Approximately 6,000 of the 8,000 native and refugee Jews of Denmark have succeeded in reaching Sweden, it is reported in the Swedish press today. Large numbers of Danish Jews have entered the country during the last two days.
Reinforcement of the Gestapo in Denmark will make the escape of more Jews practically impossible, the Stockholm newspaper Aftonbladet predicted today. The Dagens Nyheter reports that two of the four “prison ships” on which the Nazis had confined about 1,400 Jews have left Copenhagen. It is not known how many of the 1,400 were aboard the two ships.
A number of prominent Danish army officers, the Dagen Nyheter writes, have declined to accept release from an internment camp at Marieslyst in “protest against an official announcement connecting the release of Danish soldiers with the deportation of the Jews.” Major General Gortz, commander-in-chief of all the Danish armed forces, has given the Germans a similar answer and has voluntarily remained in an internment camp at Elsinore, the paper adds.
The Swedish radio, in a broadcast today, reported that representatives of the coalition of five Danish parties had handed Wernen Best, the German Minister in Denmark, a memorandum “sharply protesting the German measures against their fellow citizens, the Jews.”
An incident illustrating the attitude of the non-Jewish population in Denma towards the persecuted Jews is reported today from Copenhagen in the Swedish newspaper Allehanda. The report says that during the hunt for Jews in the streets of Copenhagen, one Jew managed to board a street ear. He was lying on the floor surrounded by the non-Jewish passengers when a Gestapo man entered the car in search of him. The passengers, however, told the Gestapo officer that the Jew had escaped from the car through the exit. Danish patriots are also stationing themselves around the railway stations and other places in order to warn approaching Jews when the Gestapo raids these places to discover whether any Jews are among the crowds, the Allehanda reported.
The same paper also reports that the Swedish Navy has mobilized a number of vessels to render assistance to boats carrying Jewish refugees from Denmark who are trying to land on Swedish soil.
The Archive of the Jewish Telegraphic Agency includes articles published from 1923 to 2008. Archive stories reflect the journalistic standards and practices of the time they were published.
