Photos of the Rescue of the Danish Jews

Very little photo documentation of these events exists. Often photos and footage believed to relate to the rescue in October 1943 do, in fact, illustrate transports of a much later date, and the persons appearing are members of the Resistance, Allied airmen etc. Please see the samples below.

Fishing boat transporting Jewish refugees from Falster (Denmark) to Ystad in Sweden in September/October 1943.

Photographer: Mogens Margolinsky

Photo No. 06E0000043

Three Jewish brothers and their sister upon arrival in Sweden in a rowing boat on October 6, 1943. With them in the boat were also their aunt and a fisherman. One of the oars (displayed on the photo) broke near the Swedish coast.

Photo No. 06E0000045

Jews hiding in a storehouse near the Copenhagen harbour (Asiatisk Plads) awaiting transport for Sweden. October 1943. Still from the documentary Your Freedom is at Stake (Det gælder din frihed) that was released in 1946.

Photo No. 06E0000018

Reconstruction showing refugees arriving in Sweden in a rowing boat. Still from a documentary produced by the Swedish authorities i 1945. Directed by the Danish film director Bjarne Henning Jensen.

Photo No. 06E0000010

Refugees on their way to Sweden in the summer of 1944 on board the ship LA 127 ELLEN operated by the organisation 'Dansk-Svensk Flygtningstjeneste'. At this time, the refugees were no longer Jewish, but members of the Resistance, allied airmen etc.

Photo No. 12A0100020

Cf.: Henrik Dethlefsen. De illegale Sverigesruter 1943-45 (1993), p. 146

Stills from the documentary Your Freedom is at Stake (Det gælder din frihed) which was released in 1946. The footage is meant to illustrate refugees appearing from hiding in view of the Swedish coast. But the takes were actually made during a leisure trip for former members of the Resistance in the summer of 1945.

Photos No. 06E0000024 & 025.

Cf.: FV-Bladet, No. 180, March 2005, p. 31.

Danish and foreign journalists arriving in Copenhagen from Sweden on the morning of May 5, 1945. (Formerly believed to show Jewish refugees arriving in Sweden in 1943.)

Photo No. 35C6000001

German lorry sabotaged by the organisation BOPA i Copenhagen on September 17, 1943. (The picture was formerly believed to relate to the rounding up of Jewish citizens in October.)

Photo No. 08A6300022

Transfer of passengers from a Danish ship to a Swedish one in the waters between Denmark and Sweden. Picture from a slideshow compiled to document the activities of the escape organisation 'Danish-Swedish Refugee Service' run by Mr. Leif Hendil. The pictures were probably all taken shortly before the German capitulation in May 1945, and the refugees are thus unlikely to be Jewish.

Photo No. 12A0100018