness of years just past, that The Age of the Fish had come again, that God had died! That Man was again a reptile, a crawling, craven, winding thing! And so they behaved, for a time, some men!
Yet this example stands, becomes our legend, faith in heroes!
Erik Staermose!
Ole Helweg!
Inge Barfeldt!
Dr. Karl Henry Koster!
Head Nurse Signe Jansen!
The Staff of Bispebjerg Hospital!
Mogens Staffeldt!
Sven Truelsen!
Aage Bertelsen!
Axel Olsen!
Margrethe Florinder!
Ole Lippman!
Professor Richard Ege!
Jens Lillelund
The long roll-call would take our lifetime to recite! Record these names beside those brave Norwegians who fought the terror there, their life at stake, and silently saved hundreds upon hundreds of their Jews!
Withall record the names of those who, taking their example, do not stand idly by while closing doors and window shades excusing, when their fellow men are beaten! Stabbed! Tortured! Killed! Such were the deeds of the people among whom I grew to Man’s estate! With whom I learned the wisdom: to light a candle! Rather – than to curse the darkness!
In my adopted land, so noble in its fibers, its conception this history is legend! And lesson after lesson must be learned, that: Those who know no history are sentenced to repeat it!
And by the Voice out of the Whirlwind Job was told, “Deck thyself now with Excellency and dignity! And array thyself with honor and majesty!”
“Then will I also confess of thee that thine own right hand – can save thee!”