Richard Osterman

Name of Interviewee: Richard Oestermann

Name of Interviewer: Shoshana Ben-Avraham

Cassette Number: VT-1975

Date: July 29, 1997

Name of Typist: Cheryl Balshayi

Place Names:

Copenhagen

Hven

Q: It’s the 29th of July, 1998. I’m Ben-Avraham, Shoshana, interviewing Mr. Oestermann, Richard. Please state the place and date of your birth.

A: I was born on the 19th of May, 1926 in Copenhagen, Denmark.

Q: Describe to us a little bit your family.

A: Well, I’ll tell you. My father came from Russia and he married into an “old Danish Jewish family” that has lived in Denmark from the very beginning of the Jews, the year sixteen hundred and something. King Christian IV let the Jews in and although he lived many years ago, he is still one of the most talked about kings in Denmark. Every child knows that his rule lasted for sixty years, 1588-1648, and under that king the Jews came in, from Germany mainly, Holland. They started out from Spain and Portugal and came up that way. And that king, Christian IV, who is the “Builder King”, the Herod of Denmark, castle after castle, and church, beautiful Dutch Renaissance style - they have the name “Yehovah”, written in Hebrew letters.

Q: Where?

A: On the church, on the round tower observatory in Copenhagen. where, incidentally, Czar Peter I rode up in a carriage, forty meters up. On that is written “Yehovah” and with a number of symbols, “May G-d direct wisdom into the heart of Christian IV” and G-d is “Yehovah”. On a church close by, “Yehovah”, another one also. In southeastern Sweden, which was under Danish realm at the time, also, in a city called Kristianstad.

Q: But let’s concentrate on your family.

A: I still want to say one more thing about Christian IV, that he was very open-minded, very liberal and he could see the good of having the Jews and they got better conditions in Denmark at the time than in many other places in Europe. So the name of my ancestor that came at the time was Salomonsen and they settle in a small provincial town called Nyborg. There was a Jewish community in Nyborg and he was in the tobacco industry.

Q: Who was in the tobacco...?

A: My ancestor, Salomonsen. I even brought - and you can see that later, you may photograph it - the family tree. You can see that it goes back more than three hundred years and so my mother is from that group. If I would be very snobbish I would say that I’m a “mayflower”. One more thing about my family. My mother’s maiden name was Grün, like Ben Gurion was before he became Ben Gurion, and I have a little story later perhaps, if we have the time. But my mother was one of ten children, six boys and four girls - lots, but not at the time. Her parents were very pious Jews and my grandfather, Herman Grün, whose name, more than fifty years after his death, and his wife’s name, are still mentioned several times a year in the synagogue when you mention the names of illustrious people who had belonged to that community.

Q: Why is that?

A: Well, it is a Danish tradition that you have a selection of names and you can increase and you can eliminate some, but he and she are on all the time.

Q: What did they do to the community to deserve such an honour?

A: Well, my grandfather was the learned man of the community. He was the head of a group called the “Klausen” and they were, you can say, Danish Jewish “sages”, who met once a week under the chairmanship of my grandfather, to discuss religious matters. And he was the head of the Jewish religious school and a very impressive man, very stern, but with a sense of humour and he died at age ninety-three, a very venerable age, I would say. My grandmother I never knew - she died before I was born, but I grew up in a family with a lot of people. These ten children almost all had children.

Q: But let’s put the emphasis on your nuclear family, I mean your parents, brothers, sisters.

A: Okay. Just one word about my father, then we go into my nuclear family. My father came to Denmark in 1905. He was on his way to the United States after the pogrom and stopped briefly in Copenhagen and saw that it was good enough for him, no need to continue, and eventually married my mother. And he was married first to a woman who died and they had three children of whom one fought in Palestine as it were and fell fighting Arabs in 1938 near Haifa. I’ll tell you about that later because I think that it ties me to this country, this particular relative.

Q: Did you know him?

A: I knew him. He was much older than I was. When his mother died, several years went by and my father remarried and in my family were four children - I am the youngest, three older sisters - of whom two are alive, both in Copenhagen, and one very, very dear person to me died in California twelve years ago. So this is my immediate family.

Q: Was your family religious?

A: Yes.

Q: I mean, in the house of your parents?

A: Yes.

Q: They were religious?

A: Absolutely. In the first place, all ten children got a very religious upbringing through the parents who were very observant. My mother carried that with her in the most beautiful way. I shall never forget her Friday evenings, her singing, the way she “kashered” for Pesach and how we stood - little children - in awe and saw her fish up the cutlery after it had been, as we say, “kashered”. We went to the synagogue very regularly every Shabbat, we associated with Jews.

Q: Only with Jews?

A: No. Now I’m coming to that. I mean, my parents’ close friends were Jews. My mother said very cleverly, that she thought that it was very important for me to have the best education you could have. I was not put in a Jewish school. There was one. At the time it wasn’t very good. Today it is a great school, high standard of learning. At the time, not, and my mother wanted me to have a very good education. So although she was widowed at a very early stage in my life - I was just thirteen years old. I was a bar mitzvah boy when my father died in November, 1939, a few months after World War II started - and my mother alone, with four teenage children, somehow managed to get us going and as far as I was concerned I was in this good school and that school has had a tremendous impact on me for the rest of my life.

Q: But it was not a Jewish school?

A: It was not a Jewish school. It was a boys’ school, it was a high school, one of the finest....

Q: But was it under any...some kind of patronage of religion?

A: No. It was a state school. As I said, at the time, a boys’ school. When I was there, there were some three, four hundred children, and up to the age of eighteen. It was a high school.

Q: Were there other Jewish boys in the school?

A: Good question. Yes. Very few, but I remember that in my class were two or three, we were exempt from the lesson of religion which was, of course, the Christian religion, and we went down in the schoolyard and played football with a tennis ball. There was also a Catholic in my class. He was also exempt - very interesting. So three Jewish boys and a Catholic - and you know, there are few Catholics in Denmark, maybe twenty thousand altogether, or thirty thousand. They form a minority as well.

Q: Could you tell me please, overall, during your years of education in high school or in elementary school, as a boy do you remember....what was the attitude towards Jewish kids in the school? Between the other kids, between the teachers and the children.

A: I’ll tell you. First of all, when I started in that school at age eleven, twelve or something like that, I was wearing “arba kanfot” and I did that until I told my mother, “This is it. I’m not going to do it anymore. There are too many questions and I can’t answer them.” When we had our gymnastic lessons and so, we were undressed and I had this special kind of textile on me, called “arba kanfot”. I couldn’t wear it anymore, so my mother understood. And I remember also coming up from one of these football sessions while they had religion - my best friend in class, Knud, said to me, “You crucified Jesus?” I said, “I?” And this was the way that it was taught at the time, that the Jews had crucified Jesus. Now we all know of the corrections that are put out by the Vatican ever since.

Q: Let’s leave it alone for this interview.

A: But other than that I don’t recall a thing. Yes, I do recall that once during a summer vacation somebody said to me, “Why don’t you go to Palestine.” And these two events are the one and only. Otherwise, completely accepted as an integral part of the Danish society. With another religion, fine, but interesting people who contributed also in culture to the whole of Danish society. And I think that’s the way it has been ever since, that’s the way the Jews have been integrated and for that reason. Because they had been there for three hundred years, the longer they are there, the more integrated they are, the more they are understood. And the Danish people happen also to be a rather well-educated people, more so than many others.

