Leeway Cottage (21 page)

King Gustav is glad to meet with Dr. Bohr. He is sympathetic with Bohr's position. Absolutely.

Will his country, then, take in Denmark's Jews? House them, employ them, feed them, school them for the duration? Which might be forever, of course, if Germany wins the war? It is the king's turn to be angry. Well, heavens. King Gustav will let him know.

“London?” ask the handlers afterward, without much hope.

Friday evening, October 1, 1943. Copenhagen.

Hilde Hansen has had her supper. She is listening to Rossini on the record player and drinking a small glass of beer before bed.

It is about eleven o'clock. She hears something in the hall. Footsteps. Then knocking. It's not at her door, though. It's a loud thumping across the hall.

Hilde sips her beer and enjoys her music.

Across the hall, the knocking has turned to pounding. Hilde gets up reluctantly and goes to her record player, where she lifts the needle from the groove with great care, and sets it gently on its bracket while the turntable spins out silence. If she's going to open the door to these hounds, she doesn't want Rossini to sweep out and get mixed up with them.

In the hall, two men in Gestapo uniform are standing angrily, staring at the door they've been hammering. When her door opens, they wheel on Hilde. One has a machine gun.

Hilde stands at the door of her now silent apartment. “What is this noise about?” she asks.

“We are looking for Miss Tofa Bing,” says the shorter of the men.

“She's not at home,” says Hilde.

“We can break the door down,” says the taller one. Both men speak in German.

Hilde shrugs. “What good would that do?”

“Where has she gone?”

“Away.”

The shorter one swears. They have a list. There are seven thousand Jews in Denmark, give or take. They have been at this for two hours. They have not found one Jew at home.

They look angrily at Hilde who suddenly gives them a pleasant smile. It is like a slap, and they would like to slap her back. Hilde turns and closes her door. There is silence in the hall; then she hears the footsteps clumping furiously toward the stairs, heading up to the next floor. Crossing her room, Hilde pauses to say a word of comfort to Miss Bing's cat. She goes to her turntable. She lifts the arm and blows imaginary lint from the needle, then lowers it gently back onto the record of her beloved
Petite Messe Solennelle.

 

Friday evening passes quietly in the house in Hornbæk. Mrs. Roth has managed to bake a challah, which seems like a proof of God's grace, and the household shares a Sabbath supper by candlelight. The Roth children are tired out, as they spent the afternoon on the beach running and playing, wearing the Bennike family's summer clothes. Per gave them all new names and taught them to cry “I am Per Bennike's cousin from Alborg here for a visit!” They hear no news of what is passing in the south. The phones are dead.

 

Stockholm doesn't know the details of what is happening across the water, because the Copenhagen telephone exchange has been shut down, to prevent the quarry from summoning help, or devising escape. But there are illegal radios, a few, sending the news, and there have been terrible things to see and hear. An eighty-four-year-old woman, deaf and blind, who refused to hide because even the Nazis couldn't be so silly as to think she threatened their racial purity, has been dragged from her home and down to the harbor. Children have been slapped, threatened, and carried from home, screaming in fear. Families have been separated, a Jewish father hauled to the harbor while his Christian wife and children beg and weep. People have been shot trying to flee or hide, people have been frightened literally to death by the pounding on the door in the middle of the night. There have been heart attacks, and there have been suicides by people who would rather die at home than let the Germans torture and kill them in camps.

In Stockholm, Bohr survives the night. And blessedly, Saturday morning brings him the king's answer. Sweden will take Denmark's Jews. A very great thing has been accomplished and everyone on this side of the sound is showing well. Bohr can leave for safety.

But he won't. It is now the second day of the pogrom. Those Danish Jews who are not already onboard the
Wartheland
and the
Donau,
or dead, are in hiding, out of reach. What good does it do to open the door, if the people forced against the wall don't know it has opened? Bohr demands that this offer of refuge be made on the front page of the newspapers. He wants to hear it broadcast on Sverige Radio.

 

Saturday morning, Hornbæk learns what the night has wrought. Per goes into Helsingør early and comes back shaken. The grapevine carries terrible news, and Mrs. Saloman puts her hands to her mouth as she listens, then starts to cry.

“Samuel,” Per says to Mr. Roth, “you have to shave that beard.”

“I can't.”

“I'm sorry, you must,” says Per. “You might as well go out wearing a yarmulke.”

“It is not permitted. I'll stay inside.”

“You'll shave the beard. I'll lend you a razor.”

“No, I'll have to go back to Copenhagen to get one.”

“What are you
thinking
?”

Mr. Roth explains that it is forbidden to shave the beard, though it can be cut. He knows an Orthodox man who has an electric razor.

“And that
cuts
?”

“Yes,” says Roth, stubbornly.

Per stands staring. Finally he says, “Stay here. Promise me. Don't leave this house.
None
of you,” and goes off.

What would they do if he never came back? Or if he is growing tired of this circus and turns them in?

Per is gone for several hours. He has been to Helsingør to try to buy an electric razor, without hope and without luck. Finally the pastor in Gilleleje has turned one up, and told him several other useful things in the bargain.

While Mr. Roth is dealing with his beard, Per tells Henrik and Ditte, “A friend of ours in Frederiksvaerk has a boatyard—he's got a German patrol boat in the shop. He was told they won't need it until Tuesday—there's nothing wrong with it. He could use it to take you across to Sweden after dark.” Clearly this scheme amuses him.

Ditte and Tofa look at each other. To them it sounds too clever. It could be a trap by the Germans, and if it isn't, what if when they get there they are simply arrested? They have no exit permits. Can Per get them exit visas? Maybe just the forms for them to fill out? If he can, will it help? It is sickening trying to make decisions without enough information, decisions that can kill you if you get them wrong.

