Madame Karin Michaelis, famous Danish authoress, writing in the “Neue Pariser Zeitung,” severely condemns anti-Semitism and states that it is a phenomenon not known in Denmark.
The Jews, she said, are fully appreciated in Denmark and recognition is accorded their contributions to world progress.
Madame Michaelis is well known for her liberalism and her sympathetic attitude toward the Jews, which has found expression on numerous occasions.
“I must declare with pride that we in Denmark are free from that bacillus which is known as anti-Semitism,” she writes. “No one among us asks whether a particular person happens to be a Jew. In our country it is impossible for such things ever to happen as occur day after day in Austria, students attacking their Jewish colleagues with sticks and rubber cudgels, and driving them out of the university.
“At home in my country we know nothing of the inhuman horrors of Roumania, or of the Ukraine, and no one could possibly imagine a pogrom in our country. We have never known such things, and we do not want to know them ever. We drive the thought from us, as if these were things that happen on a different planet, with which we can never come in contact.
“If we in Denmark have progressed as much as we have,” she went on, “it is because we have known how to appreciate the qualities of the Jews whom we have taken into our midst. Mixed marriages are frequent with us, and have helped us to advance. The Jews have given us their industriousness, vitality, and endurance, and what they have given has not been without influence upon us. I know many Jews who live according to the Sermon on the Mount much more than we Christians do, and what does it matter if they still wait for the Messiah, instead of accepting Christ?”
Denmark has a great deal for which to be thankful to the Jews who have helped it to progress, Madame Karin Michaelis, who is one of the Literature Nobel Prize Winners, wrote recently in the “Berliner Tageblatt.” Denmark, she said there, has much for which to thank the undeniable qualities of the Jews of Denmark, who have given the Danish people the benefit of their industry, vitality and endurance.
Madame Karin Michaelis has repeatedly given expression to her high regard for the Jews. In 1927, in Vienna, she told the Jewish Telegraphic Agency representative there that Europe without the Jews would be like a lump of
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.
