King Christian X noted in his diary after a conversation with his prime minister in September 1940: For three years of virtually peaceful ‘co-operation’ the Danish authorities had followed an uneasy path between pragmatic self-interest and principle but there had always been one line that they were never prepared to cross.

There had been nothing heroic about Denmark’s response to German aggression in the early years of the war but when the crunch came late in 1943 and plans were activated for the deportation of its Jewish population, a whole country woke to its humanitarian, civic and democratic collective duty. The author is careful to underline the cultural and racial differences that made each country’s experience of Nazi occupation different, and yet at the end of his lucid, compelling and scrupulously fair book nothing rings more true than his assertion that there was nothing ‘inevitable’ in occupied Europe’s collaboration in the Holocaust and that Denmark was the stirring proof of that. In both Bulgaria and Denmark, however, just one.īo Lidegaard’s Countrymen is the story of how Denmark to a great extent saved its Jewish population from the labour and extermination camps, but it inevitably raises issues of equal relevance to the rest of Europe. In France and Italy somewhere around 20 per cent perished. Of the Jews in Hungary, the Netherlands, Greece, Latvia and Poland, between 70 and 90 per cent died, while the corresponding figures for Estonia, Belgium Norway and Romania were between 40 and 50. Please ask at time of of order (USA).Of all the statistics generated by the Holocaust, perhaps some of the most disturbing in the questions they give rise to are the following. This may take up to 12 weeks to arrive if this option is required, and there is no tracking information. I will probably ask for added costs above this weight, but I can offer cheaper alternatives. Anything over 1kg, tracked and signed has almost doubled. There has been a recent, large increase to shipping costs to the USA. The level of protection/insurance is reduced with the cheaper postage, so please bear this in mind when opting for a cheaper service on more valuable items.įor postage, books are wrapped in protective plastic, bubble wrapped (up-cycled) and custom-made boxes (up-cycled cardboard).

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Countrymen by bo lidegaard