When I say Metallica and the Holocaust, I really mean Lars Ulrich and the Holocaust, but since Lars is one of the founding members of one of my favourite bands, I thought it was apt to use the name of the band in the title.
This is one of those “What if?” stories. The life of Lars could have been completely different. Lars, like his father Torben and Grandfather Einer, was destined to become a professional tennis player. However, when he saw Deep Purple in concert in Copenhagen in 1973. he knew he wanted to become a musician. As a result of his newfound interest in music, he received his first drum kit, a Ludwig, from his grandmother around the age of 12 or 13. In 1980 he moved to the USA. In 1981 he placed an advert in a local classifieds newspaper looking for musicians to start a band with him. James Hetfield replied to the ad, and Metallica was formed, the rest is Rock N Roll history. However, it is the story of his Grandmother and Grandfather which links to the Holocaust.
Einer Ulrich was a Danish tennis legend. Between 1924-38 he played Davis Cup for Denmark in 28 ties, winning 39 of 74 matches. His 74 Davis Cup matches were a Danish record until it was broken by his son, Torben Ulrich, who eventually played in 101 matches. Einer competed in the singles event at the 1924 Summer Olympics, reaching the second round in which he lost to Dutchman Henk Timmer. With compatriot Erik Tegner, he competed in the men’s doubles event and reached the third round.
In 1926 he competed in Wimbledon where he reached the 4th round. He initially started as a footballer, playing with Akademisk Boldklub, Kjøbenhavns Boldklub, and Hellerup Idræts Klub. He later served as a football referee for 25 years.
Ulrich was on the board of directors of the Danish Lawn Tennis Federation from 1938-69, serving as chairman in the last five years of his life. His career was in advertising with his own company, Einer Ulrich Advertising, and later Ulrich and Parrilds Advertising, which they sold to American James Thompson.
After the Nazi occupation of Denmark in 1940 the family decided to stay in the country despite the Jewish origin of Ulrich’s then-wife Ulla The turning point was the year 1943 when they were informed of the Nazis’ intent to “purge” the Danish protectorate as well. This rumour was strengthened by the deportation of the Danish police in 1943. In October 1943, to prevent being arrested, Einer used his ties to the Swedish King King Gustav V, a recurring sparring and doubles tennis partner of his, to send his wife and two sons to Sweden in secret. His family along with a group of other Jewish refugees were transported on a fishing boat by smugglers across the Øresund strait when they were caught on the sea by the Germans. Shots were fired, the passengers jumped into the water and scattered. They were pulled aboard by the Nazis and taken into custody in Elsinore and then to a local camp. Einer was so well known that he went to the camp and convinced the Nazis to free his family. Six weeks later, they tried again and were successful. Einer joined them six weeks later, aided by Swedish Davis Cup tennis player Marc Wallenberg. After the war, they moved back to Denmark.
A Sewing Club reunion, many years later. From left to right: Thormod Larsen; Børge Rønne; a Sewing Club associate named Carl Palm, who was a Swedish police commissioner; Ove Bruhn; and Erling Kiær.
The majority of the Danish Jews survived the Holocaust, thanks to the Danish government and also resistance groups like the ‘Elsinore Sewing Club’ a Danish resistance organization established in 1943 which covertly transported Danish Jews to safety during the Nazi occupation of Denmark. The town of Helsingør (known as Elsinore in English) was only two miles away from Sweden, across the Øresund, from the Swedish city of Helsingborg. This allowed the transport of refugees by local boats.
Finishing up with Lars Ulrich and his bandmates in action.
Theresienstadt, also known as Terezín, was a town in northern Bohemia (now in the Czech Republic), it was used from 1941 to 1945 by the Nazis as a walled ghetto and concentration camp and was also used as a transit camp for western Jews en route to Auschwitz and other extermination camps.
In 1943, the Nazis scheduled 500 Danish Jews to be deported to a camp, but the Jews managed to escape to Sweden. While Europeans elsewhere often quickly lost interest in their deported Jewish fellow citizens, the Danes persisted in demanding that the Germans account for these Danish citizens and allow the Red Cross to visit the ghetto.
