Tied to a dock at the Mystic Seaport in
Connecticut a small, white lighthouse tender sports a huge Danish flag on its
stern. The little boat, the Gerda III, belongs to the Museum of Jewish
Heritage: A Living Memorial to the Holocaust in Manhattan’s Battery Park City.
It was given to the museum by the Danish parliament in recognition of what the
Gerda III and its crew did in October 1943 when Germans attempted to round up the
Jewish population of Denmark for extermination.
Over a period of several weeks, the 46-foot-long Gerda III
made numerous trips across the sound that separates Copenhagen, Denmark from
Sweden, each time with 10 to 15 Jews packed into its tiny hold. In Sweden,
which was neutral, the Jews were safe from Hitler’s Nazis. The little ship and
its brave crew saved 300 lives.
Almost 70 years have passed since then, but the story of the
rescuers and the rescued remains as gripping as it was when it happened.
In 1943, there were 7,500 Jews living in Denmark. Germany
had occupied Denmark since April 1940, but the Danes had been allowed to
continue their government with little interference. Jewish life also went on as
it had before. Danish Jews continued to hold religious services and retained
their businesses and their property.
On Sept. 29, 1943, that changed. The day before, a senior
German official, G. F. Duckwitz, had quietly alerted some senior members of the
Danish government that the Jews were going to be rounded up and sent to
concentration camps beginning on Oct. 1. The Danish officials contacted the
heads of the Jewish community and told them to urge everyone to flee. Danes —
Jewish and non-Jewish — went door to door to Jewish households with the news.
One of those who fled, Herbert Pundik, then 16 years old and
later a journalist, wrote a book about what occurred. “The result was that on
the night of October 1st, when the Germans came, most Danish Jews
had flown the coop,” he wrote. “They sought refuge with non-Jewish friends and
acquaintances or with complete strangers who opened their doors to them.”
Then hidden in trucks and in ambulances, the Jews were
driven to the coast, where they were surreptitiously ferried to Sweden. Several
hundred ships took part in the rescue. Gerda III was one of them. More than
7,000 people were saved — almost the entire Jewish population of Denmark.
At the time, Henny Sinding, 19 years old, was working for a
lighthouse-tending business that her father managed. The Gerda III’s crew
approached her to ask her help and her father’s permission to use the boat to
rescue the Jews.
“Henny’s father gave tacit permission,” said Anita Kassof,
Deputy Director of the Museum of Jewish Heritage, “and thereafter for that
critical month of October she would leave her parents’ house at one in the
morning to go smuggle Jews and her parents essentially just looked the other
way.”
A video called “Rescuers” in the Museum of Jewish Heritage
honors people such as Raoul Wallenberg and Oskar Schindler who aided the Jews.
The segment about the rescue of the Danish Jews is simply entitled “Denmark.”
“Everybody in Denmark helped the Jews,” says Leif Donde —
among those rescued — in the video. “It was the students, the workers, the
business executives. It was the farmers. It was the fishermen.”
Henny Sinding appears in the video as Henny Sinding Sundø —
her married name — by then a woman in late middle age with a weathered,
sunburned face, short hair, no jewelry, a dab of lipstick and bright, blue
eyes.
“Why should the Germans kill our Danes?” she asks in the
video. “They were Danes like we were. Danes? Jews? They were just Danes.”
Of her role in the rescue, which would have resulted in
imprisonment and death had she been caught, she says, “Nobody – he or she –
thinks that they are heroes because it was not a very heroic thing to do. It
was just a natural thing to do.”
In the video, another woman, Elsebet Kieler, who
participated in the rescue, explains her actions by saying, “If you want to remain
a human being and take care of your own human dignity, you have to take care of
your neighbor. It’s the same thing. You have to protect everyone.”
Denmark was the only Nazi-occupied country that managed to
save most of its Jewish citizens. In fact, elsewhere much of the local
population enthusiastically collaborated with the Germans in rounding up the
Jews.
The Danes protected not only Jewish lives but Jewish
property. “Most of the Jews came back after the war and they found their houses
intact,” said Kassof. “It’s really a remarkable story. I think it’s a testament
to the Danish character.”
Anita Kassof said that Gerda III is in Mystic, Conn. rather
than in Manhattan because the Mystic Seaport, a world-renowned maritime museum,
has a full-time staff to care for the boat and to make sure that people have
access to it and that it’s being interpreted accurately.
“What started out as a temporary arrangement at Mystic has
become unofficially a permanent arrangement,” she said. “It’s working out well
for everyone.”
For Mystic Seaport hours, admission prices and directions,
go to www.mysticseaport.org/. For
information about the Museum of Jewish Heritage at 36 Battery Place, go to www.mjhnyc.org/. Herbert Pundik’s book, “In
Denmark It Could Not Happen” about the flight of the Danish Jews to Sweden is
available in the Museum of Jewish Heritage bookstore for $16.95.
Terese
