Polish-Jewish Relations: 1,300 Keyword-Phrase-Indexed Book Reviews (by Jan Peczkis)

Boats in the Night: Knud Dyby’s Involvement in the Rescue of the Danish Jews and the Danish Resistance, by Martha Loeffler. 1999. Lur Publications, Copenhagen

German Leniency. No Jewish Star-Wearing Ever. Paid Danish Rescuers. Danish Collaboration With the Nazis

When interviewed about his experiences, Knud Dyby [once Dyring-Olsen], a former Danish policeman, had lived in the USA for decades. Dyby recounts the virtual absence of Danish military resistance to the German invasion of Denmark in June 1940, and the fact that some Danes saw it as accommodation while others saw it as a form of collaboration. (p. 29).

GERMAN-OCCUPIED DANES NEVER WENT THROUGH THE PRIVATIONS OF GERMAN-OCCUPIED POLES

The author acknowledges the extreme mildness of the first part of the German occupation (1940-1943), and adds, “Unlike other occupied countries, there was enough food.” (p. 9). This contrasts with the German-imposed near-starvation in Poland, and helps explain why Poles were not always eager to share their feedstuffs with fugitive Jews. It also shows the hypocrisy of those that complain that Poles sometimes required payment for housing and feeding fugitive Jews, while no such complaint is ever said of Danish rescuers, which were much better off.

GERMAN LENIENCY ON DENMARK’S JEWS

Unlike the Jews in some other German-occupied countries, Danish Jews were never required to wear the Star. (p. 30). The myth of Danish King Christian X donning the Star, or threatening to do so, is just that. (p. 30).

NO GERMAN-IMPOSED DEATH PENALTY FOR DANISH RESCUERS

Danish boatmen caught by the Germans shipping Jews to Sweden feared beatings from the Gestapo. (p. 73, 101). There is no mention of them fearing death [which was the fate of virtually all Polish rescuers of Jews caught by the Germans.]

DANISH RESCUERS OF JEWS WERE PAID

Payments were usually required by Danish skippers to ship the Jews to Sweden. (p. 56). Dyby was involved in three-week negotiations with Danish skippers to ship the Jews and to “keep the cost low and most were paid only enough to take care of their fuel and other expenses.” (p. 64).

Later, after the Danish rescue of Jews (October 1943), the skippers of “Dyby’s boats”, operating from mid-1944 until the end of the war in May 1945, transporting contraband to Sweden, were paid 350 kroner to cover fuel and living expenses, and the fare rose to 500 Kroner for the shipment of a refugee to Sweden. (p. 88). Obviously, the presumably scaled-back prices were not exclusively some kind of favor to the Jews. They were governed by pragmatics.

“ALL DANES AIDED JEWS”: YAD VASHEM. HARDLY

In assessing the Danish Underground as a whole, Dyby tacitly acknowledges its trivial extent in the first three years of the German occupation of Denmark: “In the first three years of occupation, 1940-1943, the number of Danes involved in resistance activities could be counted only in the hundreds, but by the end of the war there were more than 35,000 freedom righters working for a variety of groups.” (p. 109). Since Denmark’s population then was about 4 million, it means that, at its height at the end of the war, less than 1% of the Danish population consisted of “freedom fighters”. One must also remember that the height of the Danish Underground (1% of the Danish population) occurred well over a year after the famed rescue of the Danish Jews. Moreover, only some fraction of these “freedom fighters” were involved in the rescue of Jews in the first place.

Obviously, there is quite a chasm between 1% and 100%, and it is clear that the popular notion that “virtually all Danes” were involved in rescuing Jews is very much an exaggeration. The Yad Vashem award, given to Denmark collectively for rescuing Jews, is clearly misplaced. And yet some Jews complain that “Poles are taking too much credit for the rescue of Jews”. Go figure.

A MEASURE OF GERMAN STRICTNESS OCCURRED ONLY LATE IN THE WAR

The first execution of a Danish saboteur by the Germans did not occur until August 28, 1943. (p. 101). This was only a few weeks before the Danish rescue of the Jews. The German deportation of several hundred citizens to concentration camps by the Germans took place a few months later (p. 101)[after the October 1943 Jew-rescue, and an everyday occurrence in German-occupied Poland].

DANISH-NAZI COLLABORATION

Dyby describes openly Nazi-collaborating Danes as follows, “…the three groups composed of Nazi-oriented fellow Danes: One was the Schalburg Corps, another the Frikorps, (FRIKORPS DANMARK: Danes wearing German uniforms and serving in the German army), and “HIPOS”, the Hilf Polizei [HILFSPOLIZEI] (Help Police), whose ranks included Danish criminals assisting the German police after the regular Danish police had been arrested.” (p. 81). For more on the hushed-up subject of Danish collaboration, see:

https://www.jewsandpolesdatabase.org/2025/04/09/the-truth-about-ignored-danish-collaborators/