To dispel rumours about the extermination camps, the Nazis permitted the visit, but they arranged an elaborate hoax. They deported many camp residents to Auschwitz to minimize the appearance of overcrowding and erected fake stores and cafés to give the appearance of a life of comfort and ease. The Red Cross visited the Danish Jews—no more than two or three in a room—in freshly painted quarters. A children’s opera, Brundibar, was performed for the guests. The hoax succeeded so well that the Nazis made a propaganda film at Theresienstadt showing how well the Jews were living under the benevolent protection of the Third Reich. When the filming was finished, the Nazis deported most of the cast, including nearly all of the children, to Auschwitz.
On 18 September 1945, Lt. Colonel J.H.M. Benbow from the Indian army compiled a report on eyewitness accounts of Theresienstadt.
Below is the transcript of the report.
Senior Search Officer HQ 1 Corps District 14, Sudstrasse, Iserlohn B.A.O.R.
To: – Search Bureau
Bunde, BAOR. 18 Sept 1945
——————–
Subject: – Theresienstadt
Reference your PWDP/55711 dated 9th Sept 1945 and conversation of 15-9-45 between Col. ALLAN and Col. BENBOW.
Samuel Wolff’s home was visited a second time in accordance with your request but he was not available and in view of the fact that he is an old man and not very well, it was deemed more desirable to obtain the information you required from other personnel in the vicinity of Iserlohn whom Lt. Apte knew of as having returned from Theresienstadt. A certain amount of information has been procured and it is hoped that this will give you some idea as to the conditions etc prevailing in that Camp.
The following account is based on facts given by one local Jewish family but most of the points mentioned have been verified by a number of internees, within 1 Corps District, who were themselves at one time in Theresienstadt. The family concerned returned from Theresienstadt about two months after their liberation by the Allies.
DEPORTATION to Theresienstadt was restricted to Jews from Western and Central Europe and of those, only old people (i.e. over 60) families of disabled ex-servicemen of World War I with children under the age of 14, married couples of whom one member was non-Jewish and which, according to Nazi ideology, were privileged marriages. For these people, a warning of the impending deportation to Theresienstadt was given two weeks in advance, but the normal procedure appears to have been short notice of about 24 hours. 25 kg of baggage per head plus bedding consisting of only one blanket and cushion and foodstuffs for the journey was allowed.
Transport assembled at Dortmund railway station but deportees were detained for two days in a former cattle shed, from which it appeared, that cattle had only been moved just before the personnel arrived. During the short period between the removal of the cattle and the entry of the deportees into the shed, Nazis searched people for possessions. When entraining, the 25 kg of baggage had to be stowed away separately and was not seen again. Deportees were accommodated in old passenger [sic] carriages which were overcrowded – about 1500 persons were involved in that move, in which the family concerned, took part. The deportees arrived at Theresienstadt after approximately 36-hour journey and were then detrained after some days. At the end of July 1942, there were 15-20000 internees at Theresienstadt but later batches arrived weekly and the number increased to about 60000. The peacetime population of Theresienstadt was about 8000, but these had all been evacuated before the arrival of the deportees.
2
These 60000 persons were placed in the few small houses which were originally there and also into the five existing military billets which were not being used for administrative and industrial work. 25-30 people were accommodated in a normal-sized room, each person being allowed 2’2” x 6’ floor space. No beds were provided until 1944, (when wooden beds were introduced) and blankets were rolled up daily and placed against the wall together with the scanty personal belongings.
Sanitary conditions were practically non-existent, with 400-600 people being obliged to use one water pump in the courtyard for washing, laundry and cleaning food utensils. Latrines were open trenches and the probable cause of much illness and disease.
Meals were prepared in a number of communal cookhouses, each one feeding up to 10,000 persons. The daily ration consisted of 170 grams of bread, black coffee substitute for breakfast, water soup and half-pound of boiled unskinned potatoes or occasionally a kind of millet-pep for lunch, and black coffee for supper. No mess halls were provided and deportees were obliged to eat their meals in their living quarters which made the task of keeping these quarters free of vermin so difficult, and in fact [sic], almost impossible.
The death rate was approximately 100-150 per day owing to malnutrition and consequently lowered resistance against prevalent disease. Corpses were removed from the Camp and buried in either the local cemetery or in mass graves. Later on, a crematorium was constructed and the ashes were stored away in urns or cardboard boxes.
