The second transport of Jews from Denmark to the Theresienstadt ghetto (Terezín) left Copenhagen on October 2, 1943, with 198 deportees. Among the German officials in charge were Rolf Günther – deputy of Adolf Eichmann, director of Department IV B 4 for Jewish Affairs and Evacuation, at the RSHA (Reich Security Main Office, Reichssicherheitshauptamt) in Berlin, – and his colleague, Werner Kryschak.[1] On September 28, Günther and Kryschak went to the Ministry of Transport in Berlin to arrange for the deportation trains before travelling the next day to Copenhagen. Also arriving in the Danish capital on September 29 was SS-Brigadeführer and Generalmajor of the Police Erik von Heimburg, the new commander of the German police forces in Denmark.[2]
In a cable dated September 8, 1943, sent from Werner Best, the German plenipotentiary (Reichsbevollmächtigter) in Denmark to the German Foreign Ministry, he requested ships for use in the deportation.[3] The ships were earmarked to deport the Jews to be rounded up in Copenhagen; the Jews from Jutland and Funen would be transported by train.[4] According to a document from the German Navy High Command (Seekriegsleitung), three ships were to transport 5,000 Jews from Copenhagen across the Baltic Sea to Swinemünde (today the Polish city of Świnoujście).[5] The document originally referred to “5,000 people” but afterward the word “people” was crossed out and replaced by hand with the word “Jews.”[6]
The three ships that were supposed to be utilized during the action against the Danish Jews were called: “MS Wartheland”, “Monte Rosa” and “Lappland.” The ship “Monte Rosa”[7] was supposed to have left Aarhus, on the east coast of the Jutland Peninsula, enroute to Copenhagen on October 1, 1943, to join the action but the ship was sabotaged by two anti-Nazi German naval officers, who claimed that the vessel was immobilized by engine failure.[8] This prevented the ship from being sent to Copenhagen.[9] Instead the ship “Moero” was sent to Copenhagen. In the end, only one ship, the MS Wartheland, was used for the transport on October 2, 1943, probably because that was sufficient to hold the small number of Jews – 198 – who were rounded up in Copenhagen.[10]...