Q: At that time?

A: At that time. At the time of two hundred years ago...there were different attitudes to the Jews in Denmark, Sweden and Norway and I think that to a certain extent it depended on how long the Jews have been in those countries - three hundred years in Denmark, two hundred in Sweden and one hundred in...

Q: Yes, but let’s not go into it. I would like to ask you, not only in school, but in the neighbourhood you used to live, was it a Jewish neighbourhood so to speak, or was it...?

A: No, not at all. We lived in a non-Jewish neighbourhood. In the very beginning when the Jews came there they lived in Jewish quarters, not ghettos, but certain streets, quarters. No, not at all. For maybe two hundred years or so, the Jews lived out in the open society, owned houses wherever, had flats wherever, and so did we.

Q: Could you tell me a little bit how was the relationship between the neighbours in the neighbourhood you lived?

A: It was fine. We lived on the third floor in a five-story apartment building. Everybody knew one another, we greeted one another on the staircase. “Hello, hello. How are you today?” Little contact, but there were some we had contact with and I am still in contact with one family that I knew at that time. Here you can go into an apartment building and you may live there for twenty years, you don’t know your neighbour. There, I don’t know, I won’t say it’s the rule, but it so happened that where I lived people were friendly to one another. Talking about surroundings, environment, I’ll tell you that practically all my friends were non-Jews from school. I also had Jewish friends.

Q: They came to your house?

A: Absolutely.

Q: And did you go to their houses?

A: Absolutely, surely. It was a free flow.

Q: Excuse me, one moment please. Was there some kind of a problem concerning kosher food when you were a guest at their houses?

A: Yes. They understood that. They knew that there were certain things I wouldn’t eat and at times they would also prepare something special for me, but I had no problem. One thing I want to tell you that I think is of some interest. I am in Israel since 1961 and I came...to cover the Eichmann trial - that’s another story. I am still in close contact with my friends in Denmark from more than yesteryear, from fifty, sixty years ago and I’d like to tell you a little warm story about that. Three years ago, 1995, I got a call from a man who said, from Denmark, “I’m Jorgen Erik Nielsen. Do you remember me?” I said, “Not really.” He said, “No wonder. You and I have not talked for fifty years. I’ll tell you now why I’m calling you, but just to remind you, you and I were not only classmates. We were friends and we did something together against the Germans.” I said, “I certainly remember you now.” He said, “Now I’ll tell you why I call you. The class is having a reunion. We are having our fiftieth anniversary of when we got our student cap and when we officially left our school with a handshake by the rector. We are now invited by the new rector to be with the new group of students, sit next to them, share in their joy, meet again, and it fell upon me to find you which was no problem. I just called Israel and they said he has this and that telephone number.” And because I am a journalist, a writer, my name has come out in Denmark rather frequently, so that was no problem locating me. I said to him, “Look, it’s a lot. I’m very touched. let me think about it, let me sleep on it.” And of course I couldn’t sleep. I was turning all night and I thought about him and the school and the rector who was a tremendous person and very, very much taught me and other Jews. Einer Andersen and I’ll tell you, had it not been for him, I would not have been the person I am today because he taught us so much of importance in life, in culture. And I thought about the Germans and our parties and I don’t know what. We had, also during those hardship times, we had fun. The next morning I ordered a flight ticket for that particular date in June and a hotel room and I called him and I said, “Jorgen, I’m coming,” and he said, “I knew that all along.” And I said to him, “If I hadn’t come, I would have regretted it the rest of my life because your approach on behalf of the class is like a continuation of 1943.” And he said, “Yes, and we all know it.” And he said, “It wouldn’t have been the same if the class would meet without you, so we hoped you would come and I’m very happy you do.” Now I have reconnected with Jorgen. We are good friends again. I’ll see him in another week and a half in Denmark. The amazing thing is that I have now for thirty-five years a tradition of having a summer party of friends in Denmark and some of my close relatives. Seventy percent at least are non-Jews, maybe eighty percent, seventy-five percent. It’s a great group of people and they are from all walks of life.

Q: Okay, but let’s go back to our subject. I would like to ask you what can you tell us about the atmosphere and knowledge of information that you possessed during the late ‘30’s about what was happening in Germany.

A: We didn’t know much, but we knew some because I had an aunt who lived in Berlin - my mother’s sister Louise. They had to get out of Berlin, in the middle ‘30’s, clearly, and at that time Denmark did not allow Jews in from Germany. There was a quota. A few managed to get in, but my sister Margot, who died in California, as a very young girl managed to get an audience with the Danish Minister of Justice and she convinced him that here was something that he had to deal with personally. She, little girl, succeeded in having him sign an order that they should get in, my mother’s sister and husband. They came to Denmark.

Q: How did she do that?

A: I have no idea. By way of persuasion.

Q: Did she write to him? Did she have an audience?

A: She had an audience with him. I don’t know how it came about. It was in the middle ‘30’s - how old was she? She was a young teenager and somehow she managed. She sat across from him at the table in his room and convinced him, somehow, that here was something and the whole family was in awe about what this little girl had done.

Q: So the relatives of your mother came to Denmark?

A: From Berlin. Now, what did I know? I was at that time ten, eleven, twelve. I knew little about that. When we heard certain rumours, we didn’t know much about it because only when they came out did we learn more about it.

Q: Did you hear any talks about it at your close relatives’, at the community, at the synagogue? Can you remember some incident that people were concerned or not concerned about...?

A: No, no. People were definitely concerned and they were somewhat fearful what might happen and at that time you had had the Austrian Anschluss in ‘38 and Memel and the German expansion, that something was coming. I remember my father saying one thing and I was thirteen, so he said that in early 1939, to me - we were walking in town. He said, “The situation is getting worse and worse and I think that it’ll lead to a world war. And the air is so thick of threats that I think that maybe a war would be good in order to clean it and clear it out.” And I never forgot what he said there. I did not, now, agree with him. At the time I was a boy. I heard him and one can never wish for a war, but apparently the situation was so loaded at the time, and I remember clearly as a boy what happened. One submarine after the other. Do you know that? The submarines that were sunk - the British, the French - and we all had the feeling that a war might break out. When the war broke out on the 3rd of September, 1939.

Q: First of September.

A: First of September. What happened on the 3rd?

Q: I don’t remember, but it doesn’t matter right now.

A: The 1st of September Hitler invaded Poland and from then on I had big maps in my room with points, I had little pins, coloured, so I could follow how the war went.

Q: Did the breakout of the war in Poland affect in any way your family life or Jewish community life or their attitudes towards the events?

A: No. I don’t think so. I don’t remember that, at any rate, that there was any difference. The war had broken out and nobody had any idea how long it would last. Everybody hoped that it would be over quickly. But then I remember that my father who had a lot of business with Finland, where he travelled frequently, and with England, then when France and England joined the war, my father’ business with England stopped completely and he suffered economically from that. And I remember the three, four months until 1939, when you had the - I don’t know whether this is of any interest, but I’m telling it for kicks - the winter war against Finland. My father died just before and he was very close to Finland and he would have hated to see that the Russians attacked that little neighbour.