At the end of 1944 and the beginning of 1945, word came that the Swiss Red Cross Commission was expected to arrive and orders were given for all traces of these casualties to be removed. These orders were carried out and within a few days, 40000 urns or cardboard boxes had been loaded onto trucks and dumped into one of the nearby rivers.
At the same time, a special spectacle was arranged to deceive this Commission. This consisted of the construction of a children’s playground in the centre of the town, children were provided with new clothing and toys, which they had never seen before. They were then invited to a kind of garden party, with cakes etc provided. A special -party was arranged for adults and evening dresses and gowns etc. were issued.
A few days after the Commission had departed, these same people were sent to Poland to be killed off at one of the ill-famed extermination camps.
Everybody had to work. Elderly people were engaged in administrative work or in the interior economy of the camp. The stronger and younger men were put to work on the roads and on railway construction. Women were employed in special workshops which were set up in cold and drafty wooden huts. One of these workshops was used for the splitting up of micre into thin layers required for electrical appliances, another was utilised for the making of leather articles such as wallets, belts etc for German troops.
General conditions of work were extremely bad and even worse during the winter months.
One large wooden shed, erected on poles and standing well above the ground was erected. Three hundred people worked in this building in which there were six very small stoves. On several occasions, permission to light these stoves was withdrawn for periods ranging up to a fortnight, either as a punishment or a method of saving fuel.
3
Hours of work were very long – 14-16 hours daily and a 7-day week being normal.
At the end of 1944, it was announced that 1,200 people would go to Switzerland under arrangements being made by the Swiss Red Cross Commission. Internees were permitted to apply to go to Switzerland provided they had no relatives who had previously been deported to Poland. Four days after this announcement, the persons concerned were despatched to Switzerland and upon arrival, a few of the younger ones wrote letters, some of which did reach Theresienstadt, but no news from the older members ever came through.
In April 1945, another announcement was made that a further 600 people could proceed to Switzerland, but participation on this journey was restricted only to those whose relatives in Switzerland had asked for them to be sent and for those who had occupied a leading position inside the Ghetto Community.
Before these people could be despatched, however, another Swiss Red Cross Commission suddenly arrived. This Commission was ignorant of the impending move to Switzerland which was allegedly supposed to have been arranged by the S.R.C.C. An investigation was carried out and the Camp Commandant is reported to have admitted that this move was a ‘fake’ and was really intended to supply the first batch of deportees to the newly-constructed extermination camp just outside Theresienstadt, which had been provided with the notorious gas chambers. Due to the timely arrival of the S.R.C.C., these people were never despatched.
On the other hand, since September 1942, transports of personnel were despatched at intervals of 3-4 months to the so-called Death-Camps in Poland and no more was ever heard of the people involved.
In September 1944, the speed of these transports was stepped-up considerably and within five weeks, 11 transports were despatched, carrying a total of 18000 individuals to almost certain death.
When Theresienstadt was eventually liberated by the Russians, they found there, approximately 20-25000 Jews who were in an exceedingly poor state of health.
It is not possible to ascertain the total number of persons who either died or were killed in Theresienstadt owing to the SS. Guards burned the whole Registry when they departed [sic] in a hurry just before the arrival of the Russians.
It is regretted that no other information is available regarding the number of graves in the vicinity of the camp, but it is suspected that these may have been obliterated prior to liberation, in order to destroy all traces of evidence and prevent the allies from determining the extent to which this form of Nazi brutality reached in this Camp. However, the fact that 40000 urns etc of ashes were disposed of and approximately 20000 victims were sent to Poland, will give some idea as to the state of affairs that existed.
I feel that this account illustrates fairly clearly the conditions etc under which these deportees were imposed, but if there are any more details required, please let me know and I will see what further information can be obtained, though a very detailed interrogation has already been carried out and I doubt whether much more knowledge of life in Theresienstadt will be forthcoming.
(J.H.M. Benbow) Lt. Colonel.
Indian Army
Senior Search Officer, HQ 1 Corps Dist.
I could not find too much on Lt. Colonel J.H.M. Benbow, but I do know that on 26 August 1946 he was promoted to the rank of Captain.
Regardless if you are a fan of the man or not, anyone who watched that match last night must have had an awful shock.
