Both Bent and I lived through the war and have great
appreciation for those who were willing to sacrifice their lives for not only
the Jews, but for us.
Many Danes were upset that the Danish King Christian the
10th let the Germans walk in to Denmark without resistance.
Bent was 6 years old and wanted to be in the resistance
movement like his older brother and was pretty upset that “he was too young”
for that. Even though Ludvig never spoke
about what he was doing, Bent and his parents knew.
I was 3 years old when the invasion of Denmark started. 9
April 1940. My father was also involved with the resistance movement, but I
don’t know the details of it.
We had a neighbor where the son Bjarne Hansen was in the
resistance movement and the father was a traitor, involved with the Nazis. The Father gave his sons name to the Nazis
and Bjarne was killed. He was my sister Birgit’s friend and she was pretty
upset.
We remember having to darken the windows every night. My
Dad would get all our clothes and everything ready every night, in case we had
to leave in a second.
In order to be warm we children had to go out on the road
to find coal for the stove.
I remember playing with “left-over” hand granite's which
was sometimes laying in our yard.
All foods were rationed. We could not get real chocolate
and we never saw a banana before the war was over. At Christmas my mother would
make “Godter”. A Danish “non-chocolate”
chocolate, non baked cookie. It was a
recipe handed down form my grandmother, who used the same recipe in the 1914-1918
war.
Ludvig Giesmann Lindhardt
Ludvig Lindhardt – a brother of my husband
Bent Lindhardt
started illegal activities
together with a friend and his father against the German invader in 1942 when he was at the age of 16.
They printed illegal newspapers
in the basement of their apartment. His friend and his father got caught and
was send to concentration camps in Germany. Ludvig was lucky that he was not
home when the Germans came to round them up.
His friend and his father came
back when the war ended, but were so destroyed from the concentration camps
that they both died shortly after.
He was regularly sent to Sweden
with messages inside a key.
When Ludvig was 18 he helped
the English when they were dropping weapons in to the resistance movement in
Denmark. How many lives he saved we don’t know, but he was constantly living in
the fear of being caught.
He kept his activities secret
for his parent all the time.
I believe we become “more of
ourselves” when we make sacrifices for others.
Danes
rescue of Jews 7.800
The rescue of the Danish Jews occurred
during Nazi Germany's occupation of Denmark during World
War II. On October 1, 1943 Nazi
leader Adolf Hitler ordered Danish Jews to be arrested and deported. Despite
great personal risk, the Danish resistance movement with the assistance of many ordinary
Danish citizens took part in a collective effort to evacuate about
The rescue allowed the vast majority of Denmark's Jewish
population to avoid capture by the Nazis and is considered to be one of the
largest actions of collective resistance to repression in the countries
occupied by Nazi Germany. As a result of the rescue and Danish intercession on
behalf of the 5% of Danish Jews who were deported to Theresienstadt transit camp in Bohemia, over 99% of Denmark's Jewish population
survived the Holocaust.
See movie “The Only Way”
with Jane Seymour
Oskar Schindler (28 April 1908 – 9 October 1974) was an
ethnic German industrialist, German spy, and member of the Nazi
party who is credited with saving the lives of 1,200 Jews
during the Holocaust by employing them in his enamelware and ammunitions factories, which were located in what
is now Poland and the Czech Republic respectively. He is the subject of the
1982 novel Schindler's Ark, and the subsequent 1993 film Schindler's
List, which reflected his life
as an opportunist initially motivated by profit who came to show extraordinary
initiative, tenacity, and dedication in order to save the lives of his Jewish
employees.
Irena Sendler (née Krzyżanowska, also referred to
as Irena Sendlerowa in Poland, Nom
de guerre Jolanta;
15 February 1910 – 12 May 2008)[2] was a PolishRoman
Catholic nurse/social
worker who served in
the Polish
Underground during
World War II, and as head of children's section of Żegota,[3][4] an underground resistance organization
in German-occupied Warsaw. Assisted by some two dozen other Żegota
members, Sendler smuggled some 2,500 Jewish children out of the Warsaw
Ghetto and then provided
them with false identity documents and with housing outside the Ghetto,
saving those children during the Holocaust.[5]
The Nazis eventually discovered her activities, tortured
her, and sentenced her to death, but she managed to evade execution and survive
the war. In 1965, Sendler was recognized by the State
of Israel as Righteous among the Nations. Late in life she was awarded Poland's highest honor for her wartime humanitarian efforts.
She appears on a silver 2009 Polish commemorative coin honoring some of the Polish Righteous among the Nations.
The Bielski Brothers is a non-fiction book by Peter Duffy,
which was published in 2003. It tells the story of Tuvia, Zus, and Asael
Bielski, three Jewish brothers who
established a large partisan camp in the forests of Belarus during World
War II, and so saved 1,200 Jews from the Nazis. The book describes how, in 1941, three
brothers witnessed their parents and two other siblings being led away to their
eventual murders. The brothers fought back against Germans and collaborators,
waging guerilla warfare in the forests of Belarus. By using their intimate knowledge of the
dense forests surrounding the towns of Lida and Novogrudek, the Bielskis evaded
the Nazis and established a hidden base camp, then set about convincing other
Jews to join their ranks. The Germans came upon them once but were unable to
get rid of them. As more Jews arrived each day, a robust community began to
emerge; a "Jerusalem in the woods". In July 1944, after some 30
months in the woods, the Bielskis learned that the Germans, overrun by the Red
Army, were retreating back toward Berlin.[1]
At the end of the war, with Soviet control of Belarus becoming increasingly oppressive, the
surviving Bielskis fled to Romania, traveling on to the British Mandate of Palestine and eventually to the United
States. Asael was drafted into
the Soviet Red Army and was killed in action at Marlbork in 1944.
A previous untold story
about Jan
Żabiński and his wife Antonina who used their Zoo to hide Jews. NOW IN A BOOK The Zookeepers Wife”
In 2007, the U.S. writer Diane Ackerman published The
Zookeeper's Wife, a
book about the Żabiński family's wartime activities that draws upon Antonina
Żabińska's diary. The Polish film director Maciej Dejczer has announced plans
for a film about Żabiński's wartime activities.
“the Zookeepers Wife” ( now also available as a movie)
Vibeke Lindhardt
15 May 2017
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