I would like another question from you, otherwise I will take off.

Q: Okay. Till when is your life and your family’s life continuing in about a regular, normal routine?

A: First of all, we have to put in here the German invasion of Denmark - the 9th of April, 1940. At that time my mother was very, she was mortally ill. She had pneumonia and was in hospital and she was the first person to be treated with penicillin in Denmark and it saved her life. Somehow penicillin came over from England. It saved her life. I did not stay at home at the time. I was staying with relatives because we were in a transition and we were also moving physically from one apartment to another. And I remember the evening of the 9th of April, on the 8th. I was sitting with an older cousin of mine, discussing what might happen, and he predicted exactly what would happen the next day. You had the, at the time, the situation with the ship on the Norwegian coast - do you remember that? I think it was called the “Altmark”. And he said, “I would not be surprised if the Germans attack Norway and Denmark tomorrow.” And they did. The next morning the German planes were swarming over Copenhagen on their way to Norway and the invasion was on. Now, the invasion of Denmark was, I think, very significant in one particular way. It rallied the Danish people, in the beginning slowly, but already in 1940 you had what was called the “Churchill Club” - young high school kids from a school somewhere in Jutland who started sabotaging the Germans at night and went to school in the daytime.

Q: When was it?

A: That was in 1940.

Q: 1940. When the Germans were already in Denmark?

A: Yes, of course. The Germans were there since the 9th of April, 1940, and at the end of 1940 this little, tiny resistance movement group started and all of Denmark knew about them and they were admired - the “Churchill Group”.

Q: The “Churchill Club”

A: Club, the “Churchill Club”.

Q: Were you a member of this club?

A: No. It was in Jutland. But I will tell you what happened in high school.

Q: How did the invasion of the Germans affect you and your family? If at all.

A: Of course. I would say that the “if at all” was superfluous because of course it affected us, it affected every person living in Denmark and the Jews maybe more than others because the Jews were the persecuted ones and Hitler was on rampage in Europe.

Q: Personally, how did you feel it? What happened to you and your closest family as soon as the German invasion, when you felt that the German invasion is here?

A: Soon after we started having bags ready in our apartment in order to leave if need be. Little bags with necessities. And we had an escape route hopefully. If the Germans came up the front door, we would go down the...

Q: Why? Why did you need to ensure for yourself an escape route? What was the atmosphere? What were you afraid of?

A: Because we didn’t want to be taken by the Germans and sent to a concentration camp. As simple as that.

Q: Did you know? That’s exactly what I want to know. Did you know by that time, in 1940?

A: About concentration camps? My answer to you is no. I don’t recall...I could say yes, but I am not sure, so when did one learn in Denmark about concentration camps? Maybe...I will not give you a date, but in the very beginning of the 1940’s, yes. From where the rumours came out I don’t know, but I know that an aunt of mine from Norway, Helga was her name, she was taken to Auschwitz and I think that was back in 1941 or ‘42. We knew about that. We knew it because it was a relative.

Q: You knew it in 1941 or ‘42.

A: Yes,

Q: What I am asking really is how did the German invasion into Denmark affect your personal life, if at all, at the very beginning, or immediately after they were there? Did yo go to school? Did you stop going to school? What was happening on the street and everyday life?

A: I understand what you are saying. We tried to live life as normally as possible. We went to school and there were a few Nazis in our school. Couldn’t be helped if you had three hundred and fifty students.

Q: Amongst the teachers as well?

A: No. As far as I know, not. And they were very nationalistic, very Danish. And there was a lot of rallying around Danish symbols, from the king to the flag to whatever, songs. And I remember that a particular teacher whom I liked very much and admired - very tall man, teacher of French.

Q: What was his name, if you remember?

A: Yes. Niels Husfeldt. He later became the rector of the school. When the Germans marched down the street, with their band in front and German music, he ordered the boys to open the windows and the minute the Germans passed, “Now we close the windows!” Bang, so that they could hear down there. I mean, it was a little demonstration, but it was...and we all enjoyed it.

Q: Did you feel threatened to walk the streets? Did your family, your mother or sisters feel less safe in their home or on the street?

A: Look, it was always terrible to see the German soldiers all over and the black-clad SS. One never knew what would happen. But in my school were more young saboteurs that in any other and our rector knew about that and he kept quiet. The sabotage was carried out to a certain extent by university students. I remember that when Denmark joined the anti-Comintern pact, you know, there was a big demonstration in downtown Copenhagen against it by university students and some from our school in the last classes. I was there.

Q: You attended the demonstration?

A: I was in the demonstration and I was knocked over by a German soldier who trampled on my face - that I remember - and I did not want to tell at home how I had gotten that very bloody nose and I said I ran my head against the door. I didn’t want to tell anybody that I had been in that. I kept quiet. And I knew not all, but some of those who were active. Later on I learned in more detail, after the war. I myself was active not as a saboteur, not at all, but I was in the resistance to a certain extent. I had distribution of several hundred copies of what was called, an illegal, an underground paper called “Free Denmark”, like the free French forces, “Free Denmark” and I had to mail that, without a sender of course, to certain people. I had to distribute it at school to certain people.

Q: Distribution. I am very interested in the details of this activity of yours. What time are we talking about?

A: We are talking about 1942-43.

Q: Okay. What was the framework within which you worked as a distributor? It was an organization? It was a personal thing that was given to you from one person? How was it all arranged?

A: I had friends who were in the resistance and although I was a Jew and I knew that had I been caught, it might have promoted or furthered the persecution against the Jews if a Jew was involved. And I knew of Jewish saboteurs, a few, very, very few, but they were there and I admired them. I knew that they existed.

Q: From your class? From your neighbourhood?

A: No, no, no. From outside. No. I knew that one who is a medical doctor, Hugo Hurvitz, what he did - a great, great hero in the Danish resistance.

Q: Could you tell me a little bit about?

A: Him?

Q: If you knew him personally?

A: I knew him personally also, but after the war. But I knew what he did, that he was one of the masterminds behind one of the most clever actions against the Germans, which I think should be told here for Yad Vashem. Can I tell it?

Q: Yes, but very concisely.

A: I’ll try to do it very briefly and then I’ll get back to that illegal paper. Now, in 1944, I think it was, when the Germans were retreating on the eastern front and had trouble on the western front, they wanted to have reinforcement of the western front by having two hundred thousand soldiers in Norway come down and support the troops. They wanted to take them down over Denmark, over the Jutland railroad system. They were sabotaged to the extent that they couldn’t do that anymore. Then they wanted to get them out...

Q: And the mind behind it was this....?