Shortly before half time during the UEFA Euro 2020, group stage match between Denmark and Finland, the Danish midfielder and star player, Christian Eriksen collapsed. He was taken of the pitch and rushed to the Hospital after he received treatment on the pitch, He is awake and stable again, after a reportedly cardiac arrest. We all wish him a speedy recovery but it appears he may not play professional football again.
Not only was this an awful shock but it was also a surprise that the match resumed after some delay. Apparently Christian Eriksen said he wanted the match to be played. The match ended up in a 0-1 win to Finland.
This was not the first time that Denmark surprised sporting fans by playing matches during an UEFA Euro championship.
In 1992, most of the Danish team had been on a beach holiday because they failed to qualify for the tournament.
They had been in group 4 of the qualifying rounds together with Austria, the Faroe Islands, Northern Ireland and Yugoslavia. Yugoslavia won the group. Denmark ended up as the runner up and failed to qualify.
However just before the tournament started, Yugoslavia was disqualified as a result of the breakup of the country and the ensuing warfare there. As the runner up of group Denmark was called up to take Yugoslavia’s place.
To make the surprise even bigger ,Denmark reached a place in the semi finals after beating France and drawing with England. In the semis the met the Dutch team, who were the reigning champion and also the favourites to win it again, the match ended up in a draw and had to be decided by a penalty shoot out. To everyone’s surprise it was won by Denmark, securing them a spot in the final against Germany.
The finals were set to be played in the Ullevi stadium in Gothenburg Sweden, on June 26.
After having beaten the other giants in European football, the Danes also managed to beat the Germans by two goals.
So Denmark went from not qualifying in the first place ,to be crowned UEFU Euro champions 1992, defying all the odds. Hopefully Christian Eriksen will also defy all the odds and make a full recovery.
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The approximate number of Jews murdered in the Holocaust by nation .
Poland 3,000.000; Ukraine 900,000;Hungary 450,000; Russia 352,000;Romania 300;000;BaltIc countries 228,000;Germany/Austria 210,000;the Netherlands 105,000;France 92,000;Slovakia 75,000; Greece 54,000;Belgium 40,000;Yugoslavia 26,000;Bulgaria 14,000 ;Italy 8,000,Luxembourg 1,000;Norway 900. Total 5,907,900.
These numbers are just estimates. I believe the number is actually higher, because not all suicides are included n this number nor are all the numbers of those who died during the transport.
However when I saw these numbers I had 2 questions. My first question was “How come there are no numbers for the Danish Jews?” The Danes had been very successful in saving their Jewish neighbours. Many of then were enabled to escape to Sweden with help from their Danish neighbours .Like 19 year old Henny Sinding who used hos boat ‘Geda III’ to smuggle Jews from Denmark to Sweden.
This is not to say that no Danish Jews died. Some did die either by suicide or they didn’t survive the escape journey to Sweden. There will also have been Danish Jews who lived elsewhere who would have been deported .
My second question was “Who was responsible for the Holocaust? ” The answer to that is not as easy as one might think. No one will doubt or deny that the Nazi regime in Germany and Austria were responsible for the death of millions, however their counterparts in other European countries also did play a part in this. The excuse of being occupied they had to do as they were told is often used, but the fact is many European governments were willing participants.
Even the countries which weren’t occupied played their part. The picture below and at the start of the blog are pictures of Jewish refugees Not much is known about the group of mostly Jewish refugees who came from the region of Moravská Ostrava/Mährisch Ostrau in former Czechoslovakia, and arrived in Great Britain on March 29 1939 ,shortly after Germany had invaded Czechoslovakia, but a day after the British Police deported them at and put them on a plane at Croydoen airport.
Although the exact number of murdered Jews will never really be known, in a way it doesn’t really matter. Because each of these numbers represent a person, a human being with a living soul. A human being like any other human being, but because they were seen as a lesser life form by a sick and twisted ideology they were murdered.
