Lidegaard, who spoke at Jewish Book Week last Sunday, has spent the past 10 years writing Countrymen to “dismantle the myth of King Christian riding in the street and to build a more solid history.
“In Denmark, the history is well known because it’s a moment of glory in a situation where we didn’t have much to be proud of,” he recalls, acknowledging that many of the fisherman rescuers overcharged Jews and that Denmark maintained huge agricultural exports to Germany throughout the war. “You cannot conceive of rescue without negotiations with the Germans. Danish politicians did sit in rest-rooms and reading rooms with the Nazi occupiers. This raises difficult moral issues because how can you negotiate with people who are out to destroy democracy, citizens and Jews?”
The Danes had punitive measures in place against antisemitic acts — there was an arson attack on Copenhagen’s Great Synagogue in December 1941. Lidegaard believes that the determination to protect Jews emanated from the highest political echelons.
“[Antisemitism] violated the values of underlying democracy,” he says. “The Danish constitution does not distinguish between Danish citizens of different creeds and therefore it would have been a violation of the constitution to single out Jews. An arrest and attack on Jews would have been seen as an attack on Danish society.
“Therefore, resisting it was part of the national defence. Danish politicians, long before the occupation, realised the danger of Nazi ideas, of fascism. The military threat was bad enough, but if the Danish democracy was eroded from within, it could be even worse.
“I’m not saying there were not stereotypes about Jews — there were. But this was not the kind of ideological antisemitism inherent in Nazism.
“Not accepting the basic Nazi premise of a ‘Jewish problem’ made it very difficult for Nazis to impose a solution. [The Nazis] met resistance. That begs the question: What if they had met similar resistance elsewhere?”
Senior Danes were able to protect Jews and enact laws against antisemitism during the occupation because they had economic leverage with Germany and the political advantage of being pitched as a model occupied country,
Lidegaard adds. “[Because of that], the Nazis agreed to postpone measures against Jews. Though, if Hitler had won the war, things could have definitely been different.”
I was surprised to learn that Lidegaard had not spoken to Danish-Jewish survivors — he has quoted solely from contemporary sources.
“I didn’t for a very particular reason. Very early on, I realised the huge difference between accounts written at the time and after. At the time, the Holocaust had not ‘mentally’ taken place. Recognition that [extermination of Jews] was in full gear all over Europe was not there. But everyone who was telling their story subsequently told it through the lens of the Holocaust. It’s a different story.
“If you ask me, did the Danish Jews know the Holocaust was going on? No, they did not. If you read the diaries it’s very clear that they did not realise what was going on. It was inconceivable.”
Ultimately, Lidegaard has written the book “to comment on current affairs — immigrants, integration, multicultural society, even Europe. Who belonged to society and who did not.”
So we discuss current affairs and the situation of Jews in Denmark today, especially with the ban on shechita imposed this month. “It’s not seen as a major change in policy,” he says.
“My understanding is that the rabbis have found a practical way to do it — performing ritual slaughter after the animal is stunned.”
