In October 1943, when the German occupation authorities prepared to round up Denmark's Jewish population, German diplomat Georg Ferdinand Duckwitz leaked the plans to Danish social democrat Hans Hedtoft. What followed was one of the most remarkable rescue operations of the Holocaust.
Ordinary Danish citizens—fishermen, doctors, teachers, taxi drivers, business owners—spontaneously organized to hide Jewish families and transport them across the narrow Øresund strait to neutral Sweden. The operation was carried out in small fishing boats, rowboats, and kayaks, mostly at night. Ambulance drivers smuggled families to coastal departure points. Hospitals admitted healthy Jewish patients as "sick" to hide them.
Of approximately 7,800 Danish Jews, around 7,220 were successfully transported to Sweden. Only 481 were captured by the Germans, and even those were sent to Theresienstadt rather than death camps, partly because the Danish government persistently demanded information about their welfare. Denmark's rescue is unique in the Holocaust—no other occupied country came close to saving such a proportion of its Jewish population.