A human being like Max Baum a cattle dealer who was born in Linnich, Germany , 18 August 1907 but lived in Doenrade in the Netherlands and spent some time in Geleen. Maz was murdered in Auschwitz, 18 December 1943. His wife survived
sources
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A while ago I read a comment of someone saying that she could no longer read stories about the Holocaust, not because she didn’t want to but because she couldn’t because the stories were so sad, they were heartbreaking. I can fully appreciate that, because it is heartbreaking and unless you are a complete psychopath and soulless the stories will have a deep,profound effect. However it is important these stories need to be told
Coming from the angle of someone who does a lot of research on the Holocaust,every story is hard but sometimes in a different way. Positive stories are very hard to find but there are some, as this blog will illustrate. But positive in the context of the Holocaust.
The “White Buses” was an operation undertaken by the Swedish Red Cross and the Danish government in the spring of 1945 to rescue concentration camp inmates in areas under Nazi control and transport them to Sweden, a neutral country. Although the operation was initially targeted at saving citizens of Scandinavian countries, it rapidly expanded to include citizens of other countries.
After a series of negotioations, the Danish Jews were released from Theresienstadt in the spring of 1945 and brought to Sweden by the so-called White Buses. A dangerous journey that took the caravan of White Busses through war-torn Europe.
All in all , an operational staff of about 300 persons removed 15,345 prisoners from mortal peril in concentration camps; of these 7,795 were Scandinavian and 7,550 were non-Scandinavian (Polish, French, etc.).In particular, 423 Danish Jews were saved from the Theresienstadt concentration camp inside German-occupied territory of Czechoslovakia, contributing significantly to the fact that casualties among Danish Jews during the Holocaust were among the lowest of the occupied European countries.
The term “white buses” originates from the buses having been painted white with red crosses, to avoid confusion with military vehicles.
In December 1944, the Danish Foreign Ministry received permission to bring sick police officers home from the concentration camp in Buchenwald, Germany.
This marked the beginning of a humanitarian operation best known as the Bernadotte Operation or The White Buses. In February 1945, the Swedish Count Folke Bernadotte negotiated with Heinrich Himmler for the release of Scandinavian prisoners from the concentration camps, while the Danish Aid Corps arranged for cars and buses to transport the prisoners. The Swedish and Danish initiative was coordinated, and in March 1945, the operation began. The process of bringing the Scandinavian prisoners back home was carried out until the end of April.
The Baltic German Felix Kersten was Reichsführer-SS Heinrich Himmler’s personal masseur.
He lived in Stockholm and acted as an intermediary between the Swedish foreign department and Himmler. Walter Schellenberg, a trusted subordinate of Himmler, had long held the view that Germany would lose the war and encouraged Himmler to explore the possibility of a separate peace treaty with the Western powers; in this Sweden could be a useful intermediary.
With Kersten’s assistance the Swedish foreign department was able to free 50 Norwegian students, 50 Danish policemen and 3 Swedes in December 1944. An absolute condition for the release of the prisoners was that it should be hidden from the press; if Hitler got to know about it further repatriations would be impossible.
On 13 April 1945, the Danish Jewish prisoners in Theresienstadt received the message that they were going home.
This applied to everyone who had been deported from Denmark, regardless of whether they were Danish citizens. The Danish prisoners were first gathered in the Jäger Barracks, where they had to wait for the buses to arrive in Theresienstadt. A former prisoner described the waiting time:
“Then, all the Danes were gathered in the Jäger Barracks, where we should spend the last days. There was a high fence around the barracks to keep the other prisoners out, while we Danes could go freely in and out. People gathered together outside, partly to ask for the bits of food remaining after we left, and partly to give us the addresses of their families, so we could write and tell them that they were in Theresienstadt.”
After waiting for a day and a half, the prisoners were finally allowed to board the buses that were to drive them to Sweden – Denmark was still occupied. 423 people were released from the camp that day. Not all of them were originally deported from Denmark: A few children were born in the camp; a Danish boy had been deported from Berlin; and a few Czech women had married Danish men in the camp and were therefore allowed to accompany them.
The expedition had German liaison officers; the most prominent of them being Himmler’s communications officer, SS-Obersturmbannführer Karl Rennau, while Franz Göring was a liaison officer with the Gestapo. The expedition had around 40 German communication, SS and Gestapo officers. The Germans demanded that every second vehicle should have a German officer on board. The “White Buses” expedition was totally dependent on cooperation with the Germans as the country under Nazi rule was a police state. Only with liaison personnel from the Gestapo and SS could the expedition move without restrictions.