A: No, no. The mind behind that was no less than one of the first commanding officers of the UNTSO here in the Middle East. General Vagn Bennike. Not Hugo Hurvitz. He had nothing to do with that. The Germans could not get the troops down because of the railroad sabotage in Jutland. They wanted to get them out by ship from Copenhagen, where there were four or five big ships that could go to Norway and take them out. Now something very clever happened. There were two bridges connecting the island of Amajer, south of Copenhagen, with Copenhagen proper. And Hugo Hurvitz was in charge of the sabotage of this bridge - blown up, repaired, blown up. The ships stayed. They couldn’t get through when the bridge was blown up. At the end the German soldiers stood at a space of maybe two or three meters - you couldn’t touch it anymore. The first ship then came out and that ship I think had one of the most heroic stories in Europe. The minute it got out into international waters, Danish saboteurs swarmed out from the hold and on top of the ship and put it aground on the Swedish coast and they called tugboats from the Danish waters to take it off ground - it was all a clever plan. Whenever a tugboat came up, saboteurs on board into Sweden. Within twenty-four hours there were no tugboats in Danish waters. They were all in Sweden and the four or five ships remained there and the German soldiers did not leave Norway. Isn’t that a marvelous idea. I mean, they used the inside of the head.

Q: But the ships didn’t leave Copenhagen.

A: They did not leave because there were no tugboats...

Q: Not Norway.

A: The ships did not leave Copenhagen for Norway because there were no tugboats to take them out of Copenhagen.

Q: Now let’s go back to...

A: To that paper there. I was actually trembling very much, I can tell you.

Q: How did you receive? Who gave you the copies that you had to send or deliver?

A: I met in an apartment with one person who gave it to me in a bag. And then at home I had to, according to a list that I had worked out with them, write envelopes and I had to mail it and I did.

Q: You received from them the envelopes as well?

A: Yes, I received the envelopes.

Q: And you had the list of the addresses where to mail it?

A: In my home, yes.

Q: And you did it at your home?

A: Yes, in my home, in my room.

Q: Your mother, your sisters, they didn’t know?

A: They didn’t know because what did I do? I said I don’t want to be disturbed, I have my lessons. I’m preparing homework. At home nobody knew.

Q: They didn’t know.

A: No. And I didn’t tell them. Look, I’m not going to make myself a big hero because I’m not, not at all, but I love Denmark and I hated the German invasion and I didn’t want that country and the people and my friends to suffer. I want Denmark free. I have a very, very positive attitude towards Denmark because Denmark has been very good to me. And so it’s still on, very much so.

Q: I would like to ask you also about the basic topics and content of this paper that you were delivering.

A: The paper had stories about what was going on in Denmark.

Q: The truth?

A: The truth. Many, many stories about successful sabotage operations and people who had been taken. And about Danes serving in the Allied forces. Whatever they could get hold of. It was a four-page sheet, no more. At times it grew to six pages, but I mean it was never a big paper. It was this big.

Q: Could you tell me please how many copies, more or less, you were delivering at one particular time?

A: I had thirty, forty copies.

Q: Thirty, forty. And you went with the whole package to the post office to mail it?

A: No.

Q: Tell me about it.

A: No. I was at different post offices because it might be suspicious that a little boy - I mean I was sixteen, seventeen - would come with that many letters, so I had maybe six, seven in one post office and in another....I mean, I was trying to be clever about it and I didn’t take more with me, I didn’t go with a big...Had I been caught, then there would not have been more than those and nobody knew what was in it. A brown envelope with a name on it. Now coming to the school. I had eight or ten to deliver to somebody I trusted a hundred percent and I had to somehow find my way to them and give it to them so others didn’t see. That was when I was trembling.

Q: I don’t understand. You had to deliver what to them?

A: To schoolmates, some in my class, others in other classes, that paper.

Q: You had to deliver a bulk of papers or one copy?

A: No, no. One. I had maybe six, eight or something, to certain people who had to be informed about what was going on.

Q: Did you have to choose those certain people according to your knowledge if they are...what their opinions are?

A: No, no. I mean, I knew about these. I also had maybe one or two names I was given from those I got papers from, but it was on me to do that.

Q: So this particular part you were risking really a possible delivery to somebody that is not really on your side.

A: No, no, no, no, never.

Q: Never. How were you so sure?

A: I knew the people, I knew the people.

Q: From your personal knowledge of them?

A: Yes, yes, personal relations.

Q: So why were you trembling? You said you were trembling at this particular...

A: Because in the process of giving the person this, it might be seen by somebody who shouldn’t see it.

Q: I thought that you were not sure about how they would receive it.

A: No, no. About the person. I would never dream of giving it to somebody whom I wasn’t sure of. No, it was the delivery itself, the process of delivering that made me feel, you know....And I did that...only a month or two, no more. It was towards the end, before we went to Sweden. I want to tell you about my escape to Sweden.

Q: Sure, of course.

A: Because I think that it has an importance. And how did I learn about it? One day - and I remember the date very well because it was the 26th of September, 1943 and how do I remember that particular date? Because it was the old king’s birthday and being...

Q: King Christian X?

A: King Christian X and every child knew that and all grown-ups in Denmark remember that date today. They may not remember the Queen’s birthday today, but he was such a significant national symbol that you can’t help it. On that particular day I met a friend of mine who was a jazz player. He was a drummer in a jazz band and I knew him. I was myself also involved with jazz, not as anything major, but he certainly was. Pedro Bieger, with a Spanish first name, and he told me that, “I think that you’d better, and your family, get out because persecution is going to start against the Jews in a couple of days. You have just a few days to get organized and get out of here to Sweden.” Which I told one of my closest friends.

Q: You were living with your mother, with your sisters at the time?

A: I was living with my mother and my two sisters also. My oldest sister was married, had a one-year-old boy and lived with her husband elsewhere. And they would get out themselves, by themselves somehow. they got out actually from Copenhagen itself. My mother and my two sisters and I got out in a different way. I must tell you this little story about...on the very same day he came with that warning we left the apartment.

Q: You left the apartment that you were living in?

A: Yes. We left the apartment.

Q: Where do you go?

A: Well, first of all, I went to a friend of mine whose name is Niels Ebbe Bindsler and he is no more.

Q: A non-Jewish person?

A: Non-Jewish person, yes, yes. My closest friend at the time. And his father was one of the mayors of Copenhagen and a conservative MP, member of parliament. And he was very, very close to me. They had relatives in Sweden and they told me that when I get to Sweden, this is where I shall go in Stockholm. Got names, addresses, everything. And I could stay there as long as I wanted to, but they did not know about any escape route, but I felt safe by them. But I thought about my family; we had to get out. So first of all, we went by train with no luggage. I was wearing three shirts and that was it. We had to look as inconspicuous as possible because there were German soldiers in the trains and had we come with suitcases, that would have given us away immediately. First we went to a place where we had rented a summer house that past summer.

Q: Who is we?

A: My mother, two sisters and myself. They turned us down. They knew what this was all about: Jews fleeing. They didn’t want to have us. I was very disappointed and pretty shocked. Then we came back to Copenhagen and started again to another place and my mother and one sister were placed in another summer house that we had rented, where they received them with open arms, my mother and sister. My other sister and myself continued to another house belonging to a Danish opera singer whose son was a member of the resistance and he was a buddy of my sister and me and therefore we stayed with them. And lots of people came there. It’s a little bit south of Elsinore, at a resort place called Snekkersten, a fishing village. And on the 1st of October, the day of the persecution, Eyvind, the name of the nineteen-year-old son of this opera singer and my sister and I... Eyvind Skjaer. Eyvind and my sister and I rode on bicycles to meet with my mother, to join up with my mother and another sister, through the forests, with no lamps on - and it was dark. But we knew every little part, all the paths through the forest. We were familiar with it from summer after summer in that area. So we joined up with my mother and sister and we walked. My mother was not a strong woman, but she got - and this is something that I think is of interest to all who hear this. Whenever a person is in mortal danger, he gets a reserve of physical force that he doesn’t possess in everyday life. And my mother had that. Later Eyvind and I saw that we all had it. We went through the forest. We had to cross the main road, the coastal highway connecting Copenhagen with Elsinore, and the Gestapo cars were there, going up and down. They were chasing Jews, looking for Jews. We crossed.

