Customer Reviews

A Conspiracy Of Decency: The Rescue Of The Danish Jews During World War II

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I came across this book at the local library recently. This slim volume tells the courageous but little known true story about how the Danish people saved the vast majority of it's Jewish population from the death camps. The text is complemented by a number of photos. This book is worth the effort to locate.

I have been studying books concerning those who rescued Jews during the Nazi era for about 10 years. Obviously, this can be a depressing enterprise. However, this book, The Conspiracy of Decency, has the distinction of being the only holocaust book I have read that made me feel absolutely wonderful when I concluded it. For Yad Vashem to honor the entire nation of Denmark for its rescue efforts is telling in itself, but this book is extremely well written and probes the motivation of the rescuers as well as their heroic actions. I highly recommend this book!

"A Conspiracy of Decency" tells the thrilling and all-too-little-known story of the rescue of virtually all of Denmark's Jews in late 1943.

In the early years of Denmark's German occupation, Danes, including Danish Jews, were treated relatively leniently by their Nazi invaders. But in 1943, when the Danish government refused to impose the death penalty on Danish resistance fighters - whose acts of sabotage against the German military machine in their country were becoming increasingly sophisticated - the government resigned and martial law was imposed by the Germans. Soon after, the Danish resistance learned that Denmark's Jews were to be rounded up on the night of Rosh Shoshanna in October, 1943. After an announcement by the rabbi at a prayer service at the synagogue in Copenhagen, virtually all of Denmark's Jews disappeared overnight: with the help of their Christian friends, they had gone into hiding. The stories of how individual Jews were hidden by their neighbors and eventually made their way to freedom in neutral Sweden makes for reading that is both exciting and poignant.

"A Conspiracy of Decency" is a well-researched and highly readable book about an episode in history that deserves far more visibility. For an exciting account of Danish resistance actions and the rescue of Danish Jews in a fictional setting, I also highly recommend the gripping page-turner, The Devil's Alchemists by A.R. Homer.

Great quotations that make you feel what it was like to live during the Holocaust in Denmark.