Neuengamme concentration camp was overcrowded, and to have space for the Scandinavian prisoners, the SS insisted that prisoners of other nationalities be moved to other camps. The SS commander had no transport of his own and required that the white buses accept the transports, so the newly arrived Scandinavians could solely occupy the Schonungsblock, a barrack building for prisoners not fit to work. Around 2,000 French, Belgian, Dutch, Russian and Polish Jews were transported to other camps. Most of the transports of prisoners for the SS took place between 27 and 29 March, from Neuengamme to subcamps in Hannover and Salzgitter and to Bergen-Belsen. During the evacuations some 50 to 100 prisoners died, and many more died in the worse conditions in the new camps to which they were transported, having been moved to avoid the advancing Allied armies.
The Swedish sub-lieutenant Åke Svenson wrote:
“We could now see how the Germans treated their prisoners in general, French, Belgians, Dutch, Poles, and Russians. It was terrible. This time the Germans had to allow us into the camp as most of the passengers could not walk the minor distance from the barracks to the road. From these barracks a group of creatures were forced, that hardly anymore seemed to be human beings.”
On the way to Sweden the buses drove through bombed-out Germany, and sometimes they came very close to the actual bombing attacks. On 17 April, the buses reached the Danish border, where the former prisoners were received with food, cakes and flags.
The buses continued to Odense, where the passengers rested for the night. The next morning, the buses drove to Copenhagen, and the group was sailed to Sweden. In Sweden, they were housed in two quarantine camps: Tylösand and Strangnæs. After Denmark’s liberation on 5 May 1945, the former prisoners could finally return to Denmark. Some could immediately move into their homes, which had been cared for by friends, acquaintances or the Social Service in the Municipality of Copenhagen. For others, the homecoming was difficult, since they had lost both their apartments and their belongings while they were in Theresienstadt. They were also emotionally scarred, and many suffered from physical injuries from their stay in Theresienstadt.
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Operation Carthage, on 21 March 1945, was a British World War II air raid on Copenhagen, Denmark, which incurred significant collateral damage. The target of the raid was the Shellhus, used as Gestapo headquarters in the city centre. It was used for the storage of dossiers and the torture of Danish citizens during interrogations.
The Danish Resistance had long asked the British to conduct a raid against this site. As a result, the building was destroyed, 18 prisoners were freed, and anti-resistance Nazi activities were disrupted. But, part of the raid was mistakenly directed against a nearby boarding school; it resulted in a total of 125 civilian deaths (including 86 schoolchildren and 18 adults at the school). A similar raid against the Gestapo headquarters in Aarhus, on 31 October 1944, had been successful.
The raid was to be carried out by de Havilland Mosquito fast-bomber aircraft, and thus it was that on the morning of 21 March, these aircraft took of in three waves of six along with two Mosquitoes that were to film the raid.
The force left RAF Fersfield in the morning and it reached Copenhagen after 11:00. The raid was carried out at rooftop level. In the course of the initial attack, a Mosquito hit a lamp post, damaging its wing, and the plane crashed into the Jeanne d’Arc School, about 1.5 km (0.93 mi) from the target. Several bombers in the second and third wave attacked the burning school, mistaking it for their target.
In all, eighty-six children and thirteen adults, mostly nuns, were killed. Separately, over fifty Gestapo members were killed in the attack on the headquarters, along with dozens of Danish workers and several prisoners of the Gestapo. Memorials now stand to the children killed as well as the Danish resistance members.
All fourteen prisoners in the Southern wing of the Shell House survived as this part of the building was not bombed.
The three remaining prisoners were under interrogation on the 5th floor, one of whom died. 18 out of 26 prisoners survived the bomb raid. A total of 133 Danes died during and after the raid. Telegrams from Copenhagen modstandsbevægelse (Resistance Movement) thanked the RAF for the successful raid, and with the destruction of the Gestapo archives the threat against its members was neutralised..
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These days teenagers and young adults are often referred to as “the snowflake” generation a term that refers to young people, typically university or college students, who seek to avoid emotionally charged topics, or dissenting ideas and opinions. This may involve support of safe spaces and trigger warnings in the university setting.
Although I agree with this to an extend, I think the problem is not with this generation but with the generation that raised them.
