If Holocaust-era Denmark could save its Jews, we can too.

Now we need to decide whose side we are on. Now we need to get over our fear and take action.

photo: Jon Tyson/Unsplash

Please consider supporting our mission to help everyone better understand and become smarter about the Jewish world. A gift of any amount helps keep our platform free of advertising and accessible to all.

---

This is a guest essay written by Mary F. Holley, a retired physician and author.

You can also listen to the podcast version of this essay on Apple Podcasts, YouTube Music, YouTube, and Spotify.

---

When I was in high school in the 1970s, Holocaust survivor Elie Wiesel’s book “Night” was required reading, both in Catholic Catechism and in the public high school.

Reading it gave me nightmares. I comforted myself thinking that if I were in Nazi Germany in 1940, I would have been in the Resistance. I would have sheltered Jews in my home and produced shoddy shells that didn’t explode in their factories. I would have been a hero.

We all thought like that.

If we hadn’t, reading about atrocities committed by people who looked just like us would have been intolerable to our fragile teenage egos.

I got some confirmation of my consoling thoughts of heroism when confronting bullies throughout my life, on behalf of the Black kids who were bussed into our high school and a handicapped kid I looked out for in college.

As a professional, I went out of my way to listen to and care for Black and Hispanic patients during residency, and until my retirement I had a reputation for helping illegal immigrants get pregnant and have babies. Immigrants are the core of our identity as Americans. All of us are immigrants.

But to resist such a powerful force as the Third Reich seemed unimaginable. A machine gun, a hangman’s noose, torture, and starvation. To resist and defy such a force seemed either stupid or heroic, something only rare people could do. We didn’t think we’d ever get the chance.

But then October 7th happened, and now we do have that chance.

Then “pro-Palestinian” protesters started demonstrating and agitating before Israel had even buried its dead. Protests progressed to property damage, aggressive marches to the beat of a drum corps, college tent cities and graffiti, attacks on synagogues, injuries that resulted in death, and now deliberate and premeditated murder. The verbal aggression and government impotence in the face of virulent and obvious hatred has reached such levels and prevalence that no one can deny or ignore it anymore.

And now, resistance is looking more and more dangerous and impossible. How can we counter the verbal filth; the lies and slander; the international, institutional, and media lies and inflammatory accusations flung at a people defending their right to live in their ancestral homeland?

The attacking Nazis are not just college kids and click-bait media; they are gangs, mobs, and masked marauders blocking intersections and building entrances. They build fences and put barriers in the streets and public areas. They take hostages, throw flamethrowers, and ram cars into crowds. They shoot people point blank, reload, and shoot them again until they quit moving, shouting “Free Palestine!”

And now we are wondering, out loud, how bad are we going to let this get? The people behind it are willing to wreak carnage in our streets to get what they want. How and when are we going to put up a real resistance? Are we really that cowardly? Are we really that weak? Maybe we don’t love our Jewish neighbors enough to even try. Whatever our feelings about Israeli politics, there is no excuse for threatening Jewish lives and businesses with violence.

We are counseled to carry guns where legally permissible. Our synagogues spend half a million dollars a year on security services. We cower behind our curtains while our Jewish brothers and sisters try to blend in, no kippa, no Star of David necklace.

The numbers look overwhelming on TV screens and social media feeds. We think ourselves small and few because we lovers of Israel are seldom on TV, have minimal social media presence, and don’t have a drum corp to accompany our message of support to our Jewish neighbors.

And if Jews are afraid to wear their Star of David in public, we are doubly afraid to identify with them, walk in pro-Israel demonstrations, or surround them on subways when they are accosted. If we get between our Jewish friend and the flamethrower, we know we will get burned. Our car will be turned upside down. Our house will get a window broken, a swastika painted on it, a terrorist hiding in the bushes. Just being called nasty names by anonymous creeps on the internet gives us the willys. Maybe the Nazis will win after all.

Mohamed Soliman and Elias Rodriguez were willing to risk the death penalty to kill Jews. Are Jews totally alone facing down the haters? Are they so different from us with their forelocks and black coats that we don’t care if they are attacked in their homes or shot in their grocery stores? Are we not willing to risk backtalk, harassment, and vandalism to defend the Jews living among us?

During the Holocaust, Denmark was a latecomer to the carnage. The Nazis put it under direct military occupation in 1943, when the atrocities were being reported publicly, the death camps were known, and the cruelty of the SS was famous. Families had been publicly hung in the streets for sheltering Jews. Resistance operatives were arrested when they were not killed outright, sent to the same death camps the Jews went to.

Urban legend has it that the King of Denmark ordered everyone in the nation to wear the yellow star when the Nazis took over. That is not true, but it made an easy shorthand for what the nation actually did when its Jews were threatened. Their king was helpless against Hitler’s armies, but he was not stupid. The press had been crushed by Hitler, but underground resistance communication flourished. A German living in Copenhagen leaked crucial information about the Nazis’ plans, and the government informed key Jewish leaders on the eve of Rosh Hashanah, Sept. 29, 1943:

“As was typical for the Nazis, they planned the raid to coincide with a significant Jewish holiday — in this case, Rosh Hashanah, the Jewish New Year. Marcus Melchior, a rabbi, got word of the coming pogrom, and in Copenhagen’s main synagogue, he interrupted services. ‘We have no time now to continue prayers,’ said Melchior. ‘We have news that this coming Friday night, the night between the first and second of October, the Gestapo will come and arrest all Danish Jews.’ Melchior told the congregation that the Nazis had the names and addresses of every Jew in Denmark, and urged them to flee or hide…”

“As Denmark’s Jewish population sprang into panicked action, so did its Gentiles. Hundreds of people spontaneously began to tell Jews about the upcoming action and help them go into hiding. In the words of historian Leni Yahil, ‘a living wall raised by the Danish people in the course of one night.’”