Per shrugs. It would have been fun, when this is over, to tell people about the patrol boat. He goes off again. Have they tried his patience too far
this
time?

Mr. Roth comes downstairs clean-shaven and his wife gives a scream. She has never seen him like this; she isn't sure she recognizes him. The newly exposed skin is a ghastly white with very many red spots, outraged at what it's just been through. His upper lip is longer than she thought it was, his chin a little weaker. His children come to the door to look at him and then run away and are heard giggling in the next room. Mr. Roth sits down heavily and won't talk to anyone.

There are people in all the houses on the lane now, crouching behind curtains. Per and others, the pastor, three schoolteachers, and the veterinarian, are engaged in buying and making food and trying to get exit permit forms, in case. Inside the Bennike house, however, they know nothing of the others, and feel alone. They have not been outside for twenty-four hours. They have seen German soldiers patrolling the roads and beaches. At one point in the afternoon a knocking at the kitchen door frightens them rigid. In minutes everyone is out of sight except Henrik, the children in closets, the adults in the basement, which is unpleasantly dank.

Henrik looks out the window before opening the door. There is a young woman waiting; her bicycle leans against a tree.

“Is Per at home?” she asks.

“No, he is not, at the moment. I am his uncle Henrik from Aalborg.”

“I'm glad to meet you. Will you tell Per, please, that Anka was here? Tell him I think I found the rucksack he was looking for. It's quite a big one, with eight apples in it.”

“I'd be glad to—would you like to write him a note?”

“No, no. No. But please remember the message exactly. I need to know when he can pick it up.”

“I'll tell him.”

 

It was many hours before Per came back. The children have been fed a cold supper and sent to bed; one of the Roth children has a fever, and everyone is on edge. They are in Per's bedroom, gathered around his radio for the BBC broadcast when the announcement is made: Sweden has offered refuge to the Jews of Denmark. It is all they can do to keep from shouting. Mrs. Saloman begins to cry again and the Roths to pray aloud their gratitude.

Per comes back exhausted. He knows, though he does not tell them, that there are now Jews hidden in haylofts, attics, boathouses, and basements all along the coast. Best is furious. The Gestapo is furious. Per has his shoes off, a cheese sandwich in one hand and a beer in the other, when Henrik remembers Anka's message from the afternoon.

“Brava!” shouts Per. He wolfs the rest of his supper and struggles back into his shoes. “She's found a boat! The fisherman wants eight hundred kroner apiece…how much money do you have?”

The Mosses and Tofa have enough. The Roths do not. But Mr. Saloman will pay for them. Per is off again. The children are awakened and dressed. Then everybody waits.

When Per comes back, cold and wet and almost too tired to speak, it is to tell them that the boat has already gone. There will be no more crossings tonight. They are glad finally to go to bed, but very frightened at what the morning will bring. Now that the Germans know every Jew left in Denmark will be trying to cross the sound, they will make an impenetrable net waiting to catch them. Won't they?

Sunday morning, October 3. A letter from the Lutheran bishops of Denmark is read from virtually every pulpit in the country. It denounces the action against the Jews, and declares that whoever protects them follows the laws of God, not of man.

The Germans, embarrassed and angry, are circling and baying throughout the country like a pack of hounds that have treed a fox but can't shake it down. There are thousands of cornered Jews under their noses. But where?

Adolf Eichmann, with his ice-cold eyes, arrives in Copenhagen.

An offer is made to General Goetz of the Danish Army and Admiral Vedel of the navy. The Germans know that most Danes long to be
Judenrein,
Jew-free, like Aryans everywhere; they offer to exchange the Danish soldiers and sailors they interned when the government fell, for Jews. The reply comes: “There is no point in exchanging one Dane for another Dane.”

The
Wartheland
leaves Copenhagen with not thousands of captives, but 202. The
Donau
leaves empty.

 

Sunday morning the promise Niels Bohr extracted is in the Swedish papers, and has been announced through official channels. The hand has been forced, by Bohr and by the Swedish people themselves, who are already giving shelter to the trickle of refugees who have made it across the sound since Wednesday. Some have come in the night by small boat or kayak. Some have been rowed the two-plus miles from Helsingør or Snekkersten to Helsingborg, where the distance is narrowest, by Danes young and old whose palms are skinless and bloody by the time they get home.

S
ydney stayed in Cleveland for two weeks. It was
the longest time she'd ever passed under her mother's roof without hostilities. Bernard was home again and recovering, slowly. He spent most of his time sitting in the library with a plaid rug across his knees. The unexpected event of the visit was that Bernard had fallen in love with Eleanor. She was a calm, bright, sunny child. Sydney could put the baby down on her blanket with a few rattles and Bernard would watch her for hours as she gurgled and chewed on things. She liked to crawl over to his chair and pull herself up to a standing position, holding on to his finger, and it was in that little room with Bernard that she took her first steps entirely on her own. You'd have thought Bernard and Eleanor had invented the whole proposition of upright ambulation themselves, he was so excited.

“The most
enchanting
child,” he would cry to visitors. Naturally, Sydney was softening toward him. Meanwhile she was free to accompany her mother on her rounds, while Bernard and Maudie managed the baby. It was rather pleasant.

One day far in the future, Eleanor herself, with her daughters, would read Candace's Line-a-Day journal for the weekend of Denmark's dark struggle.

This is what they found:

So much for brave little Denmark. And “Eleanor cried a great deal” was virtually the only time her grandchild was mentioned. “Horrible Old Trout” is how Sydney taught Eleanor to speak of her grandmother.