However during WWII young people didn’t have the time to get upset by something ‘offensive’ that was said to them. For many they had to put all their energy to survive.
Some were even brave enough to defy the most evil regime on earth, with a real risk of losing their lives.
The Churchill Club (Danish: Churchill-klubben) was a group of eight teenage schoolboys from Aalborg Cathedral School in the north of Jutland who performed acts of sabotage against the Germans during the occupation of Denmark in the Second World War.
The Churchill Club was probably the earliest resistance group to be formed in Denmark. Under the leadership of 17-year-old Knud Pedersen.
They started their activities at the end of 1941 when they began to target the German occupation forces in Aalborg as a result of the German treatment of occupied Denmark. They succeeded in carrying out 25 acts of sabotage before they were arrested by the police in May 1942.Some of those acts of sabotage included stealing weapons and destroying vehicles, blueprints, and plane parts. The boys were charged with 1,860 million kroner for the destroyed Nazi property; their sentences ranged from two to three years in prison. Even after imprisonment, they managed to escape at night to continue their sabotage activities.
A few days before Christmas 1941 the group was formed using the name of the British Prime Minister Winston Churchill.
One of their first acts was painting the words “War Profiteer” in blue paint on the offices and homes of known Nazi sympathizers.
The Churchill Club insignia was an imitation of the Nazi Swastika. It was blue and had arrows shooting out of each line. The symbol stood for “Flames of rebellion to kill Nazis!”
They made explosives out of stolen Nazi weapons. They decided to blow up the Aalborg railroad yard which was the Nazi base in Aalborg, on the 2nd of May 1942 . The rail car they blew up contained air plane wings. The Danish firemen were slow to help the Germans put out the fire because they were afraid of more explosions.
On the 8th of May 1942 members of the Churchill club had been followed and were subsequently arrested for stealing German soldier’s weapons.Although they didn’t know how to use the weapons.
On the 17th of July the boys were put on trial and were sentenced depending on their age.Knud Pedersen was sentenced to 3 years in Nyborg state prison.
I am surprised about the relative lenient sentences they received. More often then not these acts of resistance resulted in death sentences.
Knud Pedersen became an accomplished artist after the war.
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There were several events which happened on the 18 of September during WW2 happened On this day.Between 1939 and 1945 there were 6 extraordinary events which happened on this particular date of 18 September
I am not sure if it is a coincidence or planned that way. Or maybe I just happened to spot it, either way it is a bit eerie and most of these 6 events were awful crimes against humanity.
1939
The Nazi propaganda broadcaster known as Lord Haw-Haw begins transmitting.
The British liner SS City of Benares is sunk by German submarine U-48; those killed include 83 children.
City of Benares was part of convoy OB-213, and was being used as an evacuee ship in the overseas evacuation scheme organised by CORB. She was carrying 90 child evacuee passengers who were being evacuated from wartime Britain to Canada. The ship left Liverpool on 13 September 1940, bound for the Canadian ports of Quebec and Montreal, under the command of her Master, Landles Nicoll. She was the flagship of the convoy commodore Rear Admiral E.J.G. Mackinnon DSO RN and the first ship in the centre column.
Late in the evening of 17 September, the City of Benares was sighted by U-48, commanded by Kapitänleutnant Heinrich Bleichrodt, who fired two torpedoes at her at 23.45 hours. Both torpedoes missed, and at 00.01 hours on 18 September, the U-boat fired another torpedo at her. The torpedo struck her in the stern, causing her to sink within 30 minutes, 253 miles west-southwest of Rockall.
Fifteen minutes after the torpedo hit, the vessel had been abandoned, though there were difficulties with lowering the lifeboats on the weather side of the ship. HMS Hurricane arrived on the scene 24 hours later, and picked up 105 survivors and landed them at Greenock.
During the attack on the SS City of Benares, the SS Marina was also torpedoed. Hurricane mistakenly counted one of the lifeboats from the SS Marina for one of the lifeboats from SS City of Benares. As a result, Lifeboat 12 was left alone at sea. Its passengers had three weeks supply of food, but enough water for only one week. In the lifeboat were approximately 30 Indian crewmen, a Polish merchant, several sailors, Mary Cornish, Father Rory O’Sullivan (a Roman Catholic priest who had volunteered to be an escort for the evacuee children), and six evacuee boys from the CORB program. They spent eight days afloat in the Atlantic Ocean before being sighted from the air and rescued by HMS Anthony. In the end, of the 90 children, 83 died of exposure on lifeboats or were missing presumed lost at sea.