The king quietly facilitated resistance among churches, government agencies, schools, transport workers, and the fishing industry to mobilize. Ambulance drivers, taxis, school buses, sports teams, gas stations, telephone and communications operators, grocery clerks, fishing boats, hotel clerks, the nation united behind its Jews. They were one family.

The nation’s 8,000 Jews and their Gentile relatives, 20 percent of whom were refugees from other nations, were spirited out of the country, hidden in church basements and attics until passage to neutral Sweden could be arranged.

Fishermen were paid to smuggle the Jews across the Øresund strait to Sweden. Banks protected Jewish assets and property from foreclosure while they were absent. Christian neighbors and businesspeople kept Jewish businesses functioning and forwarded those funds and much more of their own money to their Jewish neighbors now in Sweden, putting them up in vacant vacation homes and motels.

The 470 Danish Jews captured by the Nazis were sent to Theresienstadt concentration camp, the part of it specifically designed for international VIPs who were not to be killed. Danes visited them often, brought food and clothing, and insisted on their humane treatment. In the chaos at war’s end, the Danes sent an invasion force to evacuate their Jews back to Denmark.

When Jewish families came home, there were fresh cut flowers on the table and food in the refrigerator. It was a small country with a small number of Jews to protect. It rose to the occasion. Only 120 Danish Jews died in the Holocaust.

Today’s leftist Nazis are much more bark than they are bite. They sound their drums, chant their chants, wave their flags, and make a lot of hostile gestures. They block sidewalks and roads, put up tents, pull down posters of Jewish hostages, and yell in people’s faces. If we tolerate that, they will become more and more aggressive, as they have proven in recent weeks. They think their cause is righteous and their violence is justified. They honestly believe the lies they tell, and they think they are on the right side of history.

By and large, they are not Christian. Today’s leftist Nazis do not believe the Bible or even read it. It is a collection of fables to them. They don’t honor Abraham as much as Nietzsche. They think all indigenous peoples have rights except Jews. They think religious minorities are adorable if they are not Jews. People who dress differently are fine if they wear a burqa, but not if they wear payot and black hats. They can read a foreign scripture if it is the Quran, but not if it’s Talmud.

Today’s Nazi leftists accuse Jews of considering themselves “the Chosen People,” spiritually superior to the goyim, the Gentiles, but don’t even seem aware of the Muslim attitude toward other religions and their adherents. They have never heard of “dhimmi” status, the sub-human legal condition of non-Muslims in a Muslim state. They don’t know what a Caliphate is, what Shariah law would do to their LGBT friends, or the penalty for “converting” to Islam, voluntarily or not, and then reverting or abandoning Islam later on. (Hint: It’s torture and death.)

The extremes of violence seen in the Nazi Germany era — forced labor camps, gunshots to the head over a pit, starvation, torture, hangings — pale in comparison to the violence perpetrated by Hamas in Gaza. Eyes gouged out. Set on fire. Buried alive. Broken bones. Cutting the Achilles tendon of all hostages. Gang rape. Sexual mutilation. Decapitation. Dismemberment, sometimes before death. Nazis tried to hide their atrocities and lied about them. Hamas simultaneously records them on video and denies them to the press.

If we think radical Islam will satisfy its bloody appetite only on the Jews, we are mistaken. The Muslim Brotherhood and its various offshoots (ISIS, Al-Qaeda, Hamas, Palestinian Islamic Jihad, Hezbollah, the Houthis, Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps, and many others) are sworn in the name of Allah to kill every infidel and establish a Muslim Caliphate worldwide — and that includes here in the United States, which they refer to as “the Great Satan.” They are even more serious about that Caliphate than we are about the Rapture, the Messianic Kingdom, and the Apocalypse.

So, now, resistance to the Islamic Nazis becomes far more important. Eliminating Islamic radicals is not just for the sake of the Jews, or for the sake of Israel. If we want our children to live in a free world, we need to face some facts. In the end, it will take a military force to destroy Islamic extremism. Right now we just need some courage and determination.

Our leftist Nazi friends in the West are mostly ignorant college kids. They like the drum beat and the community setting of the “pro-Palestinian” protests. They like the self-righteous smugness of being on the side of the “oppressed minority,” regardless of the morality of that minority. They pride themselves on their tolerance and inclusion of the Muslim, especially the women.

They are more performers than ideologues, wannabe actors who have little real courage. They hide behind the stylish keffiyeh, but they don’t wear a hajib. They take anonymous names on X and Instagram and call us profanities on discussion boards. They don’t want to be outed and lose employment opportunities or face legal consequences for their actions. They are cowards being groomed by powers they know nothing about, for a purpose they would deny even as they accomplish it.

Right now the movement is as vulnerable as it will ever be. Right now is a pivotal moment in the development of an Islamic Caliphate, worldwide Sharia law, and Muslim supremacy. Even one year from now, our opportunity could be gone. If Iran gets its nuclear bomb, we might only have one month.

Now we need to wake up and smell the coffee. Now we need to decide whose side we are on. Now we need to get over our fear and take action.

---