And this was in 1943?

I do not believe the most valuable thing these people had was that they were Americans - their most treasured possession was self-importance. It is an empty vessel, and will never help anyone in need.

Hecht makes a couple of mistakes. First, the king of Denmark never put on that yellow star. It's a myth from a Leon Uris novel. Nor did Jews continue living in Denmark. Denmark evacuated them, which wasn't too difficult as there were only 2,000.

Second, the idea that opening Palestine would have saved any more Jews is just flat wrong. The problem in 1943, really any time after 1940, was not that they didn't have a place to go, it was that Jews were simply not allowed to leave. Those who got out were not sent back. Now you can say that maybe they should have been sent to Palestine (which considering the British position in the Middle East is very debatable), but that's a separate issue.

To those who think it could have saved people if Palestine was more open before the war, the numbers belie them as well. There just wasn't much interest on the part of Jews in zionism, even in Poland. I recommend William D. Rubinstein's The Myth of Rescue which discusses and debunks pretty much all of these rescue nostrums.

Derek--

Uris didn't publish Exodus until 1958, and (the very interesting) Child of the Century came out in 1954. Could the myth actually have been taken by Uris from Hecht?

Derek:

That the King wore the star is a myth. That he told the Germans he and all Danes would wear it if they ordered Jews to wear it is not.

Derek:

Also, the number of saved Danish Jews was just under 7,300 out of just under 8,000. There were advantages because Sweden was so close, but you are still being awfully casual about a pretty heroic story.

Sorry, Peter, but the Danish story is a myth that's been blown way out of proportion. There's no proof the king had anything to do with stars. The Danish authorities simply advised the Germans that it wouldn't be good idea and the Germans went along with it because it wasn't worth their time to make a stink about it. The sad truth is that the Danes were pretty accomodating to the Nazis, so much so that they continued to hold local elections until 1943. The number of Danish Jews has been bruited about, so I may be wrong, but it was much easier for them to do what they did than for other countries who were, you know, actually fighting the Nazis--and who are getting lambasted by Hecht and other ingrates. And that's what I find most grating about this Danish story: it's used unfairly to deprecate others.

Brian, you may be correct about Uris. It could have originated earlier than I was led to believe, but the fact remains. This episode never happened, nor did anything like it occur.

2000 is quite different from 8000. Does anyone
have any census figures to back any of those
up?

Here's a pdf of the whole myth affair:
http://www.dchf.dk/publications_dk/dk_holocaust/vov.pdf

As for the number, I read 2,000 a while back, and it pertained to the 1943 boatlift. The PDF I linked to lists a number at about 5,000. However, even if it is 8,000, my point still stands. Denmark, who's often promoted to the deprecation of other countries, was in a far different position than them, and was in fact seen (rightly or wrongly) as even being collaborationist.

Here's another link with more information:
http://www.english.upenn.edu/~afilreis/Holocaust/danish-rescue.html

Of note:
"The Danes helped only the Danish Jews and showed no mercy to the non- Danish Jews, and probably none to the Gypsies as well. From 1933 on many Jews tried to escape to Denmark from Germany and other countries. They were either turned back at the border or given temporary residence permits for three to six months and deported after their permits expired."

Derek:

Heck, most Europeans would still volunteer to work the ovens if we started feeding the rest of the Romany into them. Don't most anti-immigrationists here rave about them too?

Most of Europe is content with keeping the Romany out of their country. Considering how sticky-fingered they can get, I can scarcely blame them.

However, my point isn't to villainize the Danes. It's to stop their being used to villainize others through false analogy. During the same period when Danes were turning away German Jewish refugees, Britain, the U.S., France, Belgium, Holland, Switzerland and other countries took in 72% of Germany's Jews--in the middle of an economic depression, no less--yet they get no credit for this. Indeed, they're villainized with the 'virtuous' example of the Danes.

Certainly the indifference or even complicity of FDR, Stalin and Churchill stands on its own and needs no virtuous Danes. Nor is Hecht correct when he says that making an issue of the Holocaust would have changed much.

