Countrymen /

One of the few feel-good stories to emerge from the Holocaust was the protection and eventual rescue of the approximately 7,000 Danish Jews by their fellow Gentile Danish citizens, escaping a scheduled roundup by Nazi occupiers. Lidegaard is a former diplomat and is currently the editor of the Danish newspaper Politiken. As he points out, this mass rescue was extraordinary, since the population and governments of other occupied nations rarely protected their fellow Jewish countrymen. Lidegaard uses diaries, letters, and memoirs of the participants to provide a day-to-day narrative that proceeds on two tracks: the Nazi plans for roundup and the Danish plans to defeat it. The Danish government, including the king, had advance notice of the Nazi plan. A policy of delay and obstruction bought time, which allowed ordinary citizens to organize transport of almost all of the Jews to Sweden. This is a tense, inspiring story of the resistance to oppression by a united people.--Freeman, Jay Copyright 2010 Booklist

A Danish diplomat, journalist, and historian makes his impressive U.S. debut with this comprehensive account of the 1943 rescue mission that saved 6,500 of German-occupied Denmark's 7,000 Jews from the Nazis. That King Christian X wore a yellow star in solidarity with his hunted countrymen is likely an apocryphal tale, but it is true that the monarch, government, and Danish people did do something extraordinary for the time: they denied the validity of a Jewish question. Jews were "Danish citizens... protected by Danish law." Enough said. Despite the Danes' refusal to cooperate-not to mention Hitler's dependence on Denmark for food supplies-Berlin nevertheless gave the deportation orders on September 28. Results were limited: warnings had been issued in the days before encouraging Jews to seek shelter. Typically they'd hide with friends or benevolent strangers en route to the coast, where Danes and Swedes worked together to provide the refugees with safe passage to the neutral land of the latter. Lidegaard describes an evacuation that was chaotic, frightening, and highly successful, thanks in part to the tacit acquiescence of occupying Nazis who, sensing that they would soon lose the war and face the consequences, "had nothing to gain... but much to lose" by angering the Danish people. Photos. (Sept. 20) (c) Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved.

How a Danish national "we" kept the Nazis at bay--and largely saved its Jewish population. In this passionately argued study, former Politiken editor in chief Lidegaard (Defiant Diplomacy, 2003, etc.) takes on the complicated creation of the "model protectorate" and discusses why Denmark was able to resist Nazi actions against their Jews when other occupied countries could not. The author combines fine research with specific examples of Jewish families--e.g., pediatrician Adolph Meyer and his children, as they were affected by the events that played out between April 9, 1940, with the abrupt and total occupation of the country by Nazi Germany, through the action taken against the Jews on October 1, 1943. With King Christian X's decision not to resist the Nazi assault, Denmark entered a "peaceful occupation," surrendering the export of its substantial agricultural production to Germany in exchange for upholding its neutrality and regard for constitutional democracy. It was an "unparalleled" arrangement, especially regarding the status of the Jews, protected as citizens under Danish law. A move against the Jews, Christian and others had warned, would be seen as an abuse of Nazi power and stir trouble into this working cooperation. Early on, readers may feel they are being fed a dreamy tale of Danish exceptionalism, but Lidegaard meticulously pieces together the myriad facets to this incredible story, including Hitler's special envoy in Denmark, Werner Best, a committed Nazi who managed to play it both ways until the order for a Jewish action could no longer be delayed; Sweden's open-door policy toward the Danish refugees; and the enterprising Jewish families who quickly had to go into hiding, relying on a goodwill network of friends and fishermen to shuttle them to safety in Sweden. A fascinating story about how the "Danish Jews were protected by their compatriots' consistent engagement."]] Copyright Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.