Bohr urged Sweden's king to shelter Denmark's Jews

Person: Niels Bohr
Lived: 1885–1962
Field: Physics
From: Danish

The story

In September 1943, Nazi Germany prepared to round up and deport the roughly 8,000 Jews of occupied Denmark. Word reached Niels Bohr and his brother Harald that the Nazis regarded their family as Jewish, because their mother came from a Danish Jewish family, and that they were in danger of arrest. On 28 September the German diplomat Georg Ferdinand Duckwitz leaked the plans to Danish politicians, and the next morning Jews across Copenhagen were warned to go into hiding.

On 29 September the Danish resistance helped Bohr and his wife escape by sea to Sweden. Swedish officials told him he must board an aircraft at once for the United States, where his help was wanted for the Allied atomic project. Bohr refused to leave until Sweden publicly announced that it would receive Denmark's Jews. The film star Greta Garbo, who knew Bohr, is said to have helped him obtain an audience with King Gustaf V.

On 30 September Bohr persuaded the king to make public Sweden's willingness to give asylum to Jewish refugees. On 2 October 1943 Swedish radio broadcast that Sweden was ready to receive them. That same night, the Jewish New Year, the Germans carried out their raid, but most homes were empty. Over the following days fishermen and ordinary Danes ferried families across the Øresund strait in fishing boats, rowing boats and even kayaks.

Historians debate how decisive Bohr's intervention was. Richard Rhodes and others see it as a necessary step without which the mass rescue could not have happened, while others argue that Swedish policy had already been set. All agree that he did everything he could for his countrymen. More than 7,000 Danish Jews reached safety in Sweden, and with Danish efforts on behalf of the 464 who were deported to Theresienstadt, about 99 percent of Denmark's Jewish population survived the Holocaust.

Bohr himself was flown to Scotland on 6 October in the bomb bay of an unarmed Mosquito aircraft. The rescue he championed is now honoured at Yad Vashem with a fishing boat from the Danish village of Gilleleje.

Why it matters

The rescue of Denmark's Jews saved the vast majority of the community and remains one of the most celebrated acts of collective courage of the Holocaust era.