There was no complicity. As for indifference, it was there on the part of Stalin, but Churchill and FDR struggled and manuevered to get their countries into a war with Hitler. When they got that war they demanded unconditional surrender, and bombed the bejeesus out of Germany. It wasn't like they were sitting around playing Canasta.

OJ didn't you in the past suggest or imply that the US should have avoided getting in the War with Germany?

Derek:

"The Danish authorities simply advised the Germans that it wouldn't be good idea and the Germans went along with it because it wasn't worth their time to make a stink about it."

Oh sure. Classic, pragmatic Nazi behaviour in the Occupied Territories.

Don't forget that the Germans had different occupation policies. In the East they were brutal, but they saw the Nordic countries as fellow Aryans. A lot of Danes, Norwegians, and Dutch even joined the Freiwiliger SS. Occupation is occupation, but German policy was to see those countries as potential allies.

Bulgaria did an awful lot to save its Jews, and it was technically a German ally. Franco did a lot to save the Sephardic Jews whose ancestry dated to Spain. They rarely get mentioned.

h:

Yes. We didn't go to war to save the Jews, we went to save Stalin.

Chris:

Bulgarians did a lot, quite heroically, but Bulgaria (the government) did little. All Jews in Bulgarian occupied territories (they were Hitler's allies) perished. The churches in Norway and Finland behaved bravely, but not the governments. The Catholic Church in Italy and Belgium has a good record, but not the governments.

Denmark is the only country that united broadly (but not unanamously--it was very dangerous) in purposeful opposition to the persecution of the Jews. They weren't the most impressive on the resistance front, but on this issue they were courageous enough to merit honour. Why are you and Derek trying to minimize what they did?

BTW: Remind me. What exactly did Franco do to save Jews?

Peter:

Franco didn't just saved Jews, but Europe:

http://www.brothersjudd.com/index.cfm/fuseaction/reviews.detail/book_id/693/

OJ
Seems America likes to maintain their own myths. Sorta makes us feel better about ourselves.

Actually I realize we didn't go to War for the Jews, just like we didn't go to War for the Tutu or Hutu. However you might be reaching when you say we went to War for Stalin. Let's let the British and French think we went to War for them.

It might be a useful fiction in the future.

France was gone and the Brits had won.

Orrin:

Franco was not a fascist. He was a semi-educated, old-fashioned, bland and cruel caudillo who fought, and fought brutally and with the same moral relativism as the Republicans, for Catholicism and traditional Spain. He did all he could to aid and abet the Nazis until the writing was on the wall. How does that translate into saving Europe?

Peter:

Those are Leftist lies--you should know better.

Orrin:

Mmmm..., we must get together for a cold one to debate this. I'm relying on Paul Johnson. Who is your coach?

Johnson is pretty favorable to Franco in Modern Times, but there's plenty here:

http://www.brothersjudd.com/index.cfm/fuseaction/reviews.detail/book_id/693/

Johnson Franco:

"Though Franco was an unlovable man and is unlikely ever to win the esteem of historians, he must be accounted one of the most successful public men of the century."

"The soldier-statesman he most resembled was Wellington, a figure much admired in Spain. Franco thought war a hateful business, from which gross cruelty was inseparable; it might sometimes be necessary to advance civilization."

"He saw Spanish Christian culture as unarguably superior..."

"His own motivation he invariably described as'duty, love of country.'"

"He hated politics in any shape."

"Franco was never a fascist or had the smallest belief in any kind of Utopia or system."

Britain had won a reprieve, but if the US hadn't stuffed England full of troops and military equipment, and hadn't done anything about Hitler's conquest of Europe, for how long could she have continued to stand ?

Europe's Jews did indeed resist fleeing until far too late, a completely understandable dynamic, but tragic.

For instance, the sniper and noted sex therapist Dr. Ruth was sent as a girl to school in Switzerland, for safety, but everyone else in her family remained in Germany, and perished.

Orrin:

As one who still has bruises to show for having had the temerity to defend Franco, I am aware of his strengths, which only really stand out in comparison to the Soviet attempted takeover. But, protector of Jews and saviour of the West? That is news. That's close to seeing Milosevic as the man who saved Christendom.