Q: You just, on bicycles, as...?

A: We were not on bicycles. My sister and Eyvind and I had three bicycles, my other sister and mother not, so we were dragging the bicycles, but we had the bicycles with us, but we were walking.

Q: But you were walking the same route that the Germans were passing by looking for Jews?

A: No, we were crossing the coastal highway where the Germans were in cars. We crossed it when we didn’t see any cars and then we came to a bay from where a sort of a tongue, a little peninsula juts out. At the end of that was a cement platform where a fisherman should pick us up at eleven o’clock. That was what Eyvind had arranged with a fisherman by the name of Andersen, and I shall not forget the name, ever.

Q: His other name do you know?

A: Don’t know. Just Fisherman Andersen.

Q: And it was all prearranged by Eyvind?

A: Eyvind had arranged this with the fisherman, to pick us up at eleven o’clock at night on the 1st of October. Now, we had money with us because we knew that the passage would cost money and this family was not rich in any way, not at all. My mother was widowed and she managed somehow, but she had a rich brother and he said, “The box is open. Anybody who needs money can just come here and get whatever they need.” He paid for the passage actually of lots of members of the family. It cost a thousand kroner per person to give to the fisherman, which is a tremendous amount today, would amount to maybe, just a guess, three thousand dollars per person. A stiff amount. But it was coming to this fisherman because he was risking his livelihood and his life and his family - the income. He had to make sure that the family, in case something happened to him, would be provided for. We came to the end of that little peninsula jutting out maybe a couple of hundred meters and we saw that there was a door with a lock and we had to be on the other side because that was where the concrete platform was. And Eyvind and I looked at one another and we looked at the lock and then we opened it with our bare hands. Still today nobody knows whether it was locked. It may have been open and not locked, or rusty or locked - we don’t know - but we opened it and we stood there with an open lock and looked at one another and went in. We had an imaginary feeling of being safe because we had the door between us and land and there we were. And we could hear the screams of Jews being taken, at a distance of so-and-so many hundred meters, by Gestapo, and I know - and this is something that scares me to today. I only learned about this a couple of years ago - that two cousins of mine were taken the next day at the same place where we escaped and they came to Theresienstadt and they suffered very much there. One of them died. He got kidney trouble there - he died some years ago. The other one, he is marked for life by his experience in Theresienstadt. They were taken on that same spot the next day.

Q: But I didn’t understand what was this door leading to? It was a small room to the boat?

A: No. That door led to a platform on the other side and on that platform a boat could moor. And so we should meet him at eleven o’clock and it was a cold and foggy evening and it was eleven o’clock and twelve o’clock and then at one o’clock we heard the sound of “tuff-tuff-tuff”, a boat with an engine approaching and there was Andersen. And he brought us abroad and he looked at me and he said, “We are going to play a little trick with the Germans. You are my assistant.” And he gave me a blue sweater as if I was a fisherboy. And my family down in the hold.

So the fisherman Andersen said to me, “I’m going to give you a blue sweater for you to put on because you’re my assistant now. We’re going to fool the Germans if we can.” And so he acted as if he was fishing, with a lantern on - not to obscure anything and the course directly toward Sweden and enroute we were fishing. And our luck then was that we were approached by, or seen by a German patrol boat where I could see that there were three persons on board. And there were two kinds of patrol boats as far as I know - one with three and one with ten. Had we been approached by one with ten we might have been taken because ten people don’t know very much about one another. Three people know more and so they might have been sure there’s no informer and that they would have said, “Let the devils go, the Jews. Let them just go.” And Andersen and I pretended we were fishing with fish and a net and everything.

Q: And your mother, your sister were down in the hold?

A: Down in the hold. As we came closer to Sweden....

Q: Pardon me one moment. The Germans did not enter your boat?

A: No. They were at a distance of maybe a hundred and fifty meters, something like that, and we play-acted, you know, they turned away and we continued. As we got close to the island of Hven, which is a Swedish island close to the Swedish mainland, Andersen said, “This is where you get off. I’m going back to try to get more.”

Q: On the island of?

A: Hven. It was a formerly Danish island ceded to Sweden three hundred years ago. He said, “You have to leave here and you have to wade ashore,” and he took an oar and he measured that the water would be this high and I was the first to go and I took my shoes off and put them in my coat pocket and jumped and the water went up to here and my shoes sailed out of my pocket and there I was barefoot, and then my mother came down and my two sisters. And my two sisters are good swimmers - one is not alive anymore - but they were fine swimmers and my mother not and they helped her and one of my sisters’ coat was about to get caught in the propeller of the ship and she was about to be dragged down and I had to pull her, the coat out of the propellor - all very complicated. And then we just waded up on the shore and I could feel that I was cutting my feet, bloodied by stone and glass pieces, whatever, and we get up and there were two Swedish soldiers and they said, in Swedish of course, to us, “Welcome to old Sweden,” and the Swedish soldiers cried and we cried and the water rose by one centimeter because of our tears. And we got up and we crossed with the Swedish soldiers over the island to an inn, a large one, where I saw lots of people of the high society of Copenhagen who had been transformed to refugees overnight. People who had been in their finest....

Q: From the Jewish community?

A: From the Jewish community. Who had been in their best, strolling down the main drag of Copenhagen the day before, all of a sudden there they were, refugees. And we were refugees. And there were also, of course, non-Jews because it was a big escape operation. And we were there, I think overnight and the next over to a place called Landskrona and that’s where we began thinking about what should we do in Sweden and that’s where my friend came in with his addresses of relatives in Stockholm. Now comes a nice little story also. He, this Niels Ebbe Bindsler, very close friend of mine - he died six, seven years ago of cancer and we had been together all our lives, as much as we could, up to the day he died. The other day I got a call from somebody who says, “My name is Cecilie Bindsler. I am the granddaughter of Niels Ebbe. And I know that your grandfather and you were close friends. I’ve come to hear his story from you. And after all these years - and I’ve heard about him, but I don’t know enough and I’ve heard about you and I want to meet with you for you to tell me about my grandfather. Can I come and see you?” So she came with her boyfriend, she nineteen, he twenty. Tall, beautiful young people and I had them for dinner.

Q: Here in Israel?

A: Two, three weeks ago. I didn’t know that she existed. I told her a lot that she had no idea of. We had a lot of fun. And he, he was in one of my rooms, he saw a picture of me interviewing Sophia Loren and he said, “Can I have a copy of that?” I said, “What for?’ He said, “I’ll tell you. I’d like to show that I know somebody who had talked to Sophia Loren.” And he is a twenty-year-old boy and Sophia Loren...so I had a copy made and sent to him. Now comes that they have invited me to a Bindsler family gathering for dinner in Copenhagen in two weeks where I’ll see my friend’s older brothers - one is a lawyer, the other is a professor of architecture - and their wives and their this and their that and the friends I have not been in touch with for fifty years! Bang, all of a sudden. I mean, this is what...I think this is what the Danish society is all about - values and closeness of people. That’s the way I see it. I may see it in a rosy light, could very well be. I’ll tell you a story. Want a story?

