Photo Courtesy Judy Glickman Laude - Florida Holocaust Museum Collection
Harbor, Gilleleje, 1992
Jews perished in large numbers across Nazi-occupied Europe, but not in Denmark, where more than 95 percent of Jews survived. Denmark was the anomaly of the Holocaust, a story of solidarity recalled in the new exhibition at Jewish Museum Milwaukee.
The heart of “Choices of Consequence: Denmark and the Holocaust” are dozens of silver nitrate photographs by Judy Glickman Lauder. She began her documentary photography by visiting the death camps and killing sites of the Holocaust. In 1992, she visited Denmark in a visual exploration of a nation that came together against genocide.
Unlike the nations of Eastern Europe, Denmark was regarded by the Nazis as a “model protectorate” with its king and government left in place under German supervision. “Hitler deemed the Danes as Nordic people,” explains JMM Chief Curator Molly Dubin, on par with Germans in the Nazi racial hierarchy. The nation’s Jews had lived in the country since the 1600s when they were invited by the king. They long enjoyed full civil rights. Antisemitism was a negligible factor in Danish politics; the local Nazi party was miniscule.
The German army overran Denmark after a brief skirmish in 1940 and allowed the country’s institutions to function more or less as before. Unlike France, Denmark passed no antisemitic legislation. There were no Jewish ghettos, no yellow stars, no seizure of Jewish property. In the summer of 1943, when the Nazis decided to impose their antisemitic agenda on the country, the Danish king, his government and the nation’s people rallied to rescue their Jewish fellow citizens. The Danes were alerted to Nazi plans by a quietly subversive German diplomat in Copenhagen, Georg Duckwitz, who also reached out for help to neutral Sweden.
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Over the course of several days, Danish police helped most of the country’s 8,000 Jews to reach ports where fishermen ferried them to safety in Sweden. Danish churches and hospitals provided shelter en route.
Photo Courtesy Judy Glickman Lauder - Florida Holocaust Museum Collection
Interior, Synagogue, Copenhagen, 1992
Lauder photographed places and people associated with the rescue of the Danish Jews. Her photos have, Dubin says, “a sense of presence.” Pier Humleback Beach shows a stony surface and the rough boat dock from which many Jews escaped. Harbor Gilleleje reveals one of the ports as it looked in 1992, not so different from 1943, still crowded with small fishing boats capable of carrying no more than 10 people per trip. Boat Hatch peers into the dark hold of one of those boats where Jews were concealed. In the deep shadows of Crypt Trinity Church, Torah scrolls from the nearby synagogue were hidden from the Nazis.
During her 1992 visit, Lauder located many survivors, Jews and Gentiles. Her black and white portraits include Pastor Palle Dinesen of Trinity Church; Thormod Larsen, a policeman later arrested by the Nazis for his role in the rescue; Birgit Krasnik, a rare fisherwoman among the rescuers; and playwright Finn Abrahomowitz, four years old when he fled by boat with his parents. Some of the text panels record memories of the participants, most of whom, Dubin says, “did not consider their actions heroic but simply the right thing to do.”
“Choices of Consequence: Denmark and the Holocaust” runs February 14 through May 25 at Jewish Museum Milwaukee, 1360 N. Prospect Ave. For more information, visit jewishmuseummilwaukee.org.