Michael:

Forever.

Milosevic lost. Franco won.

He also saved Jews:
http://hitlerstoppedbyfranco.com/franco_jews.htm

oj:

E'er the optimist.

OJ is assuming two things. He knows that he is making one assumption, he may not realize that his argument requires the second.

First, he (knowingly) assumes that Fascism, left to its own devices, would fail spectacularly as an economic system, bringing the Reich down with it as disgruntled subject populations revolt and then Germany collapses. I agree that Fascism wouldn't work in the long run, but I disagree that this would have made political failure in the near term unavoidable; that the Nazis, post-Hitler, wouldn't have been able to manage a transition to a dictatorial state with free market trappings; and that they wouldn't at least have been able to last as long as, for example, the USSR, which would schedule their collapse for 2008.

Second, his theory requires that the USSR hold out against the Nazis without American or British aid and without a second front or the threat of one. I find that very unlikely. Assuming that the Nazis would get control of Russia and its oil fields, they could have mounted a huge, well-provisioned invasion force, maybe not by June 6, 1944, but not long afterwards. At the very best, Britain would have ended up being a satellite within the German sphere of influence.

An interesting "What If": What would US domestic politics be like if we had never fought WWII?

I can see an argument that we would be just another socialist country, and I can see an argument that, faced with the obvious failure of the New Deal, we would have a much freer market than we now have.

Mr. Cohen;

I must disagree with you. The USSR was already winning on the battlefield long before the invasion at Normandy. The high water mark of Barbarossa was in 1942. During 1943 the Germans suffered many reversals. Germany kept 70-80% of its forces in the east, so even if they'd stripped the Western Front of every unit, it wouldn't have made all that much of a difference. While theoretically the Germans could have won in the East (e.g., by seizing the oil fields), in reality the way the campaign was run lead to a German defeat by 1943.

David:

Not at all. I assume it wul have developed into a totally typical authoritarian government and thence back toward democracy as they all do. However, the major stumbling block was the necessary war with the Bolsheviks, which, since neither side could control all of Europe for any appreciable amount of time, would likely have led to the collapse of both. We could even have sold weapons to both to drag it out--for hard cash only. At any rate, neither could ever have both controlled the entire conmtinent and launched an invasion of Britain.

David:

Not at all. I assume it wul have developed into a totally typical authoritarian government and thence back toward democracy as they all do. However, the major stumbling block was the necessary war with the Bolsheviks, which, since neither side could control all of Europe for any appreciable amount of time, would likely have led to the collapse of both. We could even have sold weapons to both to drag it out--for hard cash only. At any rate, neither could ever have both controlled the entire conmtinent and launched an invasion of Britain.

Gentlemen:

This is the problem with "what-if" history; the ability to pick and choose among those things that actually happened. No Lend-Lease, just to take one change, makes a big difference.

OJ: Totalitarian governments do not, without a push, collapse into democracies.

OJ, you make a total hash of the this story. "Zionist" meant something entirely different to Ben Hecht at that time than it does to us today. You need to be familiar with the history of the term, or at least the context of Hecht's use of it, to be aware that the people Hecht calls "Zionists," and are his villains, are the people contemporary Zionists consider heroes today, like David Ben Gurion. He thought they were quiescent weeklings; we might term them "the Jewish establishment in Israel of the time." In sum: when his colleague refers to Rabbi Wise as "the enemy," he means that Rabbi Wise is a...Zionist. Which in this context, among these people, followers of Jabotinsky, basically is shorthand for "wimp."

Hecht's faction are known to history as "revisionist Zionists," but were then considered anti-Zionists.

The moral failings Hecht recounts in his masterpiece are profound. But they have nothing to do with "left" or "right" in any meaningful contemporary sense.

You can be very smart when you think, Orrin. Though I suppose it's just easier to make a kneejerk denunciation of the left. But you end up parading ignorance, which you will continue to do so long as your primary intellectual goal remains the tunnel-visioned denunciation of your perceived ideological enemies, which you see everywhere, even when they are not there.

Anti-Zionism is nothing new among Jews on the Left though, right?