Q: Yes, but I want to hear again what happened when you came to Sweden? What was the next step?

A: The next step was, up to Stockholm from the city of Landskrona on the mainland, by train up to Stockholm, where my mother got an apartment - that was arranged by what was called the Danish Refugee Committee that had money for this purpose. So my mother got an apartment.

Q: The Danish Refugee Committee - pardon me, I don’t know - this was a Jewish organization? No.

A: No, Danish state taking care of its citizens. Could be Danish communists, could be Danish saboteurs, whatever. So I didn’t know really what to do with myself. I was sixteen, seventeen years old. So I started out going up to northern Sweden where I knew I could get a job as a forest worker and I was a forest worker, not for more than two weeks. Yes, I worked in a forest. Then I remember that my school in Copenhagen had a close relationship with a school in Stockholm - they were sort of twinning and there had been teachers from Sweden in Denmark to teach us Swedish the proper way, and the other way around. And I applied for that school and I got in and I was there a couple of months. then I learned that a Danish high school had been established in Lund in southern Sweden, a university town, and another one in Gothenborg. And there were enough students to go around for two high schools, two, three hundred in each of these two schools, with the best kind of teachers you can imagine. A professor of mathematics we had as a teacher, Harold Bohr, he was the brother of Professor Nils Bohr, as our teacher of mathematics. He was a refugee and he was teaching mathematics. And this and that and the time in Sweden passed thinking about Denmark and our friends there and how they were managing.

Q: During this time you’d had no contact with your previous friends, with the people that helped you or so?

A: Yes.

Q: You did not have contact or did you?

A: Yes I did, yes I did, somehow, somehow. Eyvind who was still a saboteur in Denmark came up to Stockholm one day secretly and we met in Stockholm. I had no direct contact with my friends in Denmark, but I wrote to them somehow through my Swedish connection and they knew that I had adopted a name - my name was Oeller Boerjeson, a Swedish name that I had taken, and they knew that was my cover name when they got a letter. And you couldn’t write much. There was maybe an exchange of one or two letters, but it was more by word of mouth. There was some contact, but it was all indirectly, nothing direct. But in my school were also a goodly amount of saboteurs, and four guys one day left school, or one night, and took a rowboat and tried to cross back to Denmark and join the resistance again. And whenever there was what was called a “weapon affair” at the school, I was involved in all of them.

Q: Could you tell me an example of what was this “weapon affair”?

A: Yes. “Weapon affair”. There was one after the other. I had bought a revolver from some Swede which I wanted to use. Had no idea how the war would pass, but it was to be used...

Q: As a personal protection?

A: No, not in Sweden. There I didn’t need it. No, as a weapon in case I should get to Denmark and fight the Germans. For that purpose and only. I had that. I shared a room with a friend of mine, a classmate, and I cleaned the revolver one day and he came in and saw me do that and I said, “You’ve not seen anything. What you have seen you have not seen. And forget about it and you are not to touch this and not to tell anybody.” And he was a saboteur and he said, “I will not.” And I had it in, because I had no locker, so I had it in my suitcase. I came home one day and I saw that the water was sailing down the staircase. I said to myself, “What happened?” and I went up there and he stood there with the revolver and he was wiping his face and he had shot. He had shot at a radiator, so the water came gushing out. And on the other side of the door were two Swedish girls that he missed by this much. And I said, “My G-d. Give me that gun and I’ll get it away. You and I have to have a story - the police will be here in no time - that you and I have been sort of fighting with a stick and the stick went through the radiator.” And he said, “They will not believe it.” I said, “I don’t care. This is our story. We have to stick to it. We were fighting for fun and now I’m away to throw away that stick, so I’m leaving with the gun in the bag.” And I buried it in a park, but it was unfortunately daylight, so somebody had seen that I put something down and they took it. I never got it back. I don’t know what happened. But it was a tough story. And I remember also that the Swedish Home Guard had its kind of headquarters at our school. They had a room with equipment and weapons and four of our students one day had stolen weapons from them and the next day the Swedish police arrived in class. And I shall never forget it because it was like a nightmare and they said, “Him, him,” and the four kids had to get up and leave. They were thrown out of school and they went to school in Gothenburg. Everybody knew they did this for the sake of the resistance in Denmark, not for any highway robbery.

Q: Do you have any knowledge how those weapons that you managed to acquire, how they were smuggled into Denmark?

A: No.

Q: No, you don’t know.

A: That I don’t know, but there were routes. The routes were open both ways, mainly in the eastern direction - from Denmark to Sweden with people, but there was contact also the other way around. Absolutely.

Q: So how long are you staying in this school?

A: I was in this school until spring, ‘45. I was in the last year of high school and I was also in the Danish army at the same time. The Danish army called the “Danish Brigade” was established in Sweden, like the Norwegian Brigade. The Norwegian Brigade was far bigger. And the idea, nobody knew how the war would end, but the thought was that the Danish Brigade would join the Norwegian in helping free, liberate Norway. At the time the Russians were in northern Norway and they stopped and you had the “burned earth” tactic. You remember? And they stopped there and we had learned, part of us in the Brigade, winter warfare to join the Norwegians. I mean, some skiing, but we learned from British officers, commando officers certain war tactics in fights - how to take a house. And we belonged to a...it was called the “work command”, something like that, that was the name of it. But I remember - and you asked whether I had been in an incident, a battle. Not a battle as such, but I had been in something that resembled it.

Q: In Norway?

A: No.

Q: Where?

A: In Elsinore, on our way.

Q: Ah, so you went back already to Denmark.

A: That was on the 4th of May.

Q: 1945?

A: 1945. The 4th or the 5th of May.

Q: Doesn’t matter.

