Media should emulate legend of Danish king’s wartime gesture

IT is surprising to find Denmark at the centre of the international furore over the cartoons that have inflamed Muslim opinion because it has traditionally been one of those countries least associated with religious intolerance.

In fact, it is one of the last countries that one would think about in this context, especially in the light of its record during World War II.

When the Germans invaded on April 9, 1940, they promised to respect the country’s political independence if no resistance was offered. The government and King Christian X knew they were no match for the Germans militarily, so they put up no resistance.

The Danish government remained in Copenhagen during German occupation. They tried to keep life as normal as possible by behaving as if little or nothing had changed. Official contact was maintained with the Germans through the Danish Foreign Minister, Erik Scavenius.

King Christian X had been in the habit of going for a morning ride on horseback through the streets of Copenhagen, so he continued the practice after the arrival of the Germans. The people saw this as a sign of defiance and an assertion of national sovereignty.

The king went unarmed and without escort. Many local citizens, especially messenger boys, would follow him on their bicycles. His gesture was seen as a positive contrast to the Nazi military and the cult of the Fuhrer.

As the Danes had not resisted, the Germans went easy on them, and Denmark was the country least scarred by Nazi occupation. The overwhelming majority of Danish Jews survived the war, unlike fellow Jews in other occupied countries.

The Nazis passed a law in Germany in 1941 requiring all Jewish people to wear a yellow Star of David with the word ‘Jude’. King Christian and the Danish government took an interest in the welfare of Danish Jews. “There is no Jewish question in Denmark,” Foreign Minister Scavenius told Hitler’s deputy, Hermann Goering, in 1941. That December the king sent a letter of sympathy to Rabbi Marcus Melchior following an arson attack on the synagogue in Copenhagen. As a result, Christian X was seen as a protector of Danish Jews. The most celebrated gesture of defiance was the king’s reputed response to a German order for Jewish people to identify themselves.

“All Jews must wear a yellow armband with a Star of David” was the decree that supposedly came from the German occupation HQ at the Hotel D’Angleterre.

That night the Danish underground transmitted a message to all Danes: “From Amalienborg Palace, King Christian has given the following answer to the German command that Jews must wear a Star of David. The King has said that one Dane is exactly the same as the next Dane. He himself will wear the first Star of David and he expects that every loyal Dane will do the same.”

Next day, according to the story, the king rode out wearing the yellow armband, to be greeted by citizens wearing the same, thereby frustrating any chance that the Germans could use the law as a means of identifying Danish Jews. It is a great story that gained international credence during the war, but it never actually happened. It was one of the great urban legends.

The Germans never ordered the Star of David to be worn in Denmark. Many believe this was because they realised that the king might respond in that way and this would become a potent sign of national defiance. One suggestion was that the story was prompted by a cartoon in a Swedish newspaper on January 10, 1942, depicting the king speaking with his prime minister, who asked, “What are we going to do, your majesty, if Scavenius makes all the Jews wear yellow stars?”

The king replied: “We’ll all have to wear yellow stars.”

Queen Margrethe II, the current head of state in Denmark, thinks the story was probably prompted by the widespread belief that her grandfather would have worn the Star of David if the Germans introduced it. She recalled the story of the messenger boy who reportedly said: “If they try to enforce the yellow star here, the king will be the first to wear it!”

The Nazis did not try to implement the armband law in Denmark because they feared the king would wear one and that this would then become a national symbol of defiance. “To me, the truth is an even greater honour for our country than the myth,” Queen Margrethe contended.

THERE were around 8,000 Jews in Denmark and the Danish authorities conspired to smuggle some 7,500 of them to safety in Sweden. The Germans only managed to round up fewer than 500, and 284 of those were deported to the Thersiendstadt concentration camp in Czechoslovakia. Almost 90% of them survived the war.

Very few people here have seen the cartoons at the centre of the current controversy, even though they are readily accessible on the internet. The 12 cartoons were published in the Danish newspaper Jyllands-Posten. One would be hard-pressed to understand how anyone could find most of them offensive, and even the most disagreeable were very mild - a depiction of the prophet with what could be taken for a Viking head-dress with horns, or one with a head-dress containing a cannon ball bomb with a lighted fuse. Viewing them one becomes even more perplexed as to what the fuss is about. When a delegation of Danish imams went to the Middle East to discuss the cartoons with senior officials and prominent Islamic scholars, they distributed a booklet with 15 cartoons. These included three bogus images that had not appeared in the Danish newspaper.

Those were obviously included in order to cause real offence, which the other 12 were unlikely to do.

The whole thing reminds one of those periodic stampedes in Mecca in which hundreds of people are killed as a result of some unfounded rumour.

Some Muslims apparently take umbrage at any presumed likeness of Mohammed.

There are Christians who have felt the same about Christian images. Remember the guy with the hammer who attacked the statue of the Virgin Mary in Ballinspittle in the 1980s.

Some extreme Muslim fundamentalists have been trying to stir things up by praising Hitler’s treatment of the Jews. Appeasement did not work with Hitler, and society should stand up to those demented people who now seek to emulate him.

It is in the interest of civilisation to expose these cranks, especially when one of them is controlling Iran, developing a nuclear capability, and threatening to obliterate Israel, which already has nuclear weapons and is not likely to stand idly by.

Newspapers around the world should emulate the Danish king’s mythical behaviour. They should strike a blow for press freedom by selecting a date and publishing the Jyllands-Posten cartoons so that people the world over - especially the vast majority of decent Muslims - would have their eyes opened to the way in which they have been manipulated by those fundamentalist phoneys who have generated this bogus controversy.