1943
On this day, September 18, 1943, Jewish prisoners from Minsk were massacred at Sobibór. This massacre, combined with rumors that the camp would be shut down, led Polish-Jewish prisoners to organize an underground committee aimed at escape from the camp.
The exact number who were killed is not known.
1943
Adolf Hitler orders the deportation of Danish Jews.
(Danish fishermen (foreground) ferry Jews across a narrow sound to safety in neutral Sweden during the German occupation of Denmark. Sweden, 1943.)
When Germany occupied Denmark on April 9, 1940, the Jewish population was approximately 7,500, accounting for 0.2% of the country’s total population. About 6,000 of these Jews were Danish citizens. The rest were German and eastern European refugees. Most Jews lived in the country’s capital and largest city, Copenhagen.
Until 1943, the German occupation regime took a relatively benign approach to Denmark. The Germans were eager to cultivate good relations with a population they perceived as “fellow Aryans.” Although Germany dominated Danish foreign policy, the Germans permitted the Danish government complete autonomy in running domestic affairs, including maintaining control over the legal system and police forces.
Considering the relatively small Jewish population and the support most Danes gave to their fellow Jewish citizens, Germany initially decided not to make a major issue of the “Jewish question” in Denmark. In fact, the representative of the German Foreign Office at the Wannsee Conference recommended that the Scandinavian countries be excluded from the “Final Solution” on the assumption that the “Jewish question” could be resolved there once overall victory had been achieved.
While the implementation of the Final Solution in Norway negated this recommendation, the general policy of non-interference in Denmark was decisive for the absence of such measures there.
Unlike in other western European countries, the Danish government did not require Jews to register their property and assets, to identify themselves, or to give up apartments, homes, and businesses.
The tone of the German occupation changed in early 1943. Allied victories convinced many Danes that Germany could be defeated. While there had been minimal resistance to the Germans during the first years of the occupation, labor strikes and acts of sabotage now strained relations with Germany. The Danish government resigned on August 28, 1943, rather than yield to new German demands that German military courts try future saboteurs. The following night, the German military commander,General Hermann von Hannecken, declared martial law.
German authorities arrested Danish civilians, Jews and non-Jews alike, and Danish military personnel. Under the state of emergency German authorities took direct control over the Danish military and police forces.
On September 8, 1943, SS GeneralWerner Best, the German civilian administrator in Denmark, sent a telegram to Adolf Hitler to propose that the Germans make use of the martial law provisions to deport the Danish Jews. On the 18th of September Adolf Hitler ordered the deportation of Danish Jews.
1944
The British submarine HMS Tradewind torpedoes Jun’yō Maru, 5,600 killed.
The 5,065-ton tramp steamer Junyo Maru sailed from Batavia (Tandjoeng Priok) on 16 September 1944 with about 4,200 romusha slave labourers and 2,300 POWs aboard. These Dutch POWs included 1,600 from the 10th Battalion camp and 700 from the Kampong Makassar camp. This 23rd transport of POWs from Java was called Java Party 23. Java Party 23 included about 6,500 men bound for Padang on the west coast of Sumatra to work on the Sumatra railway (Mid-Sumatra).
Unbeknown to the Commanding Officer of Tradewind, Lt.Cdr. Lynch Maydon, the Japanese ship was carrying 4,200 Javanese slave labourers and 2,300 Allied prisoners of war from Batavia to Padang.
On 18 September 1944 the ship was 15 miles off the west coast of Sumatra near Benkoelen when HMS Tradewind hit her with two torpedoes, one in the bow and one in the stern.
About 4,000 romushas and 1,626 POWs died when the ship sank in 20 minutes. About 200romushas and 674 POWs were rescued by Japanese ships and taken to the Prison in Padang, where eight prisoners died.
1945
General Douglas MacArthur moves his command headquarters to Tokyo
the Japanese ship was carrying 4,200 Javanese slave labourers and 2,300 Allied prisoners of war from Batavia to Padang.
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