A: Anyway, that was when the war was over in that part of Europe. Fourth of May. When Montgomery announced that the Germans had surrendered in Holland, northern Germany and Denmark, then the Danish army in Sweden went on the move and we drove with army trucks through the night on Swedish roads towards Malmo, our unit. And others came over from Hälsingborg to Elsinore by Danish fishing boats. That was main part of the Brigade and I’m talking about five thousand, six thousand men, big. Jews and non-Jews, men and women. There were women soldiers as well. I mean, they were not fighting, they were not combat soldiers, but they served in the army and they were a good part of it. Our unit of sixty came to Malmo to that particular ship I told you about before, that heroic ship that was put aground. We had to load that with - it was a depot ship for the Danish Brigade - we had to load it with all kinds of stuff what you can imagine, what an army needed. Also ammunition, also this, and I remember that three young boys, seventeen years old, and I was one of them, we moved heavy boxes that may have weighed half a ton because we knew it was necessary. We got this unknown strength that comes from somewhere and I remember that clearly. What we could do I could never, ever dream of doing at any other time. And we came to Elsinore, following the fishing boats with the bulk of the Danish Brigade. As we arrived we learned that the Brigade had already left, on its way down to Copenhagen itself, and there were very few soldiers of the Danish Brigade left in Elsinore at the time to ensure the arrival of the depot ship. There we were, sixty young soldiers. And the Germans had not surrendered yet because they were afraid of surrendering to the Danish resistance and they were waiting for the British and the Americans to arrive and they were not there yet. They were coming up through Jutland. There may have been a few officers, but there were no men, no army. So a Danish “Hipo”, that is “Hilfs Polizei” in short, of Danish traitors appeared on the pier and started shooting at the few Danish soldiers there in order to get into a fight. And our ship did not go to pier, but it docked alongside another boat and we were dying to get out and to get involved. In no time there was a lot of fighting there, but we were not involved. We were several hundred meters away. And there were Germans on the green area of Kronborg Castle who had not surrendered. They were also starting to shoot. There was a lot of shooting and we also wanted to get involved. Then an order came from the commanding officer who was a Danish rear admiral by the name of Kjolsen. His son was a classmate of mine. He ordered us out of the harbour because we had dynamite aboard and if we had been involved, we might blow up. Not only us, we would have blown up half the city. It was very, very dangerous, so we were ordered out and lots of ships while this clash went on were ordered out and they left and then we went out into Swedish waters and down to Tuborg port, where you have the Tuborg breweries, just north of Copenhagen, and this is where we established the depot of the Brigade.

And then, of course, I had to go and see what happened to our apartment and I was armed and I had seen a lot of cowboy films and I knew how to enter an apartment. You know, you kick open the door and you go back and you hold your rifle. There had been Germans or Danish traitors, whatever, in our apartment and we could see what they had been doing. They had gone with bayonets through the furniture, they had extinguished cigarettes in the furniture, and it looked pretty miserable, but I took possession of the apartment and saw my neighbours. And then I went back to....

Q: But there was no one living at that time in the apartment?

A: No, it was empty. I remember something funny also. That during the war two men rang our doorbell and they were from the Danish resistance somehow and they said, “We know that you have a big attic up there and we would like to place a big gun, an artillery piece. And we are coming tonight with it in several pieces. Can we do that?” I said, “Sure.” They took it out after the war.

Q: It stayed there when you came back?

A: It was there, yes, and then afterwards...I mean, so much went on there.

Q: Yes. Your mother and sisters came back later on?

A: They came back later.

Q: I would like to ask you basically a general question, not only concerning yourself and your fmaily, but you mentioned that before and it’s interesting. How were, the Jews that came back, how were they accepted by their neighbours, by the Danish people?

A: I think that this is, I can almost say the unique part of it, of the rescue of the Jews because not only were the Jews rescued, saved to go to abroad and find a haven, but they were also welcomed back. In many countries they said, “Aha, we got rid of our Jews, somehow.” And I don’t want to mention names of countries, but we know. But Denmark was different. If I would exaggerate, I would say that the neighbours even cared for the plants and watered the flowers or other pots and plants at home. That would be an exaggeration, but they did take care of the houses and the apartments and of the businesses, and they welcomed the people back.

Q: Do you remember personally some of your, I’m not talking friends, but neighbours in the place that you were living?

A: “You’re back! Welcome back!” I mean, our neighbours in the apartment building, yes, yes. We had nice exchanges of words.

Q: I would like now to hear the story of the boat that we have here.

A: I’ll tell you the story about the little boat. I think it’s here about seventeen years. I didn’t find the boat, but I heard that it existed, that it belonged to a fisherman who was also a real estate man in the little resort place of Gilleleje west of Elsinore. North coast.

Q: What was the name of the fisherman and this businessman?

A: I’ll tell you in a second. And I went to see him and I said....Gilbert Lassen. And I came there, I actually came with a friend of mine who is also a Danish journalist. So we rang the doorbell and I said, “I know you have an interesting little boat in your garden. May I see it?” He said, “Sure. Come in.” So we saw the little boat in the garden and it looked in a miserable condition and I said to him, “Gilbert Lassen, I’ll tell you one thing. That I come with a mandate from Yad Vashem” - which I did, and I explained to him what that was - “for the boat to be placed at a permanent and prominent place there, to be seen by the whole world and not only by you and your wife. But the whole world will see it and hear the story. The story about the rescue will be the only tangible proof of any rescue in Europe, at Yad Vashem. And it is part of Israel’s official policy to have presidents and kings and prime ministers come to Yad Vashem within twenty-four hours of their arrival, in order to show Israel’s raison d’etre.” He said, “Also the German chancellor?” “Everybody.” He said, “You can have the boat.” And he said, “But I’m an old man...”

Q: Free of charge?

A: “You can have the boat.” He said, “But I’m an old man.” He was more than eighty. “I can’t row it down myself.” I said, “Gilbert, that’s not the point. I have arranged transportation through a Danish Jewish transport company that already said ‘we’ll transport the boat if he wants to give it.’” He said, “But I’ll paint it.” I said, “You paint it.” So he painted it and he came down here and it was dedicated at that place, I think it’s seventeen years ago or so. It was the fortieth anniversary of the rescue, so it was ‘63. And there was a Danish minister, cabinet member present, and it was a rather great affair. And then I’ve following the fate of that boat because every now and then I have Danish guests and I want to take them to Yad Vashem and show them what this is all about and also the boat. And I could see that the boat was falling apart because of the weather, the climate in Jerusalem, with the rain and snow and wind and a lot of sun. And I approached Avner Shalev, the director and said, “You have to do something about this. It’s a gift from the Danish people and it is unacceptable that you don’t take care of it.” So I talked to his office after I’d written to him and they said, ‘Yes, we received your letter.” I said, “That’s not enough. I want a letter back from him. I want in writing that he received my letter and that they’ll do something.” So I got a letter back and that was last fall and then the boat came under restoration and one day around New Year I got a call, “The boat is almost restored and it has a glass roof. What about having it rededicated?” I said, “Surely. I’ll make sure that it will be rededicated in a proper way, that the board members of the two Danish associations in Israel would be informed, that the Danish priest would be informed so many young Danes can come here. And the Danish ambassador will be here also.” So they said, “What colour should it have?” I said, “Not red and white because that would be kitsch.” They said, “We have been looking for an original colour. We think it’s black.” I said, “That’s it. Black. Dark as the night it sailed through with its load of refugees.” The Jews were the majority on that boat, but there were also communists who had escaped and there were Allied airmen, British and American pilots shot down over Denmark who had to escape and rejoin their units. It’s a small boat. It’s what you call a “punt”, shooting punt. You could shoot ducks. There is almost no keel. It’s low, so it could reach the shallow areas of a lake, where the ducks were. And because it was so flat-bottomed you could hide it under sand, under leaves and Gilbert Lassen knew where the Jews could be hidden, which summer house stood empty, belonging to Copenhageners, so that’s where he could hide people and the next day get them on this little boat out, not to Sweden because he couldn’t get out more than two, three hundred meters, but there were waiting Danish fishing cutters out there on the open sea, waiting for the people to come out. And this little boat that may seat six, seven people, made maybe thirty, forty such tours, so it has saved hundreds of people. And it has a name. The initial you can see on it, “HD”, stands for “Holger Danske”. That is, “Holger the Dane”, “Holger Danske”, and he is a saga figure from Viking times and he is in the shape of a marble sculpture under Kronborg Castle, sitting with his beard grown down into the marble table and with his helmet and his sword.

Q: What’s the story briefly?

A: The story is that when Denmark is in danger he will get up, he’ll shake his head, get his beard out of the table and take his sword and fight. So he is a symbol and one of the assistance groups was called “Holger Danske”, “Holger the Dane”, and if you had been a member of that group you would have...that is one of the finest calling cards you could have. So that’s the name of the little boat. Dudu Shenhavi, who is your chief restorer here - he is the head of the team of those who restored the boat - he found a place where you could see the real original colour and this little square is on the aft of the boat. Anyway, the Danish ambassador spoke very movingly and he talked about why it happened in Denmark. He said it was a reflection of the conditions in Europe at the time. He spoke very well. And Johensen Bein, Ambassador Bein, who is your deputy director here, also spoke, and then I was asked to speak and I spoke and I can give you a copy of my speech in English, if you want to. You may or may not have it at Yad Vashem, but otherwise I’ll give it to you.

Q: Okay. I would like to ask you. We are at the very end almost of our interview. From the history that you were telling us about right now, from this piece of unique history of the Danish people and of course your personal history, do you have a message or do you have a personal conclusion that you would like to add to this interview for people of next generations or our generations to see or to hear?

A: Well, in short, you have to be decent to your fellow man. That’s the briefest I can say. And I do not close my eyes to the fact that there were Danish Nazis and Danish soldiers who served with the Wehrmacht on the Russian front. There were, but there were maybe fewer from that country than from most others in occupied Europe and that the Danes, to a very large extent, follow a biblical tradition - “I am my brother’s keeper”. He concerns me. Jew or not Jew. I have a kind of responsibility for his well-being also. If not, then who should he care about? Me? You know, you had a lot of that during the war. Less now, because when you have the outside pressure then you feel more togetherness, clearly. Can use Israel as an example, yes? But in Denmark it was very clearly felt. Well, my message is....I’ll quote what I had in an interview with a Danish priest a few days ago. There’s a small community of young Danes here. They are in social service in Israel. They’re helping in old-age homes and in handicap homes. A goodly number of them. Young men and women. And there is a Danish priest here to serve them. Now he is on summer vacation and he has a replacement for a few weeks and I interviewed him and asked him, “How do you think that the Danish people would react today if they should be in the same situation, that the Jews would be in danger in Denmark?” He said, “I’m convinced that they would act the same way because that is the kind of people it is.” He said, “I’d like to tell you that a Danish prime minister during the oil crisis, Anker Joergensen, a Social Democrat, stood up and defended Israel during the oil crisis. When it was very, very crucial for countries to come through that crisis, he defended Israel, and I think that that man had a lot of courage and conviction and I admire him for it.

Q: Thank you very much.

A: The picture you see here is maybe one of the first “Deguerreotypes” in Denmark. Deguerre was the French inventor of photography. This picture is from 1888 and it shows part of my family, my ancestors. To the right you see a man and woman, tall man, his wife with her head a little bit tilted - that’s his wife. Herman Grün is the name of my grandfather there, with eight of his ten children. My mother is in the front row, sitting to the right, with her head turned exactly like her mother’s. She looks like a true copy of her. You see what I mean. It’s very, very interesting that she has exactly this position of her head. Now, in the centre you see my great-grandparents - Solomon Grün and his wife Sara, and she was born Cohen. He was born in 1810, so he was seventy-eight at the time and you see a very pious group of people and they are to the left on the chaiselonge. Other members of the family were by the name of Meyer and Michelsen.

A: These are my grandparents, Herman Grün and his wife Lina. She was born Nathan. And he was the great learned man in the Jewish community in Copenhagen whom you consulted in religious matters.

A: My parents - my father Moritz, born in Ukraine, who came to Denmark in 1905, and my mother, in the fashion of the time with a “tonure” as you can see. That was at the time they got married, I believe.

A: This picture, I believe, is from 1931 from Humlebaek, a resort place north of Copenhagen. You see my father and my mother with their four children and it’s a very happy family picture. When I look at this I get a warm feeling. And yours truly is maybe three years old, maybe I’m four, with the last fashion in shorts. My sisters are from the left Margot, who died in California some years ago - she was an actress; my sister Lilian, who is a weaver in Copenhagen, and my sister Else to the right and she is alive and kicking in Denmark. That’s the story of this picture.

A: And here you see yours truly. I think I’m maybe two, maybe three years old. I’m still wearing the early fashion of Bermuda shorts and have a particular hairdo. And that’s as much as I can say about that particular picture.

A: So this is a school picture from way back from my school Oester Borgerdyd in Copenhagen which was established before the French Revolution. The picture was taken, I believe, in 1937, maybe ‘38, and I’m in this picture and I’m in the middle of the picture with an open shirt under a pullover. I’m standing next to, that’s the identification right in the centre of the picture. Next to me is a fellow with dark hair - that’s my cousin Erik. We are one of the very few Jews in that school. Now, this is the total school, it was a boys’ school at the time and now we’ll see it great length. There were some three, four hundred students from age ten or so up to eighteen. Here we have the teachers in the centre and in the middle soon we’ll see the rector. We are seeing a big man in the centre, a little bit to the right of this white line - that’s the rector. And I can tell you that I have many, many friends in this picture that I’m still in good contact, still today after all those years. And one of the students appears three times. He started on the left, then he ran to the middle, then he ran to the end and you can see him now, he is standing on the flank to the right. There he is. And he appears also in the centre and on the very left. And he was a very entrepreneurish kind of man.

A: This is the tombstone of one of my ancestors, Salomon Salomonsen, and it is from 1695, give or take. I don’t know whether the tombstone still exists, but I believe so in the first Jewish cemetery in Copenhagen, which is not in use, but very well-kept, a historic site. And you can see the Hebrew text on the tombstone.

A: This is from February, 1998. That is the rededication of the little boat, “Holger Danske”, “Holger the Dane”, that was used to take refugees out to waiting Danish fishing cutters from a resort place called Gilleleje. And I was asked by Yad Vashem to speak because it somehow came to me to be the rescuer of a rescue boat. I told Yad Vashem, “You can’t keep the boat like this,” so it was restored. To the left you see in the picture Ambassador Yohanan Bein, who is deputy director of Yad Vashem.

A: Present at the occasion were some people. You can see from the left Dudu Shenhavi, who is the chief restorer of Yad Vashem, Ambassador Yohanan Bein, who is the deputy director of Yad Vashem, the then Danish Ambassador to Israel, Carsten Staur, and me.

A: The picture is from my younger son’s wedding in October, 1990. You see him to the right. He is married to a very observant Jewish girl, Orly Katsav, and here he is. That’s her brother who is a rabbi of Shas in Netivot. And his older brother Michael, called Misha, who lives in Tel Aviv, to the left, dancing with his brother Ariel at his wedding.

A: This tape will be of interest to my children. What do we see here? Kerem, my four-year-old granddaughter, on her birthday, very recently. And they live in Ramat Hahayal, she with her parents, Michael, my oldest son and Yoni, his wife. And Kerem was here four and she is looking out of a little house for a baby or for a young girl that I bought for her birthday and it sat